Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 105

Putin Breakthrough

Starting with the caveat that no agreement of whatever type in Syria has so far had a shelf life which can be counted even in hours, this does look like a game changer. It is a triumph for Putin, who has stepped in to fill the vacuum caused by the chaotic state of western diplomacy in the Middle East. It is also a success for the modernized Russian military doctrine of fighting wars smart, hard and fast. It took them just over a year. America, Britain and bits of NATO are blundering about still, 15 years after going into Iraq. It puts Russia firmly in the driving seat and is politically astonishing because Turkey is a NATO member. Unlike the West which has an agglomeration of so called allies who defy every standard of human rights it holds dear and covertly work against its interests, Russia has just two, Turkey and Iran. Even more interesting is that Turkey wants to overthrow Assad while Russia supports him.

So where does this leave the West?  Hopefully humbly rejoicing that at least the worst bloodshed may be over, trying now to get a combined approach with these new power brokers to deal with IS and watching Twitter to see what happens next.

Where’s Boris?

Corbyn On May

There is emerging a much more strident Jeremy Corbyn. His Commons performance has been upgraded to a more combative style and his interview in the Guardian demonstrates a willingness to attack much more vigorously the issues of the day. Apparently this is a deliberate move to transfer his popularity among his core supporters into recognition and acceptance across the wider electorate. To win an election, the majority of voters must see the Labour leader as the agent of change, because that is why they vote Labour, but that change has to be both credible and supportable. Above all it has to be the kind of change which millions who feel ignored connect to, because it is in those legions of non voters, or fringe party protest votes, that any major victory lies.

His quip that Theresa May is not Henry VIII and that she has to bring the final terms of the Brexit negotiations (if it all happens) to Parliament for approval is very much to the point. The deal has to be approved by the European parliament so you would expect even Brexiteers would support our own parliament exercising the very sovereignty they campaigned to repatriate. Corbyn is onto a winner here.  Maybe these changes of style are why there is a hint of Labour advancing in the latest polls.

A Time To Reflect?

Everyone can see the world is going through the biggest political and economic change of weather since the end of the Cold War and the advance of globalization. But nobody is sure what this means or where we are headed. There is now more uncertainty out there than I can recall, ever. So I am not, as the year draws to its close, willing to predict what 2017 may bring. What I will do is look back and see where we thought we were going in 2016.

As the New Year received its ecstatic welcome all across the globe (more or less) Cameron was safe in Downing Street for the duration of this Parliament, Trump was a nutter who was unlikely to survive the early primaries, the In Out Referendum to finally put to rest the wild notion that we could leave the EU was set for mid-year, Corbyn was settling in as the unexpected Labour leader and in Europe the main preoccupation was the never ending diaspora of the hopeful streaming up from the south.

Well it did not quite happen as expected. The referendum was lost and cost Cameron his job. There was a rebellion against Corbyn which failed very badly. Trump was elected US President. The Italian government lost its own reform referendum and the EU’s most reformist national leader, prime minister Renzi resigned. Hollande threw in the towel and announced he would not stand for a second term as president of France. Merkel will stand in 2017 but may not win.

Trump is, in a year of big ticket items, probably the biggest ticket, for 2017. This is because he is undoubtedly the biggest wild card the Americans have elected since Abraham Lincoln and he will set about changing the very essence of the United States, just as Lincoln did. But how, in what direction and with what result is far from clear. It is also unclear whether Americans will let him deliver his vision of a greater America. It is also unclear how the world will react.

The next biggest ticket is Brexit. Here it is difficult to know where to begin. So I will just plunge in. We do not yet know by what constitutional process Article 50 will be triggered and await the Supreme Court. We do not know for sure if Article 50 is reversible (it is supposed not to be) as this is now about to be challenged in the Irish courts and will end up at the European Supreme Court. We do not know whether on leaving the EU we are actually in or out of the European free market and this is subject to another legal challenge. We do not know what the government plan is, perhaps because it does not have one.

There is talk of hard Brexit, soft Brexit, clean Brexit and no Brexit. The last is a no, no. So on current form it may very well happen, not least because the whole legal spider’s web was never meant to be unpicked and the only way might be to shut down the whole thing and start again with something less prescriptive which we would be happy to remain in. With the political uncertainty in both America and Europe we will have to wait until the middle of the year, before we can even get an inkling of what comes next, both politically and economically.

If you ask me to predict whether the May government will survive the year I cannot. If you ask me what might come after, if she falls, I would once have answered Boris. But now I am not sure about even that.

Strikes: A Christmas of Discontent?

Suddenly we seem to be engulfed in strikes designed to disrupt lives at the height of the festive season. What began on the railways and with the junior doctors, is now spreading. Baggage handlers, cabin crew, post offices, perhaps postmen. Why? Because there is anger out there that too many are not sharing in the bounty of the few, too many bosses are saying no to their workers’ demands, whilst upping their own money many times above the inflation rate. Too many are working long hours, the product of which  is gobbled up by excessive housing costs. Everywhere anger is building, yet the government does nothing meaningful to resolve accumulating issues; a soundbite here and a platitude there no longer works.

The Conservatives are ahead in the polls, but this should bring them little comfort. With the rise of populism the political group destined to topple the Tories from power may not even yet exist. Sooner or later, if that anger continues to build, it will become a powerful political force. Meanwhile Labour recognises that it has no alternative but to support the strikers and heap the blame for it all on the government. Union politics is not straightforward. Thatcher won her battles, but that was at the end of massive industrial unrest which saw about 28 million working days lost in 1979 alone. People had had enough. But  so far this year less than 300,000 days have been lost to strikes and, important this, people have had enough of austerity. When Heath asked ‘who governs Britain?‘ in 1974, the voters replied ‘not you!’  And the reason for that was that they had lost faith in Heath’s failing economic policies.

There will be a lot of political noise in 2017. But keep an ear to the pulse of the economy. That is the heartbeat of power. If it begins to fibrillate, the May government will need intensive care.

Boris?

The Javid Oath: Is This A Good Idea?

No. An important feature of the British way of life is that its citizens are not required to swear pointless oaths. Certain professions are sworn into full membership, as are MPs and members of the armed services. New citizens are sworn in. That is enough.

The present ruptures in society, first foretold in my book 2010 A Blueprint for Change, arise from the unfair elements of globalization, seven years of austerity, cuts to the financial support of public services to the point that most of them are breaking down, a failure to provide housing at affordable cost and also the advent of single faith schools.

In a secular society faith schools do more harm than good. Faith can be nurtured through religious institutions but not as an education stream. What would help, since we do not have a written constitution, is at least a written summary of how the unwritten one works, so that the freedoms, rights and obligations which form the basis of our country can be taught in schools. As it is even the government does not know how it works. It is doubtful if there are fifty people in the country who do. As for the oath, this is a pointless gesture to resolve issues which demand proper attention. Like social care for the elderly, for which the inadequate proposals, mostly robbing Peter to pay Paul, put forward by Javid last week will do very little good.

The only thing one can say about this minister is that, in this do nothing government, at least he tries to do something.

The Train Strike: Labour Moves In.

Labour has now come out in full support of this ruinous strike. Perversely this is a smart move. Because it is now a major political issue in the south and neither the government (or the company) nor the unions have put their case with any coherence, leading to a complete breakdown in public confidence and patience. This morning the Labour Transport Shadow explained the dispute with great clarity on Today. The issue involving safety is about the very high volume of passengers on these lines in the rush hour and the length, twelve coaches, of the trains. As a regular user of the Southern service, when it is running, I can vouch for that. Not only do the trains become crowded, but so do the platforms. So whilst it is perfectly safe to have driver operation of the doors on many lines, I can vouch for the fact that on this line it most likely is not.

It is unfortunate that this has not been made clear before. Labour now having entered the fray, must bring it to a head with a big political challenge about putting cash before the safety of passengers (an historic problem on these lines which has caused many deaths in the past). It must demand a moratorium on the current dispute and the cancelling of this idiotic franchise, with full public ownership of this segment now. We can then have joined up management of both the track and the trains. The travelling public has had more than enough.

This does not alter the fact that the unions have articulated their case with great clumsiness and that strikes to modern industrial relations are as lynching is to justice. There is a better way. Always.

Obama And The Russian Hack

Surely the issue is not that these emails were allegedly hacked, but that they were actually written?

Obama should think about that. The American people already did. That is why his friend lost.

Rail Dispute: A Meeting Gives Hope.

It is good to hear that ACAS is now involved in this power struggle between the government and the RMT/ASLV combination making life impossible for huge numbers of commuters in the south-east. Although the government pretends it is just a bystander, it is in fact the key player. This is because the Southern is a semi- nationalized franchise in which the company are paid a fee to employ the staff and run the service and the government collects the proceeds of the fares. If this dispute, which is not really a dispute at all but an attempt to block a modernization programme, continues without resolution, it must make sense for the government to take back the franchise and sort the mess out. That is what government is for.

I should add to my virulent attack on the train unions yesterday by pointing out that the vast majority of unions do not strike and are model examples of responsible trade unionism. This gives us industrial relations which are both productive and profitable to everyone and among the best in the world. All the more reason to bring an end to this blot on the national record. This is not the right use of union power. Equally the pretense of the government that it is just an innocent bystander is utter rubbish. At some level it is the author of the crisis and it is certainly in it right up to its neck.

 

Labour : Beware The Militant Union Iceberg

There are two strikes now in process which are in the worst traditions of the union indiscipline which exploded in the 1970s and put Labour out of power for nearly twenty years. They are the Southern walkouts over who shuts the doors of the trains and the threatened shut down of Crown post offices in the midst of the Christmas posting rush.

Whatever impact upon the businesses brought to a halt by this utterly crass union muddle-headedness, that is as nothing to the suffering of ordinary people as a consequence of the resultant breakdown in public service. These are strikes against, not the supposedly errant companies, but the public whom they serve. They ruin people’s jobs because they cannot get to them, wreck people’s home lives because they cannot get back there. Children cry because their mum is not home to read the bedtime story and will cry because the present from Santa is not there under the tree.

I do not care about the supposed merits of the cases in dispute. Listening to the massacre of the train union official on this morning’s Today, it was clear that his union did not have one. The public have had enough of this, particularly across the London area and the south. Labour activists need to do something to rescue their mission because, believe me unless they do, they can kiss good-bye to the Corbyn revolution and any thought of power for a generation. The hopes and aspirations of the rising enlightenment will be sunk by the icy mass of public rejection of everything coming from the left, however good, wise or worthy. Thatcherism will be back.

A Warning For Labour: And a Road Map

There is no doubt that the challenge to Corbyn’s leadership resulting in his re-election on an even larger mandate, has done the party a very great deal of electoral harm. Because, while the party has the largest membership in Europe entirely because of the populist Corbyn and his sidekick John McDonald, it is plain for all to see that they do not lead a populist party in the Commons. So ordinary Labour voters are not voting for them. In by-elections, admittedly in seats where they are no hopers, they are doing very badly. Perversely their performance in the Commons has been robust, especially over the procedural arguments surrounding Brexit. Corbyn, although bullied by May, has become a good deal more incisive. His shadow ministers are performing well. Sir Keir Starmer is emerging as a star debater and a formidable media performer. But sadly that is not what motivates voters. They wait, impatient, frustrated and angry. Something has to give. It has. Populism is sweeping the democratic world.

Populism crosses social divides, class boundaries and party loyalties. It is loyal only unto itself. It can be harnessed as a great force, as Brexit and Trump have both demonstrated, but as Cameron and Clinton will attest, it also destroys. It has to be offered radical change, as everything to do with the status quo, the niceties of protocol and the processes of government it despises. Because the format of globalization which has evolved is one which bears down upon ordinary people and for the first time for a hundred and fifty years, has halted the rise in living standards and advances in prosperity.

In England there are three politicians who understand this. Boris Johnson, who rides roughshod over diplomatic convention to say it as people see it. Nigel Farage who has become some kind of hero at Trump Tower and, for the left,  Jeremy Corbyn. Boris knows if May falls on the tricky Brexit course, he will take over to rescue the Tory party and the people from whatever shambles then prevail. Nigel has ruled himself out of coming back, which means nothing. Jeremy is shackled by a parliamentary party living in the past. Had Corbyn walked out of the Labour party when it tried to dump him and used Momentum to start a radical left movement, he would by now be setting the pace, have 300,000 members and be en route to electoral success. But he is nothing if not loyal to the party he has spent a lifetime serving. Sadly the brutal truth is Labour came fourth in the most recent by-election and lost its deposit in the one before that.

The reason is that once again Labour has no narrative in the chaos of the current Brexit reality. Its economic policy is the same tired old stuff about borrowing more and taxing the rich, it is at odds with most of its heartland bedrock over immigration and all the rest of it is tinkering around here and there, very worthy, but in today’s politics, pretty worthless. What is needed is a radical programme to build 2 million new homes for affordable rent, spend up to a trillion on infrastructure renewal over five years with dynamic QE, bring the currency, interest rates and the money supply back under political control, introduce electoral and structural reform to modernize our democracy so that it is 21st century fit for purpose, abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected Senate, abolish the abused Corporation and Capital Gains taxes and replace them with an unavoidable turnover tax and capital transaction tax, find a way of funding the NHS and linked social care, so that its income rises with demand and is not capped, and sort out the schools and higher education so that it is good for everyone, not just the postcode lucky, the sharp elbowed and the well off.

Finally it must demonstrate a return to government responsibility for the management of taxpayer funded services and restore ministerial responsibility for the running of all public services. In simple terms dismantle the quango state and the contracting out of public services to private companies. If Labour does all that it will stand a very good chance of winning. But it must understand that the years of tinkering at the margin and dancing on the edge are over. Labour must be radical and bold. Or Labour will be beaten.

I wrote a dissertation about all this and published it in book form Turn Left To Power- A Road Map For Labour. This might be a good time to read it.

Turn Left To Power offers a collection of fundamental reforms which amount to a political revolution, p ost Brexit, as globalization fails to bring improving prosperity to the majority and becomes the mainstream political challenge worldwide. From £1.99 

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