Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 121
July 2, 2016
Corbyn Coup Collapsing?
Maybe. In today’s political hothouse anything can happen. But the truth is the plotters appear to have miscalculated. They do not have a candidate who stands a chance in a leadership election against Corbyn and he is not going. Last week sixty thousand people rushed to join the party and the whisper is most if not all are backing him. What we are watching is the death of New Labour. It is better that New Labour dies a painful death at home in parliament now, than a violent won out in the country at the hands of the voters in 2020. Because if New Labour goes to the country in 2020 slopping about in the muddy centre ground, putrid with lies, broken promises and compromised principles, it will be massacred. People are fed up with it and nobody, nobody, wants a New Labour government.
As for Corbyn’s leadership, it is of the kind these nonentities hate. He has brought an avalanche of new members to the party, he connects to the forgotten masses, he does much better in bye and local elections than they predict, he stands his ground, he does not lie and when the going gets tough, he does not run away. These are qualities I was brought up rather to admire. The squirming cauldron of the PLP plotters has lost confidence in Corbyn. But he knows something of which they are in denial. The membership has lost confidence in the PLP. That is why he has stopped answering its calls.
July 1, 2016
This May Be The Only Way Out: Download Now
QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with recent market turmoil. Dynamic Quantitative Easing (also called Peoples Quantitative Easing) remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.
Post Brexit : The Road Ahead and a Bombshell.
There are two kind of crisis which countries must guard against. The first is a political crisis. The second is an economic crisis. But sometimes an economic crisis extends to become a political crisis and vice versa. We are now engulfed in a political crisis. In 2008 we had an economic crisis which was sudden and catastrophic. But it did not become a political crisis; in fact it was the Brown government’s finest hour. This time we are at risk from the political crisis breeding an economic crisis which is slow and creeping and the worry is that it could become quite bad. Although the markets are having a jolly after their Big Fright as the Brexit result became known, the underlying situation is tense because everything about it is far from clear.
All the informed opinion is that the real economy is going to slow. The markets are buoyant now because they know that the B of E has set up crisis liquidity and is going to ease monetary policy all the way to QE if needs be. The political crisis can hardly get worse and there are signs that people are coming to their senses. One or two good candidates are emerging for the PM vacancy on the Tory side. As a matter of national interest the rules should be changed so that when a party is in government the new leader has to be selected by the parliamentary party only and quickly. The luxury of touring the country, hustings and the whole rigmarole should be one of the perks of opposition. The Tories are brilliant at mounting leadership coups, back stabbings and treachery and in their forest great oaks crash to the ground with breathtaking suddenness. Labour on the other hand is completely inept at the coup business. They have mounted one but the oak still stands, because in their forest nobody has a saw.
However up ahead it does not look good. Little publicity has been given to certain key decisions in Europe. The Council of Ministers, in charge of Brexit under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, has decided that the terms in the treaty are quite different to the stuff we have been told here. First the terms of Britain’s exit have to be separately negotiated and it has to go. Only then can discussions begin about a new trade deal with what is now a third party country. Nobody told us that and moreover nobody bothered to find out. Repeat we have to go first, lock stock and barrel, then knock on the door for talks about a future deal.
That is a game changer. A bombshell. Perhaps somebody whispered it to Boris? No wonder he fled the field.
Brexit Thoughts 15: The Somme Remembered
As I kept the two minute silence at 07.28 this morning to commemorate the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, with an eye on the television screen showing the scene at the battlefield memorial at Thiepval to honour the dead with no known grave, one of those dead gazed down at me from his portrait style photograph high on the wall above. My uncle, a Lieutenant in the Royal Scots, 18 years old, lasted 23 days, before being blown to pieces leading his men into Delville Wood.
His brother, my father, survived the war, although his health was shattered and through most of my childhood he was an invalid. He used to tell me vivid stories of what it was like on the Western Front, which added to my own childhood experiences under German bombs and rockets, has meant that for me European Unity has always been a mandatory obligation to those who suffered hell on earth and gave their lives, that we might get to where we are today.
Until last Friday.
What exactly have we done?
And for what have we done it?
June 30, 2016
Book Of The Hour!
Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. The novel catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.
Download £2.08 Paperback £8.99
The Tory Party Crashes: Johnson’s Farce
If we have learned one thing since May 2015, it is that the Tory party post Thatcher cannot govern on its own. Having led a perfectly respectable and rather effective coalition government for five years, Cameron has managed to blunder out of Europe, threaten the Union, create economic uncertainty which will fester and grow and gone back on his promises to continue to lead the country, even if Yes to Brexit, and invoke Article 50 immediately. All because he had a Tory Party majority for the first time since Major. Including Major the Tories have had five leaders since Thatcher. All have failed one way or another. All were men. Time for another woman?
As for Boris, there are no words. His bid to become prime minister, of which his cynical decision to lead the Leave campaign was a price both this nation and all Europe has now to pay, will be long recalled as one of the most spectacular political car wrecks in history. Only yesterday, yes yesterday, the Tories sat in the Commons at PMQs, laughing smugly at the turmoil which Labour had brought upon itself. Well today it is all changed. This Tory government, with its lying, treacherous, Old Etonian core, has become the laughing stock of the world.
Labour Leadership : A Divisive Moment
The Parliamentary Labour Party cannot easily be forgiven for provoking a leadership crisis at a moment when the country is convulsed by political, social, economic and international forces beyond its previous experience and traditions. The PLP has done so and thus put itself in conflict with the majority of the members of the Labour party in the country as well as the Trade Unions. Angela Eagle, its apparent candidate to succeed Jeremy Corbyn, whom almost all of them voted against and whom they have been plotting to rid themselves, is a feisty Commons performer. She is said to be left of that desert of political ideas and initiative known as the centre.
This is all because they say Corbyn is not a leader. Well he certainly lacks the first qualification of modern British politics; he is not a liar. And it is precisely because he is not one of these ghastly ‘leaders’ who have collectively led their country to the brink of chaos and certainly into the most unequal economic settlement since WWII, that he has unprecedented public support. The PLP should ask itself if it is actually worth leading and if it can say yes to that (another porky?) it must back Angela to win. But to do that she will need to show the membership than she can cap the achievements of the leader she will be trying to depose.
Though rubbished by the PLP, it is quite an impressive list. Corbyn has brought many tens of thousands of new members into the party making Labour bigger than all the other parties in the country put together. He has won both by-elections since he became leader with much larger Labour votes than expected. He did very much better than expected (and wished for by the PLP) in the spring local elections, with Labour winning both mayoral and local elections said to be at risk, with an increase in the Labour vote across the country approaching 4% over May 2015, while the Tory vote fell by 3%. He has brought people back to Labour who long ago walked away and has shifted the political conversation from the place where Labour cannot win to the place where victory waits for the asking.
If Angela can do better than that, she could be worth a try. But if the party is torn apart in the process or if the renewed membership walks away, it will be the last thing the PLP ever does. There is a lot of bad judgement in the fetid Westminster air at the moment, so for once second thoughts might prove the difference between survival and disaster. Winning is for later. May 2020 is the date. The Parliament Act of 2011 rules out anything earlier.
The Future of Labour? A Must Read.
Turn Left To Power is an explosive dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour’s return to power, with bold ideas for a new economic and social settlement, including economic and taxation reform, restoration of responsibility in government and a renewal of democracy. Full of detailed information, hard facts and the results of thorough research and deep thinking, the narrative will grip you like a thriller and open your eyes to a brighter, fairer future in a mere 25000 words. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes In or Out. Frank and at a times brutal, Turn Left To Power offers a collection of fundamental reforms which amount to a political revolution which can propel Labour back to government in 2020.
Check it out now. Paperback £4.99 Kindle £1.99 AMAZON UK
UK Political Class : An Historic Failure.
As dreadful reports of anti-immigrant and racist abuse begin to come in, supported by truly shocking videos taken on phones and shown on the social media, it seems right to lambaste the entire political class for its self interest, half truths, broken promises and outright lies which have underpinned the most squalid political campaign ever conducted in the UK in the history of our democracy. The country has been left divided and angry, the political parties have been themselves convulsed and just at the moment when leadership is needed they are too introspective with their own spiteful quarrels to provide it.
They gorge on the politics of Westminster, entirely detached from the people they were elected and are paid to represent, who in turn are left to cope as best they can with an economic model now out of control, which favours the few at the expense of the many. Their promises to re-balance this preposterous asset inflating juggernaut have proved empty, because they are clueless, greedy and actually they do not for the most part care. And when it comes to a measured and coherent approach as to how to navigate Brexit, their inadequacy and ineptitude is total.
Except in Scotland.
Well, there will be consequences.
June 29, 2016
Market Bounce : Expect More
There has been a big bounce in the market as the shock of Brexit wears off. There will be more plunges of course because the real uncertainties of what the impact will be on the UK’s economy remain. Additionally there is political confusion and deep divisions in the country itself of a kind unknown in modern times. All the chickens set free in the Thatcher consensus economic model are now coming home to roost. Even the EU is shaken and talk of a change of direction for globalisation is now widespread because it does not work well enough for ordinary working people, i.e the majority. So there is a little clarity in any sphere, an unknown set of circumstances for all who trade the market now. It will not be a bull market, but it may not be a bear either. More a static market with bounces up and down.
Then there is Scotland. It is now acting with political independence and there is a very real prospect of it leaving the Union and taking its oil with it. Two land borders with EU countries, Ireland and Scotland could provoke a serious emigration of business to the more convenient environment for trade. Moving from London to Frankfurt is one thing but to Edinburgh is a much lesser thing.
Finally the only bright light is the fall in the value of the pound. Every point above $1.30 diminishes the chance of any easy way through a very dark wood with many ogres lurking.
