Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 17

Boris In Intensive Care

The reports are rather sparse and clearly subject to news management, so we do not really know what is happening. The fact the prime minister is still in intensive care is enough to tell us he is very ill. He appears not to be getting worse at least, because if so he would be on a ventilator and he is not. He is apparently able to sit up in bed and talk to those caring for him. So while it remains an anxious time, especially for his loved ones and friends, there is optimism.

Meanwhile the country is gripped in perhaps the biggest health and economic crisis in modern history with a daily death toll reach startling levels and predicted to get worse still. The government, Boris’s government, having fluffed about at the start of the crisis in a fog of complacency, is now firing on all cylinders to correct all the things which should have been done better. They are doing their best and by any reasonable judgment they are at last doing it well. Of course there remains the great weaknesses of testing and protective equipment, the mishaps here having without doubt cost  many lives, but little by little things are getting better.

However, many, too many, questions have been raised by commentators about who is in overall charge of the country and with what authority. The answer to the first is known, Dominic Raab, but the second remains opaque. It need not. During the WWII Attlee often took over for Churchill, who had several bouts of pneumonia. When Eden fell ill after Suez it was RA Butler, who again stepped in when Macmillan was in hospital. Attlee was formally Churchill’s deputy and when in the final months of Churchill’s second premiership, the old man suffered a stroke, Eden, his known successor, ran the country from the foreign office.

Right now things are less clear. The government is a new one and the dynamics of power personalities has not had time to develop. All the lead jobs are with newly promoted second tier ministers, with the exception of Gove. So why Raab? Perhaps because he is said to be very good at detail, Boris’s weak spot. And perhaps because whatever he does he could not possibly outshine Boris. But the ambiguity should end. First among equals is too pompous a mouthful and actually meaningless to ordinary people. Every team has to have a captain. A captain on the field of play. Butler used the term Acting Head of Government. Maybe that’s how Raab should be referred to. Then we know who is in charge for the moment, but the assumption remains that Boris will be back.

That would end the speculation. Remember while all this is making news people are dying. Hundreds of them every day. And NHS staff, care workers and workers in essential services and industries, millions of them, are risking their lives, and too often losing them, for the greater good of us all. That is the story.

C-Virus Special

Everyone knew the pandemic was spreading. They knew it was spreading quite badly in London and among the ruling and celebrity class especially. Even Prince Charles fell victim to a mild attack. But the news that it was in Downing Street was a shock for sure, even though the good humoured prime minister assured the nation via twitter that he was okay  and still working normally.

Gradually the list at the epicentre of government grew among staff,  even the sinister Cummings. It included the PM’s pregnant fiancée. But the show stopper was news that Boris had been taken to hospital as a precaution, because he was not getting better. The pulse of the nation quickened. Uncharted waters bubbled up ahead.

Then it came. The moment when fluent correspondents stumbled for words, then went into a circular monologue repeating themselves over and over to update millions tuning in by the minute. The prime minister, our prime minister of the United Kingdom no less, was in intensive care. In intensive care in the midst of the greatest crisis the country has faced since the second world war, maybe the biggest health threat since the days of recurrent plague, which as a spin off has the power to wreck the economy.

But keep calm. Raab will take over.

Who?

The Foreign Secretary.

But isn’t he the one making an absolute horlicks of repatriating Brits trapped abroad, making them last line  to get home days or even weeks after Americans, Germans, Swedes, whatever, set foot on their home soil?

Yes.

Oh.

That is the politics of it. But this is also a human story. Boris is struggling against a very nasty illness, which is life threatening. Everyone is hopping and praying that he will get better.  People of every political stripe and none stand behind his family and friends in a time of great personal anxiety.

Sunday Blog 9: April 5 2020: Do We Know Where We Are?

The Government

The government was formed with a single track mind, composed of people with one political driver, having won an historic victory on the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. Brexit. Brexit. Brexit. As the Tory party celebrated its victory, not for one moment in a wildest dream anywhere among the singing and drinking multitudes, was there a thought that within weeks their jobs would be gone, they would be locked down in their homes, while a pandemic of biblical proportions would sweep away the world as we had come to know it. Yet that is what has happened. The depth and extent has not even begun to sink in.

So it is hardly surprising that the government made mistakes in almost every direction. But it did. It first did not take the risk seriously enough, following the ‘moderate’ rating of a misguided committee. They were then slow to gear up equipment of every sort and kind, they were seduced by abstract modelling and theories, like first year students years away from having to test them in practice, they ignored raw data coming from the front lines in Asia and they told us we would be okay if we washed our hands and sang happy birthday. Twice.

Yes . Well. So now we have more deaths than China and we have not reached the peak. The entire economy has been brought to a halt and daily we are told the worst is yet to come. I will not go on and on, because as the Queen will tell us later, now is not the time. But I am haunted by a thought which will not go away. Late in February I received a call from across the world, which set out with crystal clarity what was coming and what could go wrong, if the government, which was getting the same information, did not respond. When all this is over there will be an inquiry. When that happens it will be found that very many lives lost could have been saved if the government had acted when it was warned it should.

But for now we are where we are and we have to press on. There are signs that at last the government has got the message and is scrambling to catch up. Such is the determination of the nation as a whole at every level, in the midst of a mobilisation as great as any in war-time, that in the end, we will do better than at the beginning.  And when we do, we shall find we own a quite different set of values.

Our enormous admiration and gratitude for those at the bottom of the income pile, under resourced and under paid, whom society was taught to regard as a burden upon taxpayers yet who together will have saved the nation, will ensure that never again will they be other than the first in line. For everything.

Labour Leadership

Sir Keir Starmer has won a landslide. Beside him is the  formidable Angela Rayner as Deputy Leader. This will be a game changer for British politics. Just wait and see.

Sunday Blog 8: March 29 2020

The Heart Of Government

Suddenly not only the prime minister, but the health secretary and the chief medical officer, the three who day after day told us what to do to save lives and stay safe, are themselves infected with the c-virus. This is rather shocking for two reasons. But first of all we must extend our sympathy to them and their now isolated families for what is by every account a nasty experience even when mild.

Having said that, the declaration that they continue to do their jobs, if true in fact and not a symbolic statement, is far from ideal. Decisions taken when ill are rarely the sharpest. We are also shocked because we naturally supposed that they, above all, knew what to do and were leading by example. Does it mean they ignored social distancing or that at they practiced it to the letter and still caught it? And how many lives will this contagion at the heart of our state cost?

The Gig Economy

The Gig Economy is perhaps the hardest hit by the lock down measures. Because of the informal nature of its record keeping and its opportunist MO, the Gig workers are the hardest to help with bailouts. Yet it may turn out to be the economy’s hidden strength. Anecdotal reports of adaptions and new services, much of it on line, are everywhere circulating. It would not be surprising that when the moment comes to light the fire of economic recovery, the spark will come from this fluid sector of inventive entrepreneurs.

Boris’s Letter

There is nothing in it that every household does not already know or feel. Whatever it is costing should be spent on the NHS. With all the communications platforms available to a government in a modern crisis, banging out pointless letters is absurd. Especially when the  project can help to spread the virus at every level of preparation and distribution. Churchill used the wireless, as it was then called. Even Trump does not send letters to millions. Dear Me.

Sunday Blog 7: March 22 2020

The Government

If you watch a press conference with ministers and experts, you are easily left with the impression that mostly they know what they are doing. On the other hand a news feature which casts a wider net to test the government’s assertions,  often leads to the conclusion that they may  not. The truth is probably somewhere in between. I believe the moment for one party leadership has passed and we need a much broader talent pool in government, as my last post laid out.

What is very clear to me is that there was undue delay in putting into effect social distancing and other measures which has increased the risk of a meltdown by a margin. The potential challenge to the NHS was far too low on the list in early modelling, which relied heavily on pre-cooked scenarios and turned a blind eye to what was going on at the front line. The West is nowhere near as efficient as Asia in this whole crisis.

The People

Except for a small minority of the old who can remember what it was like in the war and in the post war recovery period (which took longer in the UK than in all the countries we had defeated; here food rationing did not end until 1952 for example) nobody has before experienced a profound disruption to the structure of everyday life, not for the better, but for the worse. Most are coping well. A multitude of healthcare and other essential workers are rising to the life and death demand on their services with dedication and heroism on a par to the armed services in war. The rest of us are trying to evoke the spirit of optimism and defiance which became a legend during the Blitz. Then the killer fell from the sky, brought over by enemy bombers and later missiles. Now the killer steels silently upon you, brought there by your dearest friend or family. A very different experience altogether.

The Deniers and Hoarders

People who defy advice to keep up social distancing, which is far less demanding than social isolation, are plain selfish and also very stupid. They not only put themselves at risk, but, so much more important, they put others at risk too. They become the ally of the contagion and help it spread. They cost lives.

Those who panic buy toilet paper or hoard food supplies beyond their immediate needs are certainly selfish, but at the heart of it are driven by fear. In an age of plenty, there is an irrational fear of running out. Perhaps it is easier to deal with the fear of shortages, than it is to deal with the fear of catching the virus. The irony is that by jostling in queues and crowded supermarkets, they increase the risk of catching the virus themselves. Surely a cupboard full of pasta and toilet paper cannot be worth a life.

 

Covid 19: Time For A National Government

Last Sunday I criticised the ridiculous herd immunity theory which appeared to drive government responses to the c-virus crisis, with the result we were faffing around not doing things all the rest of the world and the WHO regarded as critical. Indeed the government lead advisers in health and science toured the media studios promoting their story in an atmosphere of calm reassurance.

Then suddenly the roof fell in. More than one model, based, not on theories and elegant intellectual predictions, but on analysis of hard facts with evidence and reports from the virus front lines across the world, demonstrated that our jolly Brit Keep Calm We Shall Win Together government was headed to a biblical catastrophe in which millions of us would die.

So on Monday draconian new measures were announced, but by no means all that should then and there have been done. Timing is everything say these people, in whom this blog has almost entirely lost confidence, but ‘more in the coming days and weeks.’ The next day stuff weeks away is banged into immediate effect. And the day after schools, the thing which would probably, they said would do more harm than good, are shut down until further notice.

The structure of this government is not fit for an international crisis on this scale. This is a moment when all talents come together to form a National Government. The fact that Boris has a majority of 80 is irrelevant. When Churchill came to power in a coalition with Labour 1940, the Tories had a majority over Labour of 233. The Tory lead National Government (a political grouping formed after the 1930 slump and mass unemployment) had an overall majority of 243.

 

Sunday Blog 6: March 16 2020

Herd Immunity

As a subject for a learned paper or even a PhD, the theory of herd immunity might be a worthy offering. But as a platform for policy at the height of a global pandemic, it is absurd. It is even outrageous because the ‘the best scientific advice’ cannot possibly include unproven (in this case) theories, which in order to prove them will require the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives.

If the official government assertion, through its advisers in whom the country is fast losing confidence, suggests that up to 60% of the population might become infected while the herd (us) tests the theory, that is nearly 37 million, 37  million, cases.  Given that the NHS could cope with the significant fraction needing care, which realistically it could not, and everybody got the very best and appropriate treatment, you are still looking at an overall death rate if things go according to this crackpot plan, way above the worst of nightmares.

There is however clear evidence that the government has woken up to the fact that what it thought was science, was in fact theory, projection and assumption. The science, real science, now shows that this is a respiratory disease and dealing with it is socially about lock down and medically about ICU beds, respirators  and the staff to man them. So everything is about to change. Let us hope it is not too late.

In the key and critical areas the signs are that the government itself, if not some wiser folk outside it, was completely unprepared. One snippet is that when they counted the ventilators available, then rushed to buy more, they found all the other non-herd immunity countries, which is all of them, had got there first and that the shelves were bare. Hence frantic calls in the night to industrialists to tool up to make them.

There is another creeping anxiety. Boris the clown, who became the brilliant politician and the popular prime minister, may turn out to be the clown after all. He is certainly no Churchill. Not least because Churchill chose his words carefully. And he was able to finish his sentences.

China, Huawei, H.S.2 etc.

Commentators became excited when the Boris government’s majority sank into the twenties over the ongoing agitation over Huawei. There are two sorts of people in politics and public affairs. One sort looks to the past to inform their wisdom. The other looks to the future. Over China it is more complex than that.

The past lookers are wedded to the traditional values of the West and seek to shore up barriers to protect that heritage. They see China as, at best, a rival and at worst an enemy. The future lookers know that the dominance of the West is in decline. America’s power is waning, China is well on track to becoming the world’s first mega power, technologically and economically. Not militarily in the absolute sense but enough to neutralise the supposed military superiority of the US. In other worst if America were to use force to destroy China’s power, it would in fact destroy its own.

The UK is now in the position that, as a country unshackled to any group, the survival of its own Union now depends on its ability to grow its economy at such a speed as to secure that Union. It has to demonstrate to its own people that they are much better off because of Brexit and much better together.  The country which can offer the UK the technology, skills and trade it needs to make sure it can achieve consistent year on year growth through an infrastructure upgrade and a home production reboot, is China. The heart of the new Tory Left government knows this. America has no 5G technology, that works, to offer, nor has it a clue how to build HS2. China can offer everything from nuclear power stations onwards and is happy to build the hardware, like trains, in the UK. It can also show us how to deliver these big projects within budget and on time. And, as we know, in a crisis can be called upon. It is China which has rescued British Steel.

To the new Red Wall Tory heartland, China can mean proper jobs and increasing living standards. Better by far than an unquantified ‘special relationship’ with a country, led by a president who freaks most people in the UK out,  and which appears not only to have lost its way, but also to have lost its touch. The fumbling confusion of its response to the c-virus, the inadequacy of its health care system, its inability apparently even to measure the extent of its outbreak, all compares very badly indeed with the Chinese focus and mounting expertise with what has now become a global pandemic.

Farewell to Austerity

There has been no occasion since WWII when a budget has been presented to Parliament to a backdrop of two gold star economic emergencies. Corona virus and Brexit both pose exceptional economic challenges. The first will be draconian but hopefully short lived. The second may go on for years depending on negotiations between two sides bound by common interests but separated by opposing red lines.

So the first Budget from the Boris Government was keenly awaited to see whether and by how much it departed from the good housekeeping strictures of the financially prim treasury which have dominated policy for the last ten years. The scale of the proposed spending, whether day to day or investment for the long term, was breathtaking by comparison to the meagre hand outs of recent years. Austerity is very definitely over. However the success will be measured by the degree to which growth is stimulated.

On the spending front the offer was dominated by critical financial support during the c virus emergency. The infrastructure plan is only just big enough to shore up the decay through ten years of under investment. There has to be a lot more to get ahead in the race to become a cutting edge country for sustained growth in a troubled world. Failure to go the extra billions will in the end just increase debt without real benefit long term.

The new chancellor has made a good start. For a Tory chancellor of the post Thatcher era, a revolutionary one. But make no mistake. He has a long way yet to go. It remains to be seen whether the Tory right wing will back him. There will have to be a big bonfire of Conservative economic verities and rules. They will have to be replaced with something much closer to Keynes and even Corbyn. This is, after all, the self proclaimed People’s Government. The People are waiting. And watching.

 

 

Sunday Blog 5: March 9 2020

C-Virus

This now dominates the media at every level. It has wrought havoc in global markets and is now seriously affecting all manner of business and social activities. Many businesses are threatened by the economic backlash. Even the Budget is set to be governed by the mounting drama, much of which is yet to unfold. The government has been accused of being slow off the mark, but I am not sure that is fair. More recently its response has been measured and coherent, unlike the fumbling about in the United States.

There things seem to be on something of a knife edge. We must hope a late start will be remedied by a bumper catch-up. Pence hardly seems the dynamic leader of the hour, although he heads the Federal response. There is a lot at stake for the Vice President and his boss. If things turn bad and the death toll balloons, Trump will stand accused of costing American lives. All hope of a second term will be gone.

Meanwhile it now seems inevitable that in the West a generation which has never had to face major international disruption from some uncontrollable event, will find itself challenged in more ways than one. When the emergency has passed, or perhaps we learn to live with an annual renewal of the C-Virus, we can be sure of one thing. Things will not return to the way they were before. They never do after something like this. People emerge with different priorities and values. That is where the biggest change will be. The terms pre-corona and post-corona will be part of the everyday conversation. They will infect almost every collective decision.

That may be a very good thing.

Sunday Blog 4: March 1 2020

A Government Under Pressure

Things do not always go according to plan, yet for Boris, Cummings and Gove, so far things have worked out rather well. Javid, who had become infected with the narrow Treasury mantra that the financial core of the nation was only about good housekeeping, was given the heave-ho in such a way as to own his own sacking. Clever. The master plan for a no deal Brexit was rolled out, disguised as a set of red lines to which it is impossible for the EU to agree. There has been very little push back. The initial stages of the coronavirus emergency appear to be well planned and the policy of keeping ministers with their noses to the grindstone and not spouting off to the media held firm.

Suddenly things took off in the wrong direction. Across the world markets have panicked, fearing that containing the spread of coronavirus causes enough disruption to trigger a recession, even before it becomes a pandemic, leading to the biggest market crash since the banks went bust in 2008. Taken together with Brexit, which makes the UK a financial loner unhitched to a bigger minder, this puts huge pressure on the Budget to come up with a credible and economically viable programme for the biggest economic stimulus in living memory. There was no doubt advance thinking for a post Brexit boost, but not  in step with recession brought on by an unforeseen pandemic.

Suddenly the Home Office blows up, I mean politically. As far as I know never has a Permanent Secretary (CEO) of a Great Office of State resigned and sued the government for constructive dismissal for any reason. And certainly not because of the alleged behaviour of their Secretary of State. Wow. Even for Boris that is big. The problem for the country is that for  gang master Cummings it is just the beginning. According to reports he has a hit list of mandarins. Maybe it is about time for a shake up, but now surely is the wrong moment to start it.

And of course there are still the floods. Not everybody is happy with the government’s performance on that front. Especially those who have lost everything.

Sunday Blog 3: February 23 2020

Dredge the Rivers

Experts from the Environment Agency continue to exhibit a reluctance to put at the top of their agenda dredging those rivers which pass through towns and villages, on their way to the sea. Some urban floods are caused by the sewers becoming overwhelmed by water volume and the remedy here is to enhance the underground network, much of which is Victorian. But all too often it is rising rivers or incoming tides which do the damage, and will go on doing so.  Flood defences help, and preventive eco management upstream will help even more, but in the longer term.

Meanwhile a crisis exists now in the lives of far too many and some current action with the power to have immediate preventive effect is urgent. Every time a farmer from a family which has managed the same land for generations comes on the media, the response always gets round to river maintenance and a failure to dredge. Over recent decades there has been a focused and successful effort to improve water quality, but because most rivers are no longer transport arteries with extensive traffic of both people and cargo, little has been done to maintain their depth. River dredging is now a priority for which the people’s government will have to come up with the cash. Not token sums spread over forever, but real money for work now.

A Double Squeeze on Business

We begin to get a better feel for the way our new people’s government thinks. It thinks the private sector is inefficient and relies too much on cheap migrant labour and cheap imports. It trades in easy bespoke markets and fails to invest in skills training, because it can hire off the EU shelf whatever staff it needs. Meanwhile well qualified Brits are doing unskilled jobs, more than one in many cases, in order to pay their bills. Employment is at record levels of high while productivity  plumbs record levels of low.

So making immigration difficult and having the flimsiest trade deal with the EU, which is barely worth having, is a good way to force business to mend its ways and power up. When Boris said ‘f….. business’ it was not, after all, a slip of the tongue.

This blog is not sure all the traditional Tory voters expected this. But the people’s government, now safely elected, does not care about that either.

Beating Trump

This is possible, but difficult. If the Democrats become obsessed by beating Trump, they will likely fail. But if they concentrate on winning the presidency because they have a Federal programme which chimes with the urgent needs of American voters, they stand a good chance of succeeding. They need someone who can capture the hearts of young America, secure the wallets of the doing okay and give real hope to the left behind. If they can do that they will likely win. Beating Trump in the process would be the bonus.

Ministers Under Fire

There has been a lot of comment about ministers in the new government this week, or rather about their absence from the scene. Especially the prime minister hidden in the Kent countryside at Chevening and Priti Patel who is having a bust up with the Home Office Permanent Secretary. There is a lot of briefing and counter briefing from opposing sides, but little of any of it is official. Commentators and reporters are finding themselves in a kind of desert of political stories. This requires gossip to become news.

The truth is that for good or bad, the government sees ministers as action people to get things done. For too long, the spin goes, ministerial rank has acquired celebrity status, distracting attention from weak and procrastinated outcomes. This has contributed to the State in a process of decay. The government knows it has to reverse it or become electoral toast. Public services across the piece have to start working as they are supposed to and infrastructures failures, to which we can now add rivers, ditches and sewers, have to be remedied. The cost of all this is not a billion here and there over x years. It is more immediate and mind blowingly big. Very soon the new Chancellor will have to start telling us how much and where it will come from. No wonder in the meantime ministers are more than willing to accede to the gagging demands of Gang Master Cummings.