Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 170
May 20, 2015
UKIP Bloodletting.
While the Tories bask in the warm glow of victory, the defeated parties are embroiled in a tasteless orgy of disunity and turmoil. Only the Lib Dems are maintaining a dignified silence as they prepare to choose their new leader.
None has been more riveting to the news media than UKIP. The latest is the demise of its two best known voices, other than Nigel Farage. They, like their leader, are still there, but with a diminished status. Following his three day long resignation, Nigel is not just the man but also the band. The edginess surrounding the disparate gang of eurosceptic little Englanders who people the inner core of the most interesting electoral phenomenon for may years, is driven by fear.
For long they have made the weather and have been backed by the strident right wing tabloids and tabloid crossovers, the chorus of which has been that the Brits are itching to exit. Just name the day of the referendum and we will be off. It is now beginning to dawn that the big silent majority who have not even bothered with the debate are waking up. They are unphased by nationalism but engaged in the national interest. As they mobilise and muster and present a convincing case of how Britain would be making itself a hostage to fortune in an ever more uncertain world if we left the EU, a new unwelcome vision has appeared on the UKIP horizon. It is that the nation will vote Yes to stay in the EU and UKIP will be over. No wonder there is a lot of catfighting.
May 19, 2015
Labour: Losing Its Soul
Yvette Cooper, one of Labour’s clutch of leadership hopefuls, believes that the party must be more pro business. The only circumstances in which people vote Labour for business is if the Tories have messed up. Because Labour’s core vote is not among business, it is among the mass of working people at all levels whose jobs are critical to the functioning of an organised society, but where their pay is limited by the nature of the job and wealth will never be the outcome. Teachers, train drivers, power workers, bin men, motorway engineers, airline pilots and countless more make up the mass of the voting population. That is where the Labour party is rooted and those roots go right down to the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. They have stopped voting Labour and in millions of cases they have stopped voting. It is with that vast multitude that Labour has to reconnect. Of course some business people and even business leaders will come aboard, but that is a bonus. It is not where Labour’s future lies.
The Bankers, estate agents, City lawyers and accountants, the billionaires, the entrepreneurs, old money and all the fingers in the capital pie will for the most part always vote Tory. There are too few of them to share between two parties and if Labour seeks to cosy up and become a pinkish Tory party with a more exciting goody bag it will never see power again. If it can inspire the working population and rally it to the Labour cause and define that cause clearly so that turnout rises to nudge the eighties, it will enjoy a landslide in England as big as that of the SNP in Scotland. So Yvette Cooper has a choice. She must reconnect to Labour’s roots and stop speaking like a Tory. Or she can become one.
May 18, 2015
Migrant Crisis
There are now two major migrant crises in flow involving boats. One is in the Mediterranean and the other is in the Andaman Sea. Both involve people fleeing terror, persecution or poverty. Europe is rescuing those it finds but has no idea what to do with the rescued or where they are to go. In Asia the policy appears to be more or less to let desperate people drift on the high seas until they either starve or drown.
The latest European initiative promulgates sinking migrant boats before anybody boards them. More bombing? That is all the West does now; bombing. In spite of the fact that it solves nothing in the long term and appears ineffective in the short term. What is needed is a recognition that much of this crisis is due to misguided Western foreign policy and the rest of it is due to the widening inequalities and real suffering caused to the have nots in the headlong dash for globalization. The West is driving that too. Thus it is that it will soon have to face up to the fact that it will have to take these desperate people in. Most of them anyway and shared everywhere. No exceptions or excuses.
May 10, 2015
View from Ibiza: Preserving The Union
The news that Michael Gove is appointed Justice Secretary with the job of introducing a Bill of Rights which enables the UK to withdraw from the human rights structure of Europe including its court of which we are a founding member has significant implications. On the face of it the administration of UK justice would be simplified and deportation of terrorists would be cleared from all the rigmarole of endless appeals to the European Court, delaying by years their exit.
Yet there is more at stake. First it would be a terrible signal to send to the rest of Europe that we were going to depart from the common standard which has been the bulwark of individual freedoms in the post war era. It would be a sign that the UK is walking away from something both treasured and special. It would be popular in England. But in Scotland? Would Scots give up the protection of their human rights by Europe and cede them to a Tory dominated England? For that would be the implication if not the application. And in populist politics implication is everything. Could this be just the trigger for another referendum for the Scots to go? Because backed by a big issue about their rights and freedoms the SNP could have just the trigger they are waiting for. And next time they will win.
May 9, 2015
English Votes For English Laws
Just a quick point. While the Tories have a majority of up to 12 if you remove the Speaker, Sinn Fein etc, or 5 to be exact, their majority in England over Labour is 113. There are then 6 Lib Dems, 1 Green and 1 UKIP, but that still leaves Cameron with a margin of over 100. So watch for more devolution to Scotland and Wales, and an English votes rule, followed by a lot of England only legislation, because here Cameron is unstoppable. His wafer thin majority is only vulnerable on full UK issues. One of those issues will be passing the English only rule.
In every other democracy in the world a constitutional change of this magnitude would require a referendum, but in the UK those who govern control the unwritten constitution, rather than those who are governed. This is why I refuse to describe our country as a full democracy. But if Labour were able to rally all the other parties to block the measure and a bit of Tory conscience produced a few rebels, this fundamental change could be blocked until a wider constitutional structure for a federal United Kingdom is agreed, as this may now be the only route open to preserve the Union in the long term.
This Blog: A few Days In the Sun
This blog will be silent until May 14th. I am off for a few days in the sun (I am not resigning!).
Meanwhile I am still somewhat seething at the horlicks made by the pollsters, which caused people like me to write a whole lot of rubbish because Labour and the Tories were nowhere near neck and neck for quite a few days before polling. I suspect it swung to the Tories after Milliband failed to give a proper defence to Labour’s alleged overspend on the Question Time for the three leaders and as the impact of the various scare stories about the SNP etc began to take effect. It is disappointing that Cameron stooped to that level of fear and I suspect a rather unworthy campaign may come back to haunt him. By then its architect will be back home on the other side of the world.
Looking at the percentages of increased vote share over 2010, not surprisingly the Lib Dems are worst at minus 15.2. UKIP are top at plus 9.5, but in 2010 they were very much a minor player, SNP next with 3.1, then Greens at 2.8, Labour at 1.5 and the Tories last at just 0.8. That is very interesting. It seems to suggest that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the negative impact of UKIP on Labour in Labour/Tory marginals was the source of the victory for the Tories. It also explains why Labour were making some random gains as well. But the big story remains Scotland.
I may have a few more thoughts later next week after chilling out at sunny beech bars for a spell. By then the talking point may be Greece.
May 8, 2015
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.
Leadership Bloodbath
Within minutes of Cameron’s triumph being confirmed Milliband, Clegg and Farage all resigned, although Farage indicated that after a long holiday he might run for the leadership again. This fashion for political losers to take flight is absurd. It is also counter-productive politically and against the national interest as the country is faced with a procession of greenhorn leaders who do not measure up through lack of experience.
When Churchill was sacked by the country in 1945 he stayed on as Tory leader and ran Attlee a close second in 1950 then beat him in 1951, returning to Downing St until he retired in 1955. Attlee meanwhile stayed on as leader after his 1951 defeat and only resigned after he was beaten again in 1955 by Eden. Gaitskell replaced him, lost his first general election in 1959, but would have won the next in 1964 had he not fallen ill and died. Wilson won for Labour in 1964 and 1966, lost to Heath in 1970, but came back to win first as a minority government, then again with a small majority in 1974 until he retired in 1976. Heath had lost one election before he won in 1970, then lost twice more before being ousted by Thatcher. I could go on but you get the picture.
After Major, the Tories went through three leaders before they found a winning duo in Cameron and Osborne, spotted and brought forward by Michael Howard, before he quit after losing in 2005. But this business walking out the day after losing, hands a huge advantage to the winning government, which only has to contend with an opposition consumed by leadership rivalries at least for the first one hundred magic days. It was in this period that the Coalition laid down the largely unjustified charge which stuck because it was never challenged, that the great crash had been caused by Labour overspending when in fact its deficits had not been as high as either Thatcher or Major until the banks collapsed. Labour never recovered its credibility and moreover lost confidence in its own convictions, leading to mixed and confusing economic messages which undoubtedly were the main source of its defeat yesterday.
Farage maybe because he said he would if he failed to take Thanet. But Milliband and Clegg should have stood by their troops, dried their tears and stayed with them during a period of reflection, until the dust has settled and a clearer aspiration for the future emerges. Meanwhile they should harass and challenge the incoming government at every twist and turn to make sure its first hundred days are no free ride. It would not be difficult. A majority of five is hardly a landslide.
Of course there is a leader who has arrived in Westminster and who will step into the vacuum. Alex Salmond. He is going to have a ball.
Election 2015: An Historic Upset
The best way to begin this blog, having been up more or less all night, is with the final sentence of my last post.
Finally there is the impact of UKIP. If tactical voting is used comprehensively it could well be that UKIP could fail to win a single seat, yet cause a political upset so unexpected as to make much that I have written above little more than hot air.
This is more or less what has happened. Votes for UKIP have prevented Labour making the gains predicted by the polls, all of which, by being just a point or two wrong predicted a hung parliament, without anyone predicting a Tory majority. But that was not all that caused the polls to be wrong, and so wrong that when the BBC/ITV exit poll was published all commentators and politicians, even Tories, doubted that it could be right. The other factor was the complete collapse of support for the Lib Dems.
The Lib Dems had made a success of being a safe haven for Tories who harked back to the pre-Thatcher era of one nation Conservatism in the south and to Labour supporters further north who felt Labour no longer looked after working class needs. Suddenly there was no need for them. The Tories extended a hand to the one nation lovers and Labour moved back towards the working class. Neither move was very significant, or even maybe sincere, but it was enough. A small party can fight on one front a bigger opponent and survive, but not on two fronts.
So all this talk of deals and a new politics of multi parties has gone poof in the night. We are back to two parties in England and more or less Wales, and that is 80% of the UK. Where things have changed ominously is that Scotland now speaks with a single united SNP voice and in Westminster that will be the voice of Alex Salmond.
Now for the bed of roses which may prove rather thorny. Cameron is set, at the time of writing, for a majority of three or four, but he has been used to governing with a majority of eighty. Yes it meant compromise in coalition, but once agreed the parliamentary position was formidable. A majority of three or so is almost certain to lead to political crisis and has always done so in the past. The problem is that while the opposition, which will be primarily Labour, the SNP and both the Unionist NI parties, backs the Tory position on the Union, it is opposed austerity and pro Europe. This will severely restrict the Tory ability to push through unpopular measures, hostility to which unites all the other parties in the Commons.
