Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 207

Scotland. YES: High Water Mark?

The latest polls have shown that the advance of YES is slowing. In a volatile campaign anything can happen any day, but the final outcome depends on a single emotional issue. If Scotland votes with her heart, she will vote YES. If she votes with her head, she will vote NO. If  the answer is NO, Salmond will have failed to achieve his stated goal because he has failed to offer a package which combined head and heart together. The uncertainties of both currency and cost, which cannot be dismissed with clever soundbites about team Westminster and the like, remain unknown and unanswered. The doleful performance of John Swinney on the today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning confirmed this.

If the answer is YES Salmond will have delivered, but the independence will be nothing like so complete as his supporters expected. This is because the monetary union he advocates, if he gets it, will leave the Scottish economy in the iron grip of the Bank of England and the English Treasury. If he is forced to use sterlingisation, the financial and banking industries in Scotland will have to domicile themselves south, because they must have the backing of a Central Bank to function. His credibility will take a big enough knock for the Scottish Nationalists to risk losing to Labour at the first Scottish general election after independence. Because Scottish Labour will almost certainly be led by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. With Danny Alexander, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy and others from the Lib Dems, Labour’s big beasts will no longer sit in Westminster and will arrive in Edinburgh, changing the political landscape of an independent Scotland.

So if YES triumphs in a week’s time there is every prospect that Salmond will not be home and dry, but soon high and dry, either without true independence, or without a proper currency. On the other hand if he loses and it is NO, the lavish devo max offered in panic by the derided team Westminster, will deliver more or less what he wanted in the first place and make him something of a political hero. Politics is a funny business.

Books: Something For Everyone

 

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

 

Scotland: Panic Now, Chaos to Come.

The unprecedented announcement that the three party leaders are to dash to Scotland today to shore up the NO campaign is a show stopper, not because it may make a difference, but because it shows a degree of panic at the prospect of a  YES win. A feeling reinforced by the irrational spectacle of the Scottish flag aloft over Downing Street.

Whitehall, famed across the world for having a plan for every contingency, has nothing prepared for a YES at all. On Cameron’s orders apparently. So if Scotland goes, nobody knows whether in 2015 there will be Scottish MPs elected until the actual date of separation in 2016, or whether none will be allowed in. In the former case it could mean a Labour government with a majority that only lasts a year. In the latter case it would mean Scotland is governed for a year from Westminster without representation. Neither can be said to be ideal. Or maybe a parliament that is dissolved on separation so that the rest of the UK has to elect a new one? Or extending the current one, already well past its sell by date, for another year?  But if you think that is a mess, see what comes next, if NO wins.

If NO wins Scotland will be given major new powers including tax raising, spending and borrowing as almost all significant domestic policy will devolve to Edinburgh. It will then be necessary to finally confront the anomaly that English MPs cannot vote on devolved issues for Scotland but Scottish MPs can vote for those very issues as they affect England. If that is changed, as it must be, then everybody will vote for the issues over which they have jurisdiction, but not on  devolved issues. This could easily mean that a Labour government loses its majority in London when the Westminster parliament votes on English issues,  which would be the only ones on its agenda for the most part anyway. It could also mean that there would be a different parliamentary majorities for Welsh or NI matters because their jurisdictions are different to devo max Scotland and to each other. Because there is no written constitution and because nobody has thought anything through a NO vote could introduce a period of ungovernable chaos. If things were left as they are with Scottish Labour giving a Milliband government a false majority, democracy would be in ridicule. And of course whereas every other country in the world, bar two, can consult its constitution for guidance, Britain does not have one.

Whatever your ideas for the political map ongoing may have been, forget them. Great Britain is about to leave the road and take to the woods. Thursday week may not be the end, but the beginning. The beginning of confusion at the core of the British state the like of which has not been seen before. Whether the Sots vote YES or whether they vote NO. And nobody saw this coming.

Buy And Tell Your Friends

 

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

 

Cameron, Scotland And Judgement

David Cameron is the only credible Prime Minister at Westminster and looks and sounds the part on the media and across the world stage. He does, however, appear to be in some trouble with his MP’s who are now panicked at the prospect of Scotland leaving the Union. Even if the Scots do vote NO, there is still Clacton looming. Tory grandees are saying that the prime minister who broke up the Union, if this happens, will be gone by Christmas. Well, we shall see. Nothing ever goes according to plan these days in politics; often because the plans are badly laid.

Alex Salmond wanted a two question referendum with devo max as an option. There seems little doubt that this would have been the overwhelming choice and Scotland would have remained in the Union for certain. But Cameron refused, demanding one in or out question, clear and final. He then agreed to the Salmond plan giving the Yes option to the separatists. He could have had the question framed as ‘Do you want Scotland to stay in the United Kingdom?’ Yes for Union, No for separation. Yes is positive. No is negative.

So some angry MPs will feel, if Scotland walks out on Thursday next, that it is all Cameron’s fault and they may be right. As this blog has said before, Salmond’s independence model with the monarchy and the pound retained, in a currency union rather than a political union, is not true independence but a kind of devo max. The No campaign are now, many say in panic, offering devo-max as well. So both Yes and No are heading for the same place in practice, but with a slightly different format. The canny Salmond wins either way.

Cameron has, on the other hand shown a dangerous lack of judgement. Coming on top of Coulson, Libya, the defeat in the intended bombing of Syria and the simplistic approach to the Ukraine crisis, this leaves him damaged. He is still afloat but has taken on a good deal of water. One more hit, Clacton for instance, and he could sink.

Obama, NATO and Russia.

The NATO summit in Wales, together with President Obama’s upcoming address to the nation, mark the end of one era and the start of another. After the end of the Cold War we had a spell of America the only superpower. This period could have been used to build unshakeable bridges between East and West and draw Russia into its proper place in Europe, but it was not done. Then came post 9/11, which was a mixture of revenge, a mistaken belief that democracy was a cure for everything, and the imposition of it by force. This was a period of almost complete diplomatic failure, but it was a period where politics, albeit muddled and mistaken, drove military necessity.

The failure by the West to correctly assess the Russian fears which drive its intentions, has now led to breakdown. To build sound diplomacy you first have to see problems through the prism of the other side’s vision. If you do not do that you will do yourself more harm than good. The West is now harming itself by its sanctions on Russia in ways which it cannot afford. Germany France and Italy, whose economies are the economic heart of Euroland are now flatlining or in recession. It remains as important for the West to find a way of settling differences with Russia as it is for Russia herself. Indeed Russia could turn east and build an economic and military alliance with China, if issues are not resolved.It is not yet too late but it soon will be.

Meanwhile the period where politics drove military necessity is over. We are now into the old familiar format where military needs and fears drive politics. NATO has drawn red lines and is upping its preparedness. Russia is doing something similar. NATO is overwhelmingly the more powerful, but, and Putin hinted at this just the other day, Russia is a nuclear mega power and can destroy both the United States and the whole of Europe in the course of a single morning. But it would not itself see the end of that very day either. We know the drill. There will be a period of dusting down systems and targeting programmes. This is very disappointing.

The much criticised Obama saw this coming. Hence his reluctance to commit himself. By boosting the confidence of eastern NATO members with assurances of support if attacked and by calibrating the response to the blood thirsty ISIL to be conditional upon the regional players running the ground action, is way of creating an atmosphere of greater diplomatic calm because everybody knows what the intentions are, especially the Russians. Obama believes there is then a prospect of a deal with Putin which will not put the clock back to where it was, but will open a future of cooperation based on mutual self interest , if not on friendship.

Because in the end defeating ISIL will require a combination of some kind of federated Iraq and a shrunken Syria, which gives the moderate Sunnis, by far the majority, an autonomous region, or state within a group or confederation. To achieve that will require not only the support of the pro western gulf states, some of whom face both ways, but also Iran and above all Russia. Once again Obama knows this but he is just about the only American who does.

Four Thrillers: Kindle or Paperback

 

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

 

Ashya King: Read Mirror Article

Read the article in Mirror On Line.   This is a vital public interest issue which every parent should consider. If you are outside the UK it is still worth a read.

Southampton General: Now The Questions

The news that Ashya King and his parents are being allowed to fly to the very treatment in Prague they sought all along, is heart warming news. The Southampton General not only dismissed this suggestion when it was advanced to them, but then, having threatened the parents whose only fault was their desire to do the best for their child, triggered an international manhunt to try to prevent it, resulting in the child being taken from his parents, who in turn were thrown into gaol. It is one of the most outrageous individual episodes in the whole history of the NHS.

It is the view of this blog that this hospital should be in Special Measures for three good reasons. It has revealed a shocking inadequacy in its ability to maintain a constructive dialogue with parents of a desperately ill child, which it had a clear duty of care to the child so to do.  It has shown a failure of clinical judgement in its dogmatic opposition to proton beam therapy, finally overruled by the Court. It has demonstrated a lack of integrity and sense of proportion in its hysterical response to the King’s flight from its clutches.

Various enquires are now being set up and rightly so; the revelations of what happened behind the scenes are only just beginning and the conduct of the authorities and the the alleged facts they were given to trigger their responses are now being scrutinized as they should be. This story is far from over but the harassment of the family is.

The whole country is behind them and wishing them well.

A Sorry Tale

The trauma of Ashya King and the enthusiasm with which public authorities we trust have demonised his parents without any real cause is shocking, but it is also a symptom of something which has crept like an evening mist over the integrity of our country. What would once have happened and what should now happen is this:

FIRST

The Secretary of State for Health should start the process to put the Paediatric Department of Southampton General Hospital into Special Measures while inspectors discover why it appears that:

1 The hospital created a general alarm when it must or ought to have known very well that, as turned out to be the case, Ashya’s parents would never have put him at risk

2 Were complicit in allowing the police to invoke a criminal statute of child neglect and cruelty, when it knew this to be untrue

3 Issued generally misleading information to other public officials as to the true facts of the case

SECOND

The IPCC should investigate the Hampshire Constabulary for invoking the issue of an International Arrest Warrant for a crime which it knew, and has admitted to knowing, had not taken place.

None of this will happen because until there is a major scandal nobody cares about the smaller stuff. The Kings are just one family in focus but soon the focus will shift and none will answer for their ordeal. Every official organ involved, all part of and paid for by, the State will close ranks and cover backs.

It took over one thousand deaths of frail patients at Stafford to trigger any sort of enquiry; it took Jimmy Saville’s industrial scale abuse to trigger even an awareness that something was going on and then too late; Rotherham, Rochdale, phone hacking, food banks (food banks in Britain??), the list is long and will grow longer. But something is stirring within the beating heart of a nation which can do better. How that will manifest itself politically is hard yet to define. We will know more after Scotland votes, because until then we cannot be sure what the shape of the nation will be.