Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 33
March 7, 2019
May: Break Through 0r Break Down?
After a lot of optimistic leaks and noises, together with self important wisdoms from a phalanx of Brexit lawyers, once again talks with the EU have ground to a halt. The reason is the same as it has been from the very beginning. May does not listen. She keeps going back, or sending ministers back, to demand of the EU something which it will not and cannot give. The kind of stuff the ERG talk about and the legal jiggery pokery of Geoffrey Cox cuts no ice at all in Brussels or in any capitals of the EU.
Moreover although the DUP is against the Backstop, it is clear that the majority in Northern Ireland want it, otherwise they face social and economic mayhem. There might yet be a last minute breakthrough, a cavalry over the hill moment, but reports indicate that the cabinet, which now spends most of its time having rows, is resigned to defeat next week by as many as 100 votes.
Meanwhile another row has broken out in the government and country which could prove just as difficult for May, not least because it goes to the heart of savaging her non listening persona. It is about the stabbing crisis, the lack of police, youth, community and education resources and a string of stupid decisions May took while Home Secretary. A score of former and current police chiefs, as well as her current Home Secretary and a growing mass of victims’ grieving families, have attacked her part in stoking the knife problem into a crisis because she would not listen.
It could yet all work out. But on the other hand it might not. Very might not.
March 5, 2019
Labour Must Stop Infighting
This Blog has no real experience of Labour’s antisemitism problem other than the fact that it is a constant running sore. Clearly there can be no anti semitism in Labour or any other political party. At the same time the party must be given time for its new systems and processes to bed in. Moreover at no stage must anti semitism be used as a proxy for anti Corbynism.
New Labour lost votes at every election it fought after 1997 until 2015, when Ed Miliband moved slightly left and recovered a few hundred thousand votes from the 5 million lost by Blair and Brown. But Corbyn took the party back to its founding purpose further left and in 2017 gained millions more votes and and hundreds of thousands more members. Labour is not the party of the centre and with an economy so badly tipped to favour the few over the many, it must remain true to the left wing tradition. It must also stop fighting itself. This is not just about Labour. It is about hope, opportunity and ambition for our country. About everyone.
March 1, 2019
Is May Back From The Brink?
Like Trump in the US who carries on undamaged by scandal, mishap, revelation and resignation, so May survives as head of a government of undreamed of incompetence at almost every level. The Brexit negotiations have been mismanaged, miscalculations abound, wishful thinking as become the preferred modus, yet she carries on. There is an explanation, although it is not one which any sane person should wish to hear. Chaos. Political chaos. On such a scale that even the process of fixing a new leader or dissolving this chaotic parliament is no longer straightforward or capable of reliable delivery.
But, and there is now a but, at last she has been forced, albeit after a tumultuous cabinet meeting, to confront the ERG. Although twenty of them voted against the Cooper Amendment and many more abstained in an Alamo style last stand, they were beaten foursquare on Wednesday, both by the passage of the amendment itself and by May’s mega U-Turn announcements before it. There is now a chance that Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, can come back from the EU with a fig leaf cover-up of the infamous backstop, to get her Withdrawal Agreement through the meaningful vote when it happens, rumours suggesting sooner rather than later.
It will not be straight or clean. Some ERGs will defect from their nationalist friends and vote with May in fear of losing Brexit altogether. Some Labour members will vote with the government because they also think that Brexit will be lost in a storm of delaying Article 50 and a People’s Vote. Most of these hate Corbyn. With the rest of the Tory Party voting en masse with May, she might just pull it off. In a free vote she would without any trouble, but if Labour whips against, it is less certain. There is also the question of the DUP. This is a party founded on the principal of being opposed to everything. So far there are no hints of anything going on in Brussels which will satisfy them. If they vote against and are beaten, they will withdraw from backing May in power. So May could secure an orderly Brexit, but lose the power to govern.
That will give Corbyn his election. It must be hoped that there are enough in Labour who want him to win it.
February 23, 2019
Parliament: Paralysis or End Game?
The answer just now, but even an hour is a long time in politics at the moment so caution, is both. Not only does there appear to be no way forward which with any certainty can deliver an orderly Brexit, but the main parties are splintering and with multi-coloured reasons, ranging from the bitter to the naive. If there were splits between pro and anti Brexit it would make sense, but this is not the case. Although the Brexit theme is everywhere like seeping fog, within it there are so many opposing and fractured opinions, nothing concrete or reliable is offered. Moreover although Labour is not fully united over Brexit, the biggest schism is in the Tory party and it is the government. May stumbles forward trying to go backwards at the same time.
The whole world is gobsmacked. Two years ago on the list of countries likely to fall victim of dysfunctional government, the UK was just about the last. So the fact that it is now even less coherent than Greece in the Euro crisis or more capricious than Italy under Berlusconi, is almost beyond comprehension. That is a worse shock than Brexit itself. It also begs the question. Can Britain govern itself outside the framework and discipline of the EU? Or will she head for a never ending populist squabble?
It is a chilling thought. At the heart of all those problems, which now threaten both the future and stability of Britain as a country as well as the integrity of the Union of four nations which compose the UK, is the nationalist wing of the Tory party now morphed into the ERG. This is a poisonous grouping which led the various bits of the leave campaign making false promises, stoking real fears and raising hopes with outright lies. It sees a disorderly Brexit as a wonderful and cleansing experience, it cares not a fig for the suffering and chaos it may cause, because it is anti-foreign, anti-Europe and pro an illusionary vision of something it calls Global Britain.
Well this blog opposes it hook, line and sinker. As do millions of Brits. My proudest possession is my European citizenship. As it is for millions, especially the young. It may be the ERG and those who believe in its fraudulent prospectus will succeed in having their day. But it will be short. And then there will follow a new day. A day of reckoning. For them.
February 21, 2019
Brexit: The Problem Is May
There is in parliament a majority willing to pass a sensible deal acceptable to the EU based on a permanent customs union and with a close relationship with the single market. This will protect jobs, businesses, living standards and the economy. It will restrict independent trade deals but preserve 70 we already enjoy through membership of the EU. The ERG will never vote for it, for they believe in hard core nationalism, no matter the cost. Neither will the DUP. But enough of the patriotic and sensible majority of MPs from all parties will to push it through the Commons. The EU have already indicated they see the plan as a route out of the present mess.
The only thing preventing this is May, her red lines and her blind adherence to putting party before country. In other words the people will have to suffer to keep whatever is left of the Tory party together. May is not a national leader and has no grasp of what national leadership entails. She is the worst kind of party politician. She talks big and promises bigger. But in reality she is stubborn and narrow. She is the author of the greatest breakdown in orderly governance is modern history and is now the biggest obstacle to our country’s future prosperity, the integrity of our Union of four nations and the futures of our children.
If we keep her in office we deserve all we get.
February 20, 2019
Tory Split: Three Formidable Women
The Tory breakaway Three has a different flavour to the Labour Seven (now eight). Before it was a line up of angry and rather bitter also rans who talked mainly about themselves and whose Monday drama had by Wednesday slipped off the headlines. This time it is three Tory women, each of whom is a success in her own right in business, the law or medicine and who, because of their knowledge and experience outside the Westminster bubble, have called out their party in government for being blindly hell bent on a course to wreck our country. This is powerful stuff.
It may be that by Friday they too are forgotten and vaguely referred to as part of the Independent Group of Eleven (if you are old like me you will remember the Gang of Four) or it may be that they have started something much much bigger.
We shall just have to wait and see what happens next. You can bet on something, but not on what.
