Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 35
February 9, 2019
The Brexiteers’ Trade Deal Uplands? What Trade Deals?
Among all the wishful thinking, pipe dreams, ignorance and lies which form the manifesto of the hard Brexiteers, ‘freedom to do trade deals with other countries’ is by far their most often proclaimed. The United Kingdom already has trading arrangements outside the EU with more countries than at any time in its modern history. Leaving the EU without a deal would void all of them. It now transpires that the promised ease with which we would instantly get roll over deals to enable that trade to continue were based on almost total ignorance of the legal and political framework of these treaties, and the rhetoric was tripe. No such roll overs have been secured and Japan, with whom we are supposed to be especially matey, is driving for a much harder bargain than it has given to the EU. Which is less favourable to us.
It is no small wonder that the word fiasco is being widely used in Europe to describe the Brexit nightmare.
February 8, 2019
Brexit: Labour Steps Up To the Plate
The Brexit drama is hotting up and reaching a moment when something will happen which will change the nature and identity as well as the future prospects of the United Kingdom. But nobody knows what or how. The EU is now describing the situation in our country as a fiasco. This blog agrees.
To reiterate for new readers, I am a Remainer who believes passionately in the EU as the greatest political achievement since the fall of the Roman Empire. I see myself as first European, then British and finally English. I value my European citizenship above all others. I see the European Union as a project for peace, built on national integration, open borders and trade. The political union is the core, the economic union is the structure within which all can together prosper and within which individuals can enjoy personal freedom and shared sovereignty without equal in history. I regard nationalism as racism in another form; it is bad, dangerous and even, yes, evil. So now you know.
But the crisis now engulfing our country goes beyond all this. We are engaged in a nightmare sequel of national self harm, of which we are ourselves the authors. We are already damaged but if we do not act now to stave of the lunacy of a crash Brexit, an unhappy misfortune will become a frightening catastrophe. So we have to unite around a course of action which puts the jobs, welfare, livelihood, health and wellbeing of ordinary people at its heart and preserves the integrity of the United Kingdom, itself now in danger of busting apart.
So Labour has come forward with proposals which the EU cautiously acknowledges could form the basis of a sensible way forward, acceptable to the majority in the Commons as well as the EU.
But it will never satisfy the so called European Research Group made up of Tory nationalists of the very worst kind, neither will it please the DUP. These two minority political groupings, not the EU, are the intransigent problem in our midst and it is against them that action must now be taken to isolate them in the minority corner which they actually occupy. A cross party consensus in the Commons will do that very well.
Labour has made an historic move in the right direction. May must now reach out and find a viable accord which parliament will back. This is very much not a moment to run away barefoot into a cornfield.
February 7, 2019
February 6, 2019
Corbyn’s Labour: High Water Mark?
Nobody ever imagined Corbyn would become leader of the Labour Party. Nor that he would survive in that job. Nor that he would turn the tide on May in 2017 and push Labour to over 12 million votes for the first time since 1997. Nor that he would make Labour the biggest party in Europe. But he did. Yet now there are some signs that Labour is slipping both in the polls and in the total of its membership. So has the tide of the Left reached as far as it will go?
There is no doubt that Corbyn has changed the political conversation, moved the centre several steps to the left and brought into political engagement millions of young people. That gives Labour a massive foundation on which to build. The problem for Labour is Brexit, but not in the ideological sense of the Tories. Seventy per cent of Labour party members voted to stay in the EU and as many as eighty percent are thought willing to come out and vote Remain in a new referendum, which the majority of them want.
But large numbers of the seats Labour holds voted Leave. Many of these are marginal. So Corbyn and his senior team have been ambiguous much of the time on what their Brexit policy actually is. If you listen carefully you can grasp the main threads, but only if you are an enthusiast for nuance and detail. To everyone else the party seems, while not riven in shreds like the Tories, indecisive and muddled and Corbyn’s leadership is beginning to look weak. If you add the ongoing rumbling about antisemitism, you have a dangerous build up of a not good something.
The Labour leadership is not in trouble, but it could be if it does not come down off various fences and stand somewhere on firm ground, where people can see and understand. Not all will like it. But that is politics. And that is how Corbyn was chosen in the first place.
February 5, 2019
Liam Neeson: Beware the Thought: But Curb the Action
You must make up your own minds whether this popular and talented actor was right to confess to evil thoughts he had in the past, which were clearly wrong at every level. Mercifully he never turned the thoughts into action, although had the specific opportunity presented itself, the story might have had a very bad ending. At the heart of it is racial prejudice of the very worst kind. We all know that. But Neeson knows he was wrong and shared the story to illustrate how even good people, as he and everyone else now regards him now to be, can at some time think bad things. Very bad things. But that is not unlawful. We need to remember that.
This blog has a simple view. Prejudice against any colour, race, religion, class, orientation or whatever is wrong. All people everywhere are part of the same human family. For this reason you will never find support here for another form of prejudice, nationalism. Railing against foreigners, immigrants, people with different values or culture, is just as wrong and bad as racism and causes vast damage to countless millions in war and conflict.
This is why I remain implacably opposed to Brexit. Because at its heart are bad thoughts turned into a very bad idea.
February 1, 2019
EU Says No: May’s Test: Break the ERG
As expected every authority in the European side of the Brexit drama have said no to May. Around her, people tell her hold fast and the EU will crack. But the EU is not her enemy. It is the ERG. This hard core Brexit whatever the cost nationalist wing of the Tory party is little better than an ideological gang of wreckers, who have fed a diet of lies and imaginings into minds of ordinary people, made fertile by years of austerity and a widespread feeling of being left behind by an economic model that makes the rich richer at the expense of the poor. They were told they will be better off. This, whatever the shape of Brexit, is not going to happen. The ERG have taken a dose of realism and they know that.
So they are looking for a way out of what could be either of two equal calamities. Calamities especially for the ERG and all who support them. The first is that Brexit is lost altogether because people are fed up with it and vote in a second referendum to dump an historic blunder of national self harm. The second is that through their opposition to anything vaguely sane and achievable, we crash out in a no deal Brexit. The consequent economic, social and logistical shock, the likely unification of the two Irelands and the real prospect of a Scottish breakaway, will not only break up the United kingdom but also break up all our existing trading arrangements across the world, now legally constituted through our membership of the EU. To suggest this is a moment of national renewal and upgraded living conditions is tripe and they know that too. And their fingers will be on the disaster, they will own it, and a tsunami of anger of the cheated will surge towards them.
On the other hand a softer Brexit based on a Customs Union solves all the intractable problems and delivers the best outcome of a bad job. They should be told what again they know already in private, but will now become public. Back a workable Brexit plan or see it carried by Labour votes. Either way, it is over for them. They did their best to wreck their country but their country is bigger than they think.
January 29, 2019
Parliament Gets A Grip: Of Itself Or The Government? Or Both?
Yesterday was a game changer. And because it was unexpected it was very British. It was also a major victory for May. But it is not a beginning of the end moment. More an end of the beginning, to paraphrase Churchill. In a series of votes on amendments in which many had expected a string of government defeats, the government won all but just the one, a critical one, which gave victory to the majority in the House against a crash Brexit, thus removing the national suicide threat from the negotiating platform. Even more important parliament voted on what it was actually for. That is the game changer. The fact it is for something which cannot be delivered is, in the context of restoring coherent governance to our country, not important. And here is the thing. If parliament can maintain discipline and work more or less within its proper bounds of government and opposition, instead of a brawl of multiple factions, the impossible might become deliverable.
As we all know the Irish backstop is the pill the nationalist Tories and their DUP friends(!) cannot swallow. But they have in effect swallowed everything else in May’s deal. Therefore there is potentially a majority for it. What the voting figures showed yesterday was that there were about twenty Tory MPs willing to vote against the government and slightly fewer Labour MPs willing to vote with it, which could very well enable May to win her final vote. For its part the EU has declared there will be no reopening of the Withdrawal Agreement, especially the Irish Backstop.
But if there is a crash out because the EU will not play, then there will be a hard border between the two parts Ireland and moreover the whole logistics of the Republic’s trade with the EU will be disrupted, as most of it passes through the UK. Add to that the high volume of its exports going into the UK tariff free will be subject to duties, making them a good deal less competitive. So what the EU refuses to give in over, it will actually get. It might not be a full custard pie moment, but it is not far short.
However both the DUP and hard Brexiteers know that if that hard border does return, Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. This would trigger an eventually irresistible demand for a reunification vote for Ireland. That could finally lead to the loss to the UK of Ulster. This blog would not be sorry, but it would certainly fatally damage both the DUP and the Tory right wing. So both sides know they will have to give a little to gain a fudge which leaves the essence of the Withdrawal Agreement intact but offers enough to get it through the Commons.
And there is a new dynamic. Up till now the EU has held firm across all 27 States, in its parliament and governing council. The Commission reports to a united political force. In contrast London has stunned the world with its collapse of coherent governance and its chaotic splits, factions and rows. Nobody could fathom what it wanted because it did not know itself.
But at the critical hour it looks as if London might stop trying to copy the worst of Athens or Rome and become itself once again. United and clear cut in its agenda. And perhaps in the face of that, the unity of the EU will crack. That is what May and her allies hope for. It is also how Britain has historically won its wars. By losing the opening battles but winning the last. This eccentricity is how it remains, while no longer a world power, nevertheless in spite of everything, a power in the world.
