Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 87

National Emergencies: A Management Gap

If there is a terrorist incident or some other threat or event involving national security, there is a seamless response programme which mobilizes all relevant services under the COBRA umbrella, delivering exceptional outcomes in often challenging and heartrending crises. But we have seen several instances of what might be called civil threats, for example the Foot and Mouth outbreak, sudden floods and now the terrible Grenfell Tower disaster, when the initial response at best has been far short of what was expected and where victims have been left to struggle with little support.

This is not good enough and must change. Cobra’s reach must be extended or a new civil authority must be set up to mobilize, coordinate and rehearse the responses of all civil authorities to unexpected events which leave victims traumatised and thus far it seems, authorities, beyond emergency responders, paralysed. We disbanded Civil Defence as the risk of World War Three receded. Now we need something to replace it, tailored to the times in which we live.

The End Of An Era: Thatcherism Is Over

The political landscape has so many different aspects that to blog about the whole picture is too complex in a reasonable length post. So I shall be making a number of key points over the following days. Readers can join them up or just remember the things that grab their attention.

Today let us take an overview of where we are. The Winter of Discontent in 1978/9, when public sector workers went on strike creating mountains, literally, of rubbish piled in public places and the dead were left unburied, was the final expiry of the post war settlement in which the state was the primary player in the life, economy and well being of the nation. It was clear the state had failed. In came Thatcher and everything changed.

The state was elbowed aside by free markets, there was no such thing as society, the individual had primacy over community, nationalism gave way to globalisation, industrialisation was dumped in favour of asset acquisition, jobs were exported and everything we used imported. Saving was abandoned and borrowing became a contagion.  A whole generation of politicians and public officials grew up who knew of no other way.

It is not necessary now to list the glaring failures of that collapsing model. There have been warnings. Corbyn and Brexit. But the final and horrific sign that it is all over, is the terrible spectacle of innocent men women and children being burned to death in a public housing tower, because nobody would listen to their pleas that the building was a fire trap. And if that were not enough, the gross incompetence of the civil authorities to respond to the aftermath has unleashed a tide of anger which cannot now be turned.

Just as the Thatcher era was founded by a very clever woman who had the ear of the people and read them with skill, could get things done and win election after election, so it is that as it all implodes, there is in Downing Street the next clever woman to hold the top office. But there, as we all know only too well, the comparison ends. As is perhaps fitting.

This Has To Stop.

Once again we find ourselves expressing horror and sharing the pain of the victims and their loved ones caught up in tragedy. We are familiar in these islands with violence between Protestant and Catholic. We have suffered terror attacks from a perversion of Islam called IS. We cannot now go down the road of attacking Muslims in revenge. The white van assault on Muslim worshipers in Finsbury Park is terrorism pure and vile. The whole country condemns it. It is unnecessary and cruel. There must be no more.

Are the Tories Toxic? Could The Government Fall?

In a period when political developments cascade down at unprecedented speed, there is now a whispered question, could the government fall at the end of the Queen’s Speech debate? On the face of it, the answer is no, because the DUP will prop it up. But those cold political maths ignore two new elements. The split in both the Cabinet and the Tory backbenches between hard and soft Brexit, which is now so pronounced that the Chancellor is openly declaring a position at variance from the government. And the gathering surge of public anger and national shame over this terrible fire.

The first suggests a government in something not far short of chaos on its core policies. The second is that the death by burning alive of perhaps 100 innocent men women and children in a public housing block is revealing many threads to guilt, but the most damning leads back to Whitehall and this Tory government, in power since 2010. Because when all is said and done there will be two prime causes; inadequate regulation of refurbishment standards and too little money available to do the job to the highest safety standards.

The signs are already there. It is thought that the DUP are playing hard ball. But if you listen very carefully to what they are saying about not being interested in the Queen’s Speech and the fact that they have still not agreed final terms, it looks more to me as if they are walking to a safe distance from a government which has become toxic. They fear, and remember they are perhaps the most intuitive politicians in these islands, that when the reckoning comes, any small party in association with the Toxic Tories will become toxic too.

This is not a prediction, but it is a sharing of thoughts with loyal readers. I may have overworked the analysis and got it wrong.But there is a very real possibility that when the vote comes at the end of the Queen’s Speech debate, no smaller party dare support a toxic government and a prime minister whose poll ratings are already as low as Corbyn’s before he began his meteoric rise. He could be Prime minister sooner than we thought.

Tim Farron: The Right Choice

In a country numb and overshadowed by the terrible events at Grenfell Tower, the news of Tim Farron’s resignation has passed almost unremarked. But as political resignations go, his reasons were unique in modern times. Once politics and religion were one. But now within formerly Christian societies, this is much less the case. In England particularly, Church and State, whilst still joined constitutionally, are very much separate in practice. And rightly so. This blog believes in a secular society and is opposed to faith schools, whilst defending the right of every citizen to believe in any faith and practice any religion, so long as nothing that the faith preaches harms others or is a promotion of acts or attitudes which are against the law of the land.

Tim Farron has been an honest and open party leader for the Liberal Democrats. He articulated with a good deal of clarity unusual in modern politicians, ways forward which were not always down the popular road. Without him the debate will be less interesting. But it seems his faith lead him down a path to conclusions which this blog considers shocking and deeply offensive to the people of our country who are outside his muddled understandings of virtue versus sin.

He is right to go. He must now decide whether he wants a career in politics or religion. In these times, now, he will find it difficult pursue both. With his homophobic thoughts that is as it should be.

This Terrible Fire: A Point Of No Return

If it is possible to imagine something worse than screaming families being burnt alive in a raging tower block inferno, this Blog cannot think of it. The whole country is transfixed with shock and dismay that something which all thought was impossible, has happened. But following upon the desire to help, contribute, shelter and comfort which flows down to North Kensington from every corner of the British Isles, there is a rising tide of anger. Anger that this did not need to happen.

Anger that repeated entreaties from residents that something should be done to deal with obvious fire risks were ignored by authorities at every level. Anger that parliamentary warnings to ministers to regulate standards of refurbishment which have a lower bar than building standards, were ignored by this Tory government. Anger that never ending austerity and cuts to local authority funds have meant poor supervision and inspection. Anger that contractors and others directly responsible for this unprecedented calamity are hiding behind compliance with regulations to justify the institutional manslaughter of innocents.

For it is a fact beyond denial, widely filmed and witnessed, that a building said to be constructed of fireproof boxes designed to ensure fire could not spread and which, like others, had for years stood secure in this belief, after a refurbishment carried out by a cash strapped council using bargain basement contractors, one of which has already gone bust, became a flaming torch, an upward raging firestorm, burning from within and without, incinerating an unknown number of residents in the greatest domestic horror seen here since World War Two.

Inquiry will reveal guilt. For the guilty a day of reckoning will come. For the bereaved their suffering will never end. For those who, helpless, witnessed terrible scenes, those images will never go.

As for austerity and its clammy outriders, a small state, light touch regulation, outsourcing, cuts and toothless quangos, the day of reckoning is now.

It is over.

Oh No! Another Disaster

The fire in Kensington is horrific. I had no idea these tower blocks could go up like a torch! People are missing. One dare not think what the death toll may be. Once again this nation will have to stand united in grief. The thoughts of the whole country are with the victims and their loved ones, those traumatised who managed to flee and with the first responders and the emergency services upon whom we so much rely.

Power Turns Left: Corbyn’s Triumph

Not since 1945 has Labour had such a surge in its voter base. Tories try to salvage some of their pride by saying May got more votes than Blair in 1997 (but not as many as Major in 1992). But Corbyn achieved a much bigger increase, beating Blair in 2001 and 2005 and Gordon Brown in 2010 by a staggering 4 million votes. Indeed only Blair’s landslide in 1997 and Wilson’s win in 1966 exceed Corbyn. That is a spectacular political earthquake which fundamentally changes the political weather, although Labour is not in power. Moreover the majority of the members of the new House of Commons support a left leaning political agenda which is very close to Corbyn and very far from May. And in a hung parliament, where power is split from office, that counts for everything.

So May leads a government which will have to accept the maths of democracy that will drive her prospects from now on. Her manifesto is binned in its entirety and what is coming in the Queen’s Speech are some bolt ons to existing government programmes. All of it will take account of the new political tide which is seeping fast into every nook and cranny of the national culture.

Out  are

Austerity

Hard Brexit

An Economy ruled by Markets

A Shrinking State

 

In  Are

An Economy for the Many not the Few

Soft Brexit driven by economic necessity, not immigration

Financial stimulus through borrowing and printing

Growing State Responsibility

 

May’s survival depends upon her being able to deliver on the list of Ins. She has a majority of only six, even with the toxic DUP. So four unhappy people in a crucial vote and one of those can be an abstention, and it’s over to Corbyn.

 

 

May’s Confession

May is reported telling her MPs

‘I got us into this mess and I will get us out of it.’

If she were truly reformed she would have said

‘I got us into this mess and together we will get out of it.’

But it was a first step on her road to reality.

Delusional May: Now The Politics

May is now stripped of all political power. But the political pot is at boiling point with many elements bubbling around. Here are some of them.

A spokesman for the DUP has said  his party’s toxic attitudes to abortion, sexual orientation, climate change and other issues, were shared within many parts of the Tory party. If that idea takes off, the Tory party is electorally dead.

The DUP is anti austerity, pro triple lock, pro universal winter fuel allowance, anti dementia tax, anti hard Brexit and pro an open border with Ireland. Hardly an ally of the Tories surely?

The Scottish Conservatives are anti austerity, pro soft Brexit, pro triple lock and winter fuel allowance and anti dementia tax. All of that is opposite of the Tory manifesto.

The Cabinet is  split between soft and hard Brexit supporters. But negotiations are about to begin. The threat to walk away is simply ridiculous. The other side knows May is on borrowed time and parliament would force her back to the table. There is absolutely no majority in parliament or the country for a hard Brexit which damages the economy even in the short term.

The reality is that the whole political agenda and conversation has now swung Labour’s way. There are more members in parliament broadly in sympathy with its new vision of a different political and economic settlement, than there are in sympathy with the old vision of the Tories. May will be able, we imagine, to get her Queen’s speech through, although it could well suffer amendments. She will get her budget through only if austerity is rolled back and it contains significant measures to stimulate the economy, which means more printing and borrowing. She cannot have her grammar schools. Free school lunches will stay. The list is long and growing.

So May, her cabinet and and the unhappy Tories in the Commons will bear all the burdens of office, but the power is already with Corbyn.  And after nearly forty years in the Commons he knows where all the levers are and how to pull them. That is why he looks so chipper.