Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 90

Leader Debate: Corbyn or May?

There was no knockout blow. Both sides will be relieved. But it was not an even contest, because Corbyn had everything to gain and May had everything to lose. Corbyn came across as principled, comfortable is his skin, engaging and willing to give quite detailed answers to questions even from Paxman. The more people see of Corbyn the more they warm to him.

For May it is the opposite. The more the campaign has exposed of her the less she is liked. A 25 point lead is now down to 5 points. She came across as brittle, evasive and unwilling to answer one single specific question with numbers or costings. She was shown to be a serial mind changer. On Brexit, she campaigned for Remain. On the tax changes for the self employed in the budget, she  scrapped them. On the promise she would not call a snap election, she did. On no cap on social care costs, now there will be one. And this is the person who has staked the whole Tory campaign on her strong decisive leadership. Well it appears voters are now changing their minds about her ability to provide it. Last night she did nothing to halt that trend.

Trump’s Trip: Did It Go Well?

Trump thinks it was a success. Those Americans who are aware it took place will be relieved there were no disasters. His administration and its supporters will feel pleased. But what is really interesting is the change in dynamic which it inaugurates, about what America First means and how American power overseas will in future be used.

The first part of the tour with the Saudis was a big spectacular and was something of a triumph for Trump, projecting an image across the world which exuded authority and acceptance of US primacy. He used it to tell the Saudis and their allies that they must do more themselves to bring an end to the tyranny of IS. America will back you, but you must do more.

Israel and the Palestinians got the same message but tailored to their own situation. Israel was America’s number one ally in the Mid East, but go easy on settlements and we are not moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Yet. To the Palestinians it was the assurance that America would support them in the peace process as long as they made a genuine effort to engage. To both was the message Trump would back anything upon which they both agreed and would not adopt a position favouring one against the other. Very different in style, but not unwelcome to either side, who could see red lines and green lights clearly set out.

NATO was told to pay up its dues and rightly so. America would not and should not pay 70% of the cost of the alliance now that Europe’s economy was almost as big as that of the US. It was at the G7 summit in Sicily that things did not work out so well. Merkel described it as the G6 plus One. This time Trump’s view of world trade was different and his refusal to back the Paris Climate Change Accord was difficult. Merkel returned to Germany and made a speech about not being able to rely on the US and Britain in future. Europe would have to stand on its own feet.

Put simply this Blog would judge the tour a success, but perhaps for different reasons to the official line. Broadly the message to the parts of the world visited was that America First meant that the US was less willing to poke its nose into everybody else’s affairs, unless its own real (rather than contrived) interests were threatened, in which case watch out. But also if the rest of the world wants to play rough and break its toys, it can no longer rely on the US to mend them and clear up the mess.

The rising star of the journey was Ivanka. She is now widely described as America’s First Daughter. Something else to get used to.

Election 2017: Now It Gets Interesting

No denying there is still a Tory lead. But the poll in the Telegraph puts Labour at 38% and the Tories on 44%, a lead of just six points. This confirms the trend in all the other polls and evident from the start of the campaign, when May had a lead in the mid twenties. Based on the 2015 turnout this would give the Tories 13.2 million votes, 2 million more than in 2015. Labour would achieve 11.4 million, also 2 million up on their last result. It would also be their best result since the Blair landslide of 1997. Indeed on these figures Corbyn stands to get more votes than Blair in 2001 and 2005, Brown in 2010 and Milliband in 2015. So the idea that Corbyn is a vote loser is rubbish and pedaled only by people who cannot add up, mostly in what was ‘new labour,’ now a muttering rump of lost souls in a political dark corner.

Unfortunately with a first past the post voting system, the number of votes is not the whole story. Blair lost a staggering three million votes between 1997 and 2001, yet his landslide majority remained almost intact. There are now two critical elements in play before June 8th. The first is whether the Lib Dems and UKIP perform better on the day than in the opinion polls. If they do that will almost certainly hurt both main parties, but the Tories will face the heavier loss. The second is how much the turnout goes above the 30 million or so of 2015. Because the increase will indicate more young people voting and they will break for Labour.

Yes Labour can win.

To Help Labour Win: From 99p

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are available from 99p.

                                   Click images to buy

 

Labour Continues to Climb: Latest Corbyn Message

It is heartening news for this blog, which has campaigned for a change of foreign policy since 2009, that at last Labour has had the courage to walk away from the foreign policy consensus which has delivered nothing but misery to millions for over fifteen years. These interventions destroy the fabric of states, leaving a vacuum in which all manner of rebel groups vie for power and in which perverted ideologies of cruel repression with violence germinate and blossom. Not only have we caused suffering to millions but also created a diaspora we cannot cope with.

The Labour manifesto is the most radical for decades, signalling a new way of resolving problems and advancing the common good. This now embraces foreign affairs, including the use of the military to advance political objectives. That is very good news for the country and I suspect very good news for Labour’s prospects on June 8th. According to a poll in today’s Times , the Tory lead over Labour is now down to five points. For Corbyn to speak out took courage in an area where cowardice and self interest tends to dominate, because the truth is too unpalatable to face. He made clear there was no excuse for Manchester and there was no justification for the cruelest act of terrorism thus far in the War on Terror, which he described as a failure, pointing to a different way forward.

It was expected that the Tories would fly into self righteous orbit, putting words into his mouth and meaning  opposite to his message. Yet when the BBC went onto the streets of a South London marginal to gain reaction, they could not find anybody who did not support the views of the Labour leader. The public back this much more than the political establishment, including New Labour. There was another objective too. To provoke May into grandstanding and saying things that were just not true about Corbyn, which replays can confirm. This reinforces the seepage of her ‘trust clever Theresa who knows what to do’ image. Judging by the clip of her on the news last night, she took the bait.

Funding Social Care: A Tripwire For May

Before we look at what has happened, let us look at the ideal world. In that a person is born, nurtured, educated and grows up to take their place in adult society. They get a job, buy or rent a house, which takes no more of their income than a proportion which leaves sufficient over, to save for the cost of bringing up a family, retirement and old age. Either the home can be bought at the outset and paid for during the working life, or savings will provide the funds to buy one, as often in Germany, at retirement. In this world there is a constructive partnership between the person and civil and private providers as well as the state and capital. Some services are provided by the state, to enable which taxes are paid. The rest is down to you. Insurance can be used to spread privately paid for services.

After the war (WWII)  we lived in a period of hard core socialism followed by a period of social capitalism. This was a model of capitalism which promoted free enterprise, but retained political, in other words democratic, control over the shape of the economy. It worked well for a while, but eventually it became unresponsive and inert and failed to deliver competitive outcomes. People became disillusioned and turned away, electing Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

She offered first an economic model driven by control of the money supply, but later modified this to control by the markets. That conformed with new developments in technology which enabled more extensive world trade and ultimately globalisation. At first the new model was very liberating and worked for the majority, whilst leaving a minority whose welfare was, in exchange for the fact that they were somehow left behind, protected by the state. Thatcher also took the decision to sell council houses to their tenants at a discount. Popular and apparently benign, it has proved the cancer which is killing the current economical model.

This is what happened. If Thatcher had given cash raised on the sales back to councils to build more houses and if, when house price inflation first began to exceed general inflation, the Bank of England had introduced a Mortgage Rate, separate to Bank Rate, to regulate the housing market, things would now be very different and much better. Instead housing shortages have built up, savings have dried up, money is sucked in by borrowing countless billions overseas and pumping it into property via huge mortgages, which further inflate a market out of control. Young people cannot afford to buy, so taxpayer money has to be used to guarantee even bigger loans and to boost savings for deposits, inflating the market even more. Rents are so high in the private rented sector that billions have to be paid to landlords by the government, to subsidize the gap which tenants cannot meet. Another thrust on the inflation pump. At this point we no longer have a free housing market, but a government funded scam acting against the public interest.

The result is that people have to work round the clock to pay for housing costs and instead of saving as they did in the past, everything goes into the property, sucking up not only their own resources, but the resources of the state, because of rising benefit costs and lower taxation revenues. By creating an economy which favours asset inflation over wealth creation and borrowing over saving, the state ends up so short of revenue that it has to raid the inflated assets to carry on. And the people who have spent a lifetime borrowing instead of saving, have to accept that. The trouble for May is that they won’t.

US Leaks Outrage: Trump Must Act

The world watches perplexed as some kind of political feud in the intelligence services of the United States of America is disrupting the normal conduct of its government. But the obsession with Russian contacts of those allied to Trump is a domestic political imbroglio which simply makes America look childish. Leaking classified information about an ongoing investigation into one of the cruelest terrorist outrages of modern times, designed to kill and maim children with chilling success, is a tawdry and untrustworthy act of people who have lost their way. To publish pictures of the bits of the bomb which did the killing and maiming, as a means of selling more copies of what has become the most internationally discredited newspaper now in print, beggars belief. It is a kick in the teeth to the suffering and a gross act of disrespect to the murdered and their families.

That all these are the acts of our best friend and closest ally will leave a scar which will take a very long time to heal. Already intelligence sharing is curtailed and unprecedented diplomatic exchanges are in progress. The Special Relationship is badly damaged. Not since Suez have relations between the UK and the US been so fraught. Then it was the UK which was at fault over a state to state issue of foreign policy. This time it is the US in the dock. On a people to people matter of human decency and reliable partnership.

As soon as he gets home Trump must act to end a situation now out of control.

Manchester Horror

It could not be worse. A happy night at at a concert to see a star. What a treat. Then this. Aimed at the young and children at a moment of their happiness and enjoyment. One cannot think of anything more cruel for them, their parents and their friends. And for us all. There is no blow heavier than the death of your child. This Blog shares the grief and sorrow of millions at this dreadful news and sends sympathy and human warmth to those whose world lies in ruins today.

May U-Turn: The Queen of Flip Flop

She campaigned to stay in the EU, then changed her tune to hard Brexit. The key financial measure in the Budget had to be withdrawn, although she approved it. There was to be no snap election but she called one. She produced the worst election manifesto in modern Tory history, causing panic in the country because it is a mega vote loser, cutting her lead in half in days. Now she has invented some new cap in her dementia tax plan and blamed it all on Corbyn. Sorry what has Corbyn got to do with her manifesto? Have we missed something? At least she did not blame Putin. Yet. Minutes later she is telling the media nothing has changed. Then why do it?

Strong and stable leadership. Pardon?

Strong negotiator batting for what’s best for Britain. Ha Ha Ha.

No wonder Merkel says May is delusional. She has after all met and talked with her. Elect May on June 8th and this whole country will go down the tubes, Brexit and all.

Wow.

 

 

 

 

Labour Advances Steadily In All Polls

There are several points. I have been saying for some years, and publishing from 2015, that centre politics is over and victory for Labour beckons from the Left. This is confirmed by Jeremy Corbyn’s double landslide in the Labour leadership contests and, in spite of an extraordinarily hostile media and little support from much of the PLP, the brilliant radical manifesto has changed the political conversation. Labour is advancing steadily in the polls because its policies are popular and it is now scoring higher in all polls than it achieved either in the 2015 or 2010 general elections. Corbyn’s own popularity is advancing and with it record numbers of younger people are registering to vote. The majority of those will back his modern brand of democratic socialism.

The biggest political turnaround in modern history is now in the making. May’s landslide has imploded in the omnishambles of the Tory manifesto. It might even be nominated for the 2016 prize for the longest political suicide note in history. May’s persona as the invincible national mother-in-law who always knows what’s best for everyone lies in shreds.  If the present Labour advance can be maintained on the same trajectory as from the start of the campaign, her political career will end on June 8th. At least there will be no landslide.

But the Tory party is a truly nasty set up and seeing victory slide from view, it will fight hard and fight dirty. This is the moment when a re-energised Labour must throw it heart, its soul and all its activists into the biggest fight in the history of the Labour movement. Because suddenly it is clear the cause is far from lost. Within 24 hours it will not be the Conservative lead which is the story, but the Labour advance.

Finally, a message to the New Labour faction in the PLP. Even if you worship Tony Blair as a God, in the real world Jeremy Corbyn is now your man.

 

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