Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 91

Tory Lead Falling:Free Download Extended

The Tory lead in the opinions polls is falling fast as the public wakes up to the fiasco of their manifesto.

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are offered on FREE DOWNLOAD extended to 0800 Sunday

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Free Downloads: Just A few Hours Left: Hurry!

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are offered on FREE DOWNLOAD until Midnight Saturday.

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Tory Manifesto Problems: Trust Theresa: Really?

Ha! It did not take long for controversy to break out over the winter fuel allowance means test, the un-achievable and economically illiterate immigration target (sorry aim) of 100,000 per year and, more seriously, the absence of any costings on most of the proposals. Coming down the line is serious and angry commentary about the astonishing grab at the property equity of the elderly needing help in their homes.

Just one weekend thought. If this deeply flawed and at times evasive document is the best that May and her ‘team’ can do, why on earth should anybody is possession of their wits trust them with the most critical negotiations ever undertaken by our country?

Free Downloads

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are offered on FREE DOWNLOAD from  Thursday May 18th for three days.

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The Tory Manifesto

Perhaps we should call it May’s manifesto, not least because she herself calls it that, referring to ‘my manifesto’. It is also the case that Lynton Crosby, who is apparently in charge, has decided on a presidential campaign about almost nothing but the leader, believing it exploits the perceived weakness of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour. On the face of it the strategy is clever, bold and at some level perhaps rather cruel. But who cares, if it works? Exactly. But. There is a weakness. All the Tory eggs are in one basket carried by the strong and steady Theresa. If she trips up? Oh dear.

The striking thing about the Labour manifesto is its radical approach to all the problems facing people in their everyday lives and polls reveal the measures are popular with voters on the doorstep. Talk of Micheal Foot is pointless. People live in the hear and now and Labour has changed the nature of the political conversation. Likewise the Lib Dems are projecting their pro-EU credentials as a strength. Both manifestos are costed although, as always, economists argue about the figures.

The Tory manifesto is different. It is high on rhetoric but vague on the source of funding. But in three areas it is specific and it could be here that trouble is brewing. It could be about these things that widely reported rows between numbers Ten and Eleven Downing Street took place.

1 Ending free school dinners for infants is absurd. Not only have these brought a big lifestyle and life chances improvement for youngsters,  especially to the poor and vulnerable, but they required huge logistical efforts by schools to set up kitchens and dining facilities to give effect to a very popular measure. Offering a free breakfast instead is cheaper and very cynical. An advance would have been to offer both. It sits very badly indeed beside finding money for new grammar schools, opposed by every educational professional of every political persuasion.

2 Means testing the winter fuel payment sounds reasonable, but it appears that most will lose it. Whatever the moral case, it is fodder for opponents in a manifesto.

3 Raiding personal property and and savings assets to pay for social care in old age and infirmity, especially in cases where the home is the only asset, is a stunner. On the face of it logical and fair, but in practice this is  an attack upon the home owning democracy at the very core of the Tory ideology since Thatcher sold the first council house. Once the detail sinks in, this will prove equivalent to one of the many budget disasters we have come to know and enjoy.

The rest of this tawdry document, full of promises and platitudes, uncosted and ill thought through, I will leave you to ponder, if you really have nothing else to to with your day. It is a full magazine of ammunition for all the opposition parties, especially Labour. It has certainly thrown the editorial hierarchy of the Daily Mail into a state of  ecstasy, which is enough in itself to repel droves.

On the one hand it may not matter because this is all about Theresa the Leader, so who cares about policy? She is strong and she will know what to do. This is the Crosby plan. The manifesto has a pink cloak and looks like a shift to the left, but underneath it is a rejection of most of what the modern Tory party has stood for since 1979. The reason for that is the total failure of economic policy to deliver the money needed to run the fair and just society about which she talks like a recorded computer message on a telephone banking app. Instead of offering to the many rather than the few, it kicks millions in the teeth.

On the other hand we come back to the basket of eggs.  She may have dropped it. If Britain votes for this on June 8th, it deserves everything that will happen afterwards.

Trump: Enter The Special Prosecutor

I did predict early in his campaign that if Trump were elected we would soon see special prosecutors and so we now have the first. In view of the chaos now gripping the body politic of the United States, this may be a good thing as it will focus the Russia issue and channel the hysteria on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless it is now the position of this blog that whether you love him or loathe him, Trump is the duly elected president of the world’s top super-power and our closest ally. He deserves to be allowed to govern, albeit in a rather different way, much of it innovative and refreshing in method.  Because that challenges not only the political establishment, but also bypasses institutions who regard the matter in contention as their turf, there is now an organised campaign in hand to destroy this presidency.  That is appalling. If it succeeds it will damage America more than Trump.

The President is evidently about to set off on his first foreign tour which will take him to Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and the G7 summit in Sicily. That is a different itinerary to his predecessors but interesting nevertheless. There are reports that both Houses of Congress plan to have Comey appear before them to tell all during the course of next week. If the report is true, and reports in Washington and not at present reliable, then it should not happen. There is a tradition that when the president travels overseas it is hands off at home, for the obvious reason that at best the value of the trip may be undermined and at worst reduced to a media farce.

Comey’s kiss and tell will have to wait.

FREE DOWNLOADS FOR LABOUR

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are offered on FREE DOWNLOAD from 0800 BST Thursday May 18th for three days.

 

Turn Left To Power is an explosive dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour’s return to power, with bold ideas for a new economic and social settlement, including economic and taxation reform, restoration of responsibility in government and a renewal of democracy. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes hard or soft. Frank and at a times brutal, Turn Left To Power offers a collection of fundamental reforms which amount to a political revolution which can propel Labour back to government. Published in 2016 and circulated to the Labour leadership, Turn Left To Power was a trailblazer for the manifesto.

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  Labour Can Win is an abridged version of my dissertation Turn Left to Power. The Labour Manifesto for the General Election on June 8th contains proposals which echo many of the principles which I set out, giving Labour the opportunity to spring a historic surprise on June 8th. If you want a Labour victory, this is a must read. It will give you ideas and inspiration to drive you forward. A message of hope over fear in under 100 pages.

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The Lib Dem Manifesto

We have had Labour’s offering, which is a courageous swing to the left, changing the nature of the political conversation and not only putting clear blue water between Labour and Tory, but an ideological ocean. At last we are back to a left and a right, which makes for much healthier politics, more constructive opposition as well as better focused government. Voters have a real choice to make and nobody needs to feel abandoned or left out. This blog’s mantra, as regulars are beginning to learn, is that you campaign from left or right but because you must govern for all, either side in victory is pulled towards the centre ground. If you campaign from the centre, you do so in a void, tinkering with trivia. With a sigh voters declare ‘they are all the same’ and lose interest.

Since their formation the Liberal Democrats have managed to attract in good times 6.6 million votes (2010). Many of these came from Labour voters fed up with abandonment by New Labour, the effect of this was mainly north of the Home Counties, and from Tory voters who leaned further left than the post Thatcher Tory party, which had rather lost its way. These gave Lib Dem victories in the South and West. There is also a traditional liberal following in Wales and Scotland.

However in 2015 they suffered catastrophic losses, 49 seats, leaving them right back at square one on the same level as their predecessor, the historically glorious but marginalized Liberal party. There were three reasons for this. The first was that Tory voters went back to their own party because, as the Lib Dems had been in coalition with them, they might as well vote for the real thing anyway. Labour supporters, dismayed that their left of centre refuge from New Labour had joined with the Tories, voted UKIP instead. Finally the young vote on which they had in the past relied, outraged at the flagrant breaking of the pledge not to increase tuition fees, walked away, many vowing never to return.

So the Lib Dem planners have had a challenge to come up with a distinctive offer, which can be heard above the clamour of the contest between the big two. They have done that. There is some candy on their stall which will appeal here and there, but the cake is the promise of a second referendum, which will offer the chance to vote on the final outcome of the Brexit negotiations, including the option of abandoning Brexit altogether. This gives them a message to hammer home across media and doorstep, soundbite and meeting which is distinctive and different.

It also takes shrewd account of the fact that of the millions who voted Brexit, a high proportion were not voting about Brexit, but about having their voice heard and cutting immigration. But all the millions who voted Remain did so because they believe in the EU, take pride in their EU citizenship and their sovereignty democratically expressed in voting for members of the European parliament. There was no sub text or grievance message and very large numbers of them are aghast at the wild lurch into nowhere that their country is taking. It may well be the the Lib Dems offer to them a voting option that many will find attractive. If that happens it will not propel the Lib Dems to power, but it could swing the election.

But above all it offers to the British people a clear three way choice unseen in decades. Let us hope many more turn out to exercise it.

Dynamic Quantitative Easing: An Easy Guide

An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Download 99p Paperback £2.99  CLICK IMAGE TO BUY

 

Funding Economic Growth

The state of the UK economy is such, and has been such for years, that growth is not going to happen on any meaningful scale without a significant boost. The complete failure of both the Tory led coalition and the Tory government, to hit any of their financial targets and to achieve their promised re-balancing of the economy underscores this. The GDP is too small for the growing population and has to expand significantly to create a wide enough tax base to deliver the required income to pay for all the public services properly.

Tax increases on the better off and corporations will certainly produce revenue in the short term, as will borrowing to invest. Investing in public housing, infrastructure, energy, broadband and so on are critical to economic growth and it is the refusal of the present model to borrow for investment that is the reason for the failure to grow the economy at a decent level thus far. Austerity lasting longer than eighteen months is a trap which inhibits growth and sucks resources from the bottom to the top, enabling the rich to grow richer at the expense of the poor.

But borrowing alone will not be enough. The financial sector, including both the post crash and post Brexit injections, has enjoyed £435 billion of printed money known as quantitative easing. If Labour wins power, either alone or in coalition with other anti austerity soft Brexit parties, it will have to pump the same amount into the base of the economy to re-boot it. This needs to be direct or via a national investment bank and must be in the form of investment rather than loans. I call it dynamic quantitative easing.