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Author Archives: Paul Reynolds

The Mandelson debacle – Implications, Part 2 (remedies)

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 29th April 2026 - 8:55 am

On 25th April 2026 I wrote in LDV about the longer-term political background to the Mandelson debacle, referencing his time on Lambeth Council and the rise of the anti-left in the Labour Party, alongside the formation of the SDP, which partially sprung from there (see yesterday’s Guardian article).

The main conclusion of the LDV article was that Mandelson’s political orientation was shaped by opposition to the far-left in the Labour Party, (reinforced by the militant left’s control of Lambeth Council in the 1970s and 1980s). Mandelson’s close colleagues then, such as the subsequently ennobled Roger Liddle, Matthew Oakeshott, and the late George Thomson (associated with BBC and ITV governance), not only opposed the far left, they also objected to Thatcherism. They particularly opposed those of the left and right who were sceptical of internationalism and EU cooperation, especially dissenters from the quasi-corporatist European ‘social democratic consensus’. Mandelson stayed in the Labour party to fight the left, but Oakeshott and Liddle joined the SDP, the latter, being close to Mandelson, rejoining Labour after 6 years.

This group, and many Labour colleagues, believed that the Labour Party would never regain power again if it remained under far left control, hostile to ‘right-wing’ mainstream media and the big business and finance organisations behind them. Being cosy with international business helped get PM Blair elected in 1997, and softened media scepticism towards PM Starmer in early 2024. However, in cosying up to big business and finance, attitudes to economic elites and oligarchs began to border on adulation.

But there is a serious policy problem. The last 19 years has seen a transformation of the world economy, since the 2007-8 financial crisis. The rise of the Chinese economy has occurred alongside the rise of ‘financialisation’ and concomitant authoritarian bureaucratisation in the West; leading to increasing economic concentration and ‘stealthy monopolisation’. Asset prices rise in a bubble, as long term economic performance in the ‘real sector’ declines, and Western governments ignore the fiscal & debt sustainability tsunami.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economy, liberal democracy and politics | 5 Comments

The Mandelson Debacle – some implications

By Paul Reynolds | Sat 25th April 2026 - 12:29 pm

How did His Majesty’s Government get itself in such an integrity-destroying tangle over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Ambassador to the USA? The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, 10 Downing Street, Cabinet Office, Security Services and the senior Civil Service have all faced serious potential reputational damage. What’s at the root of this?

Flashback to the late 1970s and early 1980s. To an extent the early 1970s was the heyday of Soviet Socialism. There was much admiration of the Soviet system even among the British middle classes, albeit more in theory than in practice. At my university there were several active political groups; the Revolutionary Workers Party, the Revolutionary Workers and Trotskyists, the Spartacist League, and the Communists, with the Labour group dominated by Militant. There was a small Tory contingent (mostly engineering students) and three Liberals.

The Labour leadership, including PM Callaghan, struggled with limited success to keep the party mainstream and less ‘ideologically left’. Thatcher countered successfully with a quasi-ideological ‘free market/small government’ approach in 1979, appealing to working class ‘cloth cap-italists’. Notwithstanding, the leftward drift of Labour continued and the leftist Michael Foot became leader, badly losing the 1983 election. Neil Kinnock replaced him and, blaming the far left for the defeat, took on the radicals. The infighting crippled the party and they lost the 1987 and 1992 elections (with much help from the right wing anti-Labour media).

Two years after Thatcher was elected, the Labour Party divided between those who wanted to stay and attempt to seek power without the left, and those that saw Labour as unreformable. The latter formed the SDP (later merging with the Liberals) and the former seeing future Labour success in recognising the power of big business and media moguls

Peter Mandelson was the exemplifier of the ‘recognise where power lies’ approach. He had seemingly agreed to join the SDP (he handled my national publicity when I was elected as a Liberal Councillor in Lambeth) but in the end decided to stay with Labour and implement the ‘power-realism’ approach. On the night of my election, at a party in Albert Square, out came his now famous Black Book and he almost ‘instructed’ editors and journalists to write up the story ‘along the lines suggested’. Mandelson was very effective indeed. He appeared to know every journalist, editor, and media owner in the UK (and their foibles), and could apparently make or break careers.

This approach formed part of the idea that if Labour didn’t get cosy with the media bosses, and big business and finance behind them, they would never enjoy power again.

Not all Labour moderates agreed, but Mandelson and colleagues had a logical ace up their sleeve. If Labour were out of power permanently, they couldn’t do anything for the poor or “working people”. Being close the big business meant that they could at least do something, and something is better than nothing.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged business and political party funding | 9 Comments

The Importance of ‘Red Sea Jigsaw Puzzle’ (Part 2)

By Paul Reynolds | Sat 10th January 2026 - 12:58 pm

Source: Horn of Africa Simple Map

Part 1 was published yesterday.

DJIBOUTI

This small but strategic former French colony sits at the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, overlooking the narrow Straights of Mandeb. It is famously home to a port serving Ethiopia and hosting the huge multi-agency Camp Lemonnier base for the US and in part the UK, with 4000 staff. However over the last 15 years Chinese companies have dominated and they also have a large Red Sea military base there, a short drive from Lemonnier, allegedly staffing up to 10,000 personnel.

Proposals for a bridge between Djibouti and Yemen, enriching this poverty-stricken area, have been many times scuppered by conflict. The Chinese take over of port facilities prompted DP World (Dubai, UAE) to develop the Berbera port in Somaliland, and potentially the small Bosaso Port in Puntland.

SOMALIA

After achieving independence in 1960 from Britain (Somaliland) and Italy (Puntland, South-Central Somalia), Somalia has been riven with conflict, especially since the collapse of the ‘unified’ government in 1991. There has been no stable government since, although Somaliland has been somewhat less in turmoil. A local movement emerged to settle local disputes, the Islamic Courts Union, but after 9/11 in the US this was seen as problematic.

With Western encouragement Ethiopia invaded in 2006, but were repelled in 2009 by a nationalist tribal movement, Al Shabab, which still controls much of ‘South-Central’ today, despite monthly US bombing. Right wing factions in the US have lobbied for recognition of Somaliland after 2009, but this came to nothing until December 2025 when Israel recognised Somaliland as a separate country, gaining a series of beneficial concessions. This had added to tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with the latter ‘less enthusiastic’ about such recognition, notably concerned about the possibility of Israeli bases both at the north and south ends of the Red Sea, inter alia.

ETHIOPIA

Apart from the Afar and Somalia regions in the East, Ethiopia is a landlocked, fertile, mountainous country, reliant on Djibouti for external trade. The country is divided into regions based on different ethnicities and their languages, which has led to ethnic-based internal conflict in the post-Italian-colonial-era, hindering development. Nearly two thirds are either Omoro or Amhara. One in eight Ethiopians is either Tigrayan or Somalian with affiliations to Eritrea and Somalia respectively.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged djibouti, ethiopia, libya and somalia | 3 Comments

The Importance of ‘Red Sea Jigsaw Puzzle’ (Part 1)

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 9th January 2026 - 4:50 pm

Source: Horn of Africa Simple Map

While foreign policy circles in London are focused on Ukraine, the Middle East/Iran and now Venezuela, as well as the dramatic new US National Security Strategy, a set of interconnected lower key conflicts around the Red Sea are escalating. This has global ramifications, especially in relation to the two Red Sea ‘pinch points’ for Europe; the Suez Canal and the Straights of Mandeb.

These conflicts involve Saudi Arabia, UAE, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Turkey, Israel, Yemen, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya … and Eastern and Western land gateways to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eritrea, south sudan, sudan, turkiye and yemen | 3 Comments

Economic growth – simple but not easy. Reform summary

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 21st November 2025 - 1:08 pm

In a recent 3-part series (part 1, part 2, part 3) I set out some remarks about the pursuit of ‘beneficial economic growth’, and why it needs to be systematic, rather than tokenistic or riddled with ‘solutions looking for problems’. Below is a summary.

‘The economy’ is still the No1 policy concern of the general public, and it was the central ‘cure all’ of the current Labour government when it was elected. The government did not, however, set out its approach systematically, or tell us ‘how’, thus leaving everything to hard-pressed civil servants. The coming dire budget is but one consequence.

QUALITY OF GROWTH

Economic policy throughout government should focus on the quality of growth, not just the quantity. Key quality attributes include fiscal, environmental and social sustainability.

DYSFUNCTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Economic regulation and promotion is spread across government, and can be harmfully contradictory and dysfunctional. The institutional set up for orchestrating beneficial growth aims, is confusing, and ineffective. The interdependence of reforms seems not to be taken into account. There are many lessons from overseas.

CONCENTRATED FINANCE AND FINANCIALISATION

Investment banks, banks and non-bank-financial institutions, should be providing services to businesses, which should be the master not the servant of finance. Extreme concentration in international finance (eg via index funds) has led to excessive financialisation, opaque cartelisation, and systemic risks. De-monopolisation and reforms to transparency and capital market rules, are the main remedies.

SCLEROTIC STATE

Few in the UK would disagree that the UK state is sclerotic. But why so ? Excessive secrecy and a lack of transparency and accountability is one factor. The major hidden culprits are … excessive contracting out, appalling procurement practices and lawful conflicts of interest. Coupled with the culture of ‘generalism’ in government and obsessive ‘commercial confidentiality’, this is catastrophic. Transparency, and major changes in the parliamentary supervision of governmental employees/departments, with more accountable value-for-money criteria, are the first reform steps.

LAND AVAILABILITY

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economic growth | 4 Comments

Economic growth – simple but not easy, part 3

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 18th November 2025 - 12:31 pm

This article concludes a three-part series on what the UK needs to do to manage ‘beneficial growth’ policy across government. This article briefly considers examples in banking, trade, commercial law and infrastructure.

De Jure Monopoly Banking – ‘Never a lender or borrower be’

A purposefully restrictive banking sector, dogged by regulatory capture, has done much to inhibit the UK economy. The monopolistic sector structure was designed to create high profitability and crisis resilience in the UK banking sector; but the 2008 crash did not change this justification! In effect the sector’s self-governed, cartelised approach, with multiple regulators, failed. Instead of reform, a permissive approach to ‘accounting tricks’ transpired. The remedies proved to be very profitable.

The sector thus remains largely unreformed. The dysfunctional UK banking sector has relatively few banks, absence of specialist banks, and weird over-extended anti-customer rules. The UK suffers unresponsive services, instability, lack of competition, and reliance on the taxpayer as a last resort. Over-dependence on derivatives and property lending means they hardly ever lend for real-world business development. Remedies include more effective prudential regulation, and a raft of measures to increase competition; for example, a regulatory path from small (eg credit unions) to large, among many steps to eliminate the protections afforded the big banks from smaller competitors.

Trade policy, promotion and facilitation – ‘The expert manufacture of bottlenecks’

There are three critical problems in UK trade policy. First, post-Brexit, the UK is notoriously bad at matching UK tariff demands with evolving strengths and weaknesses in the UK economy.

Second, the UK system of business promotion globally is amateurish compared to (for example), Japan, South Korea, Finland or the USA. Japanese sectoral development associations, global technology organisations such as JETRO, and the role of METI in supporting overseas manufacturing, are worth copying.

Third, trade facilitation within the UK is sclerotic. Consider international freight rail transport from London Gateway to the North, or the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Hull route, (and the permanent gridlock in S.E. Kent). The aims of trade reforms can be clearly stated.

Commercial Law – ‘Labyrinthine and outdated’

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economic growth | 7 Comments

Economic growth – simple but not easy, Part 2

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 14th November 2025 - 4:20 pm

The Labour government still has ‘economic growth’ as its cure-all remedy in the lead up to the Budget. However, without any systematic, coherent approach, expectations are low. What should the UK actually do ?

In Part 1, I argued that it was necessary to start from key principles; defining growth and where it comes from, and scoping out the landscape (and boundaries) for beneficial economic growth; at least to help all the relevant people know what is to be achieved. Part 1 also touched upon the ‘headline’ economic problems to be tackled, and institutional obstacles to be overcome.

In Parts 2 and 3 the aim is to comment on a few of the ‘levers for achieving growth’, starting with the two main inhibitors to growth, concentrated finance and its link to monopoly, and a sclerotic state.

CONCENTRATED FINANCE – ‘Make financial services, services again’

In the UK expressions like ‘capital markets’ and ‘institutional investors’ mask the extent to which control of the finance sector is concentrated in a few hands (eg Index Funds). Share prices rise due to manipulations such share buybacks rather than performance, creating vulnerabilities and systemic risks. De jure monopoly, and private cartelisation amongst supposedly arms-length investors are designed to keep share prices rising at all costs. Such institutions have become the masters not servants of productive businesses. A range of complex measures are required to address cartelisation, and shift power back to ‘real businesses with long term plans’. That is, if these towering financial institutions do not collapse first.

SCLEROTIC STATE – ‘Parkinson’s Laws are Euphemisms’

In the UK over recent decades the path to riches is no longer seen as providing innovative goods or services that people want to buy. It is getting an extendable profitable government contract, or a favourable regulatory change, where the ‘client’ is none too bothered about the detail, or even concerned about value for (someone else’s) money. The ‘reach’ of the state has gone beyond critical mass, fuelled by conflicts-of-interest. Culturally, in the UK, on the political right and left, it has become unfashionable to demand accountability and transparency, especially in procurement, regulatory and civil servant integrity matters.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economic growth and economy | 14 Comments

Economic growth – simple but not easy. Part 1.

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 5th November 2025 - 1:33 pm

For decades the current governing party in the UK seems to have assumed that economic growth comes from the blunt instrument of government borrowing and spending. But as state debt has approached 100% of GDP, they have had to think beyond that. Unfortunately, this has not amounted to much, with ideological barriers and lack of experience among decision-makers hindering reforms. Labour tend to resort to photogenic one-off remedies, which may or may not ultimately contribute to any beneficial growth; a heavily subsidised weapons deal, a fantasy ‘new-town’, or a trade deal of exaggerated benefit.

Economic growth is not quite as easy as that, although scoping out required reforms is relatively simple.

To be effective the government instead needs to state its considered position on where it thinks growth comes from, and what hinders it. In addition there is the question of what type of growth is being pursued; surely not all growth is good, especially growth that is not environmentally sustainable, nor fiscally or socially sustainable.

Improving the ‘quality of growth’ sits, strategically, alongside the quest for aggregate higher growth. Environmentally sustainable growth must include the implementation of the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Fiscal sustainability means growth should not be generated through unsustainable debt. Social sustainability means growth that is not captured by a plutocratic elite, leaving everyone else behind, or even poorer.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economic growth and economy | 13 Comments

The Political Opportunity of UK Industrial Policy

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 13th October 2025 - 2:30 pm

The Starmer Government appears desperate for economic growth, positioning it, almost Chinese style, as a source of political legitimacy.

Where does economic growth come from ? What policy tools are used around the world to achieve it ?

In the UK political parties tend to focus on fiscal policy or macroeconomics; both more of a facilitator (or a hindrance?) than generator of growth.

Beyond that, the left of centre, when not criticising growth per se, tend to focus on ‘industrial policy/strategy’ by which they usually mean interventionist state subsidy (ie ‘picking winners’) , full/partial state ownership (ie ‘partnerships’) , ‘more regulation’, or protectionism.

The right of centre, by contrast tend to focus in theory, though not always in practise, on the functioning of markets; typically expressed from the perspective of arms-length passive investors interested in purchasing assets, private or state. The right often assume that a focus on markets necessitates a reduction in the quantity of economic regulation, however that might be measured, rather than de-monopolisation.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged industrial policy | 15 Comments

‘The future’s bright’ – be wary of futurology

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 7th October 2025 - 11:54 am

Embed from Getty Images

The Soviet politburo member stands on a high pedestal above the vast crowd. ‘In the future’ he says ’there will be no hunger. In the future you will be able to eat as much as you wish’; adding ‘Vast state farms will provide for your needs, and science will bring us new foods’. He waved at the sea of flags.

In Post-War USSR there were continuing food shortages, mostly due to the abolition of ‘politically threatening’ collective farms, in favour of larger state mega-farms. Those new state farms were catastrophically unproductive. ‘Artificial food’ factories stayed experimental.

I heard similar messianic speeches when I worked in an unreformed Belarus in the 1990s for President Lukashenka and Piotr Kapitula. They had a strangely familiar ring… Why tackle the nitty-gritty problems of the agriculture sector when you can paint a picture of a coming nirvana and plenty, subduing the ‘impatient’ masses.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Digital ID cards, Soviet Union and USSR | 8 Comments

Understanding the Syria conflicts 2

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 13th December 2024 - 1:07 pm

Although they cannot be condoned, public executions of former Syrian secret police in Damascus, Latakia and elsewhere in Syria, following the new HTS-led government, are not exactly unexpected.

When Hafez Assad came to power with the support of the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Moscow helped the new regime set up the brutal, hated Mukhabarat secret police. The Mukhabarat , led mostly by Alawites, were known not only for mass torture and ‘disappearances’ to keep Hafez Assad in power, they also had their tentacles all over the Syrian military and economy, deploying widespread ‘confiscations’. His son Bashar Assad, reportedly considered reigning in the Mukhabarat for economic reasons, but had little chance to succeed. He became dependent on the Mukhabarat to stay in power, who increased their murderous, torturing spree under his rule, and further alienated the population.

Saddam’s equally murderous and hated Mukhabarat in Iraq was also developed with Soviet assistance, as were the internal terror institutions of Algeria, set up under Chairman Boumédiène.

I am intimately acquainted with these three Soviet-initiated security institutions myself, having been arrested and imprisoned pending execution in the Algerian garrison town of Blida at the age of 19, having been dragged from my car and cuffed by the Syrian Mukhabarat on the Jordanian border for no apparent reason in the 1990s, and having shockingly located the hidden Iraqi Mukhabarat torture HQ in Basra, after giving chase with my Close Protection Team, in 2003.

Hatred of the Mukhabarat helped fuel the genuine ‘Arab Spring’ Syrian uprising from 2011, but as with the Tahir Square uprising in Egypt, and revolts in Tunisia and Libya, the young, sometimes EU-facing pro-democracy ‘moderns’ were soon swept away by the more grounded Islamists. In Egypt the Brotherhood were appreciated amongst the poor for their social support.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged syria | 2 Comments

Understanding the Syria conflicts

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 11th December 2024 - 9:50 am

As in many parts of the world, history is very much a political weapon in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is difficult to assess conflicts in Syria (and the British/Western interest) for this reason, especially for politicians unversed in the labyrinthine machinations of post-Sykes-Picot Syria and the Levant. Every phrase uttered is ‘controversial’.

There is much to be understood about the ancient past of the area, especially in relation to territorial claims and counter-claims made by different ethnic and religious factions today (..of widely-varying historical or archaeological solidity). These claims fog up the search for ‘academic’ historical understanding. The Eastern Med is identity politics on steroids.

However, relevant modern Syrian history begins not so much with the much-touted 1916 Sykes Picot agreement per se, but with a series of related international agreements established between 1915 and 1923, initiated primarily after the start of WW1 due to the anticipated fall of the Ottoman Empire. These involved the UK, France, Russia, Turkiye, Armenia … and Arab & Kurdish groups who had opposed the ruling Ottoman Empire.

Syria’s borders today do reflect these international negotiations. Local ethnically Arab, Kurd and other populations had limited influence. There was a reluctance in the major-power negotiations to establish countries or administrative regions based on ethnicity or religion, and a key result of that was the absence of a ‘Kurdish’ state, and the consolidation of several Arab states of mixed ethnic make up, and of varying denominations of the mostly Abrahamic religions.

These divisions were utilised after WW2 by the Soviets, with their anti-colonial narratives in the Cold War period. Recognising the history, they sought a ‘strong leader’ (in the colonial tradition) to hold all the Syrian groups together, by force or otherwise, who was not a member of one of the major dominant groups. In the early 1960s they cultivated a notable Alawite family, conveniently based in a Northern coastal area. By 1963 the brutal Ba’athist Hafez al-Assad, the future president, was already the primary power behind the scenes. He had received pilot training in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged syria | 6 Comments

Fixing Britain ?

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 25th September 2024 - 8:26 am

There has been a flurry of books published recently, on the subject of ‘broken Britain’.

Some look at the big picture of why ‘nothing seems to work’, like ‘Great Britain?’ by Torsten Bell, and ‘Failed State’ by Sam Freedman (featured at a Liberal Reform fringe at Conference). Others address more specific problems, like ‘Bad Buying’ by Peter Smith or ‘Fixing Broken Britain’ by Alun Drake. There are some scandal-specific books too which draw broader conclusions, like ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’ by Nick Wallis, ‘Death in the Blood’ by Caroline Wheeler, and ‘The Rise & Fall of DfID’ by Mark Lowcock & Ranil Dissanayake.

It is not just specific sectors like health, economics , transport, housing/planning, and education where astonishing dysfunction has been exposed. There has also been much emphasis on institutional problems; the turbid executive function, extreme centralisation, opaque administration, systematised ‘corruption’, absent civil servant competences, catastrophic procurement practices, a permissive approach to monopoly … and much more.

Most concerning perhaps at a time of severe financial constraints is the breathtaking neglect of value-for-money in governmental spending which all these books highlight; where lobbying and ‘generating the big juicy contract’ seem to dominate administrative behaviour too often.

Will Parliament enthusiastically set about addressing the problems set out in these books? Judging by the policy clumsiness of the Labour government, and the cynical anti-immigrant obsessions of the Conservative Party and Reform, this seems depressingly unlikely.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged broken britain, policy making and problem solving | 12 Comments

What should we make of the increasing rate of government scandals ?

By Paul Reynolds | Sun 26th May 2024 - 1:55 pm

Scandals. Lots of them.

The sub-postmaster scandal. The contaminated blood scandal. The DWP carer scandal. The continuing Windrush scandal, The Grenfell prosecutions scandal. The HS2 costs debacle.

There are others not so much in the headlines.

The scandal of unused border facilities post-Brexit. The long list of NHS IT scandals. The TFL and rail contract scandals. Regulation of Thames Water. The Crown Court backlog scandal. The GP appointments and finances scandal. There are dozens more; most the public doesn’t get to hear about..

But the general public is the victim, and the general public knows it.

There is also an extensive list of decades-long astonishing military procurement scandals, that have weakened our defences; Scout/Ajax, al-Yamamah, Warrior CSP, £8bn aircraft carrier problems, and the £100bn+ Dreadnought submarines. Billions and billions wasted. When money is short.

Any scan through the NAO and Public Accounts Committee archives show not only an accelerated rate of major government scandals, but that the public harm from them is increasing.

Are all the problems scandal-specific or is there something wider underlying the problems ?

Here’s an analogy. Your football team goes a whole season without a win. The supposed causes are all match-specific; that missed penalty, your player wrongly sent off, the substitution mistake, the goalkeeper injured… Wouldn’t you find it odd if deeper, season-wide issues are never raised ? Well, that’s where we are in the UK with government scandals.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged political culture, regulation and scandals | 8 Comments

Ukraine: are we absolutely sure we want a wider war? Part II

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 9th April 2024 - 4:32 pm

Embed from Getty Images
It has become quite mainstream now to portray Russia as an evil regime, about to invade Western Europe, that needs to be defeated at any cost (i.e. nuclear war … even though some such advocates don’t understand that implication). Until recently this was seen as a fringe conspiracy theory.

Sure, Russia has a pretty appalling power structure with a lawless mafia-ised system clustered around the Presidency, with it’s tentacles around Europe, Mid East and Africa. It is also technologically advanced, especially in military and space spheres, and has vast natural resources, managed centrally. Russia is not Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. It is formidable, and limiting its ‘ethnic Russians’ propagandised mischief-making, (eg Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Donbass and the Baltic States), without getting to a counterproductive World War, requires a sophisticated carrot-and-stick approach.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged neocons, russia and Ukraine war | 34 Comments

Ukraine; are we absolutely sure we want a wider war?

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 8th April 2024 - 4:25 pm

In war it is good to remember two bits of age-old wisdom, if unnecessary deaths are to be avoided; ‘know your enemy’ and ‘don’t believe your own propaganda’.

Ignoring these two adages led to the West’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, and Western-led conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Saharan Africa and Yemen, which have all been catastrophic for Western interests.

We now have a parallel in Ukraine.

As I wrote in LDV on 11th Feb 2023:

In April Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said ‘We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine’ and ‘Ukraine clearly believes that it can win, and so does everyone here’. At the end of the previous month the US President called for the removal of President Putin from power.

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged ukraine | 23 Comments

Rivers of Blood Mark II

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 5th October 2023 - 11:12 am

There has been a lot of publicity this week about Tory factionalising and Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s apparent positioning for the party leadership, after the Tories’ expected 2024 GE loss of power.

However, there has been a lot of muddle in the media about which faction proposes what and why. What is really going on ? Clearly if Braverman’s far right platform is to be opposed, what exactly are we opposing ?

The start point is to remember that the jostling of Tory MPs is missing the point. The competition is between different sets of interests, which MPs attach themselves to in order to advance politically. Each set of interests has their own narrative (sincere or not) as to why the UK is seemingly in steep decline and why the Tories are currently unpopular.

There is a group of interests that broadly revolve around international finance, the City and global investment groups. They support privileges for investment banks and are unfussed about monopolies, or high state debt. Sunak vaguely might be placed here.

There is a Thatcherite free market group supported by industry and commercial interests; many being victims of monopoly and fiscal problems. Folks might put Liz Truss in this group.

There is a small military-orientated group, and a small social libertarian group which are both rather limp politically.

Braverman is closer to the expanding Neo-Conservative group, supported by think tanks in Washington DC. They are unfussed about BOTH markets and monopoly finance, sanguine about fiscal risks, and are supported by groups linked to global wars of choice, and by US/UK armaments interests. It is funded via opaque donation intermediaries (although leaks have shed light on the actual international donors).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged conservatives and suella braverman | 2 Comments

Economic crisis: problems and remedies

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 12th September 2023 - 8:26 am

There’s an economic crisis underway. Several policy motions at Lib Dem Autumn Conference make reference to economic problems. The government’s current industrial strategy (‘Plan for Growth’) runs to 112 pages and reads more like an argument against reform rather than for it; perhaps fearful of being accused by the tabloids of ‘talking down Brexit Britain’ .

UK economic problems are deep-rooted; some even hundreds of years old. Political parties of course share the blame but that’s only a small part of the story. Perceptions of problems and remedies have changed over the many decades, independent of political oscillations. But we will need clarity and deep thinking beyond political partisanship to extricate ourselves.

The symptoms are all around us. Disposable income is collapsing as mortgage payments, rents, energy, food prices, and now taxes, are all rising. Credit card debt is accelerating. Investment is in serious decline; since 2019 British businesses have invested less, as a percentage of GDP, than any other major economy. The Bank of England forecasts that business investment will further fall by around 2 per cent in 2024. By most measures GDP performance is the worst in the G7. UK debt sustainability is worsening. Debt service is set to exceed total NHS spending within three years. Tax revenues are just a third of GDP, and only half the population pay income tax.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged bank of england, banks and gdp | 30 Comments

Accelerating economic decline and the political long game

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 2nd August 2023 - 12:58 pm

Conservatives of all shades seem resigned to being in opposition after the next General Election. Apart from minimising losses by trying to trip up Kier Starmer, what is the strategy ? What are they thinking about the future, and are there any useful potential implications for other parties ?

The idea gaining traction amongst some senior Conservatives is that, since the economic fundamentals are so bad, conditions for almost all of the population will continue to deteriorate during 2024 and 2025.

Therefore it is better to get Starmer and the Labour Party into government as early as politically possible. The logic goes that after six months or so, high expectations of a Labour government will lead to disappointment, and Labour will start to be blamed … initially for not reversing the decline, but then gradually for the decline itself.

Adding to this idea amongst some Conservatives is the view that a Starmer-led Labour Government, boxed in by right wing authoritarian factions, public sector trade unions, Corbyn supporters, and ‘internationalised’ donors, is not in a position by itself to work out how to manage the continuing decline, let alone reverse it. This will result in a Starmer government relying heavily on Treasury and Bank of England officials to handle the worsening crisis; the same folk who have brought the UK to this point in the first place, it is claimed.

Therefore, the view goes, the scene is set for a new and refreshed Conservative Party back in government soon. This seems to be the leading Tory ‘long game’ strategy; by the time the next election comes along three to five years from now the public will be blaming the new 2024 government.

This strategy is clearly predicated on three main things.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged conservatives, general election 2024 and labour | 9 Comments

Iraq – 20 years on. A personal story.

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 23rd March 2023 - 11:55 am

In early 2003 I was in Sierra Leone working on post-war reforms and rebel disarmament. I was running past the run-down Russian UN helicopters on Lumley beach when I received the call.

It was already known that British Forces had attempted to find a way to appoint the first regional government; in Basra, one of the four UK-controlled Iraqi governorates. By agreement with the US, the UK had been tasked with finding a model. They were looking for someone ‘reckless’ with relevant experience. Folks knew I was against the war, but the final make-or-break question from the official was ‘you’re not a bloomin’ tree hugger are you?’.

Following bio-weapons training, my first interaction was my car being attacked by stone-throwing teenagers after I crossed the border from Kuwait. There was a lot of audible gunfire, and on the main roads there were still uncollected bodies littering the way.

Saddam’s gaudy riverside palace had been looted and all the marble floors were deep in broken glass. There was no power at first. It was 51 degrees, down to 42 by 3am. Water was scarce. Catching a breeze on the roof at nighttimes was noisy, with explosive flashes and gunfire sweeping across the city below.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged international and iraq | 4 Comments

War in Europe and the role of the UK

By Paul Reynolds | Sat 11th February 2023 - 1:56 pm

The Big Lie of the Russian position regarding the war in Ukraine is that they had no choice than to invade. They did have choices, and furthermore they should see the events of 2014 onwards in Ukraine as a Russian policy failure, rather pleading mere victimhood. The harsh reality is that all deaths in the war were and are avoidable.

This is Step One in the doctrine of ‘know your enemy’. But to go beyond Step One it is necessary to reject the Western Big Lie; that the war was unprovoked. The ‘retail’ position of the UK is that Russia invaded because Putin, and the Russian government, are irrational and mad. This is quite the opposite of ‘know your enemy’, and an attempt to mask the role of US neo-conservatives in Ukraine, especially since 2014. This is the same group of individuals behind the 2003 Iraq war, the extended war in Afghanistan, Western involvement in the Syria, Somalia and Libya conflicts, and other adventures. They all resulted in relatively negative net outcomes for the US, UK and Western Allies.

The UK position for the public domain is however understandable in times of war; to show resolve and maintain public support. The point made is that Russia must be removed from all de-jure Ukrainian territory, President Putin must step down, and all efforts covert and overt, kinetic and cyber must be made to bring this about. Weapon supplies must be stepped up to support the ‘regime change’ doctrine that Russia will eventually be comprehensively defeated. Few might fully realise that this is likely unachievable without nuclear war.

For UK parliamentarians and political parties, the future path of the war may require ‘heads above the parapet’, the absence of which resulted in the Afghan war dragging on for at least 15 years longer than necessary. At least the UK Liberal Democrats objected to the Iraq war project.

However, there are two reasons why the UK position on Ukraine is very difficult for UK parliamentarians.

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged ukraine | 41 Comments

Improving the quality of democracy is not just about proportional representation

By Paul Reynolds | Tue 10th January 2023 - 10:24 am

Of all the major ‘-isms’ that pervade our politics in the UK, democracy (or ‘democratism’ if you prefer) is perhaps the least written about. That may at last be about to change.

It is perhaps mostly taken for granted in UK political discourse that democracy is ‘A Good Thing’. Today, only the very brave would argue publicly that democracy is ‘A Bad Thing’ per se.

Defenders of UK-style democracy however have to gloss over aspects of the political system. These include the constitutional monarchy and the broader role of the Royal Prerogative, the unelected House of Lords, and tight executive control of parliament. They do rather mute the UK’s moral high ground when promoting democracy abroad.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged democracy and proportional representation | 30 Comments

In praise of precision in UK public policy

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 16th December 2022 - 11:57 am

The United Kingdom faces a series of interwoven crises simultaneously; double-digit inflation, among the highest domestic energy prices in the world, rising tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade with its major trading partner, an ineffective over-centralised bureaucracy, obsessed with contracting everything out, (which makes problem-solving and public investment very difficult to implement), and low skill levels and investment in R&D.

The result is deep-rooted, seemingly inexorable, decline. The aggregated remedies of the last two decades seem to have run out of road; QE, low interest rates, and debt-funded economic stimulae. Quality of life is noticeably on the slide. The latest country to surpass the UK in a wide range of social and economic measures, is Slovenia.

It may be that the UK political-administrative system is not capable of addressing the underlying problems. The main political parties appear to have degenerated into competition over short term populism and media manipulation, unable to overcome the layers of bureaucratic complexity and competing interests.

The country would beat a path to the door of any political movement that has a sincere and credible definition of problems, obstacles and causes, and how to overcome them.

One of the many reasons why political movements in the UK don’t get off the starting blocks here, is because their pursuit of public policy is littered with imprecise concepts. Shorthand terms for complex ideas are necessary in common parlance, but fatal for public policy. They can end up with policymakers trying to solve the wrong problem entirely.

Such terms include austerity, privatisation, sovereignty, over/under regulation, sustainability, debt, investment, infrastructure,

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged public policy | 8 Comments

Labour Party constitutional reform proposals

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 7th December 2022 - 9:47 am

This week Keir Starmer launched a report for consultation entitled ‘A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy’. It is admirably full of attitude survey results, international comparisons, and north-south contrasts.

The report has a solid narrative and an overall theme, and in this sense can be said to have a certain amount of clarity of purpose.

The emphasis is on what some might call ‘the real economy’ – industry and commerce, and small businesses, and social deprivation resulting from declining economic activity, especially outside London and the SE.

The ‘problem’ which the report focuses on addressing is a serious collapse in trust in the UK political and administrative system; which gets worse the further people are from London. It blames this not only on accelerated regional economic decline, but also on a corrupt and over-centralised governance system, where development and infrastructure proposals from areas distant from London, sit for decades at the bottom of the pile in Whitehall. These conclusions have seemingly emerged in part from Labour mayors, and other government decentralisation processes around the UK over the last decade, where Labour leads. Rising Scottish and Welsh nationalism are also blamed in part on fiscal over-centralisation and mutual disdain with London.

The proposed remedies reflect the definition of the problem; greater participation of regions and nations in central decision-making (including a new second chamber of regions/nations to replace the House of Lords), moving central government civil servants out of London, and limited devolution of transport, employment support, and economic development spending decisions. One has to assume that the absence of basic detail behind the remedies means that they are still being worked through, (under cover of the report being ‘for consultation’; all the relevant consultees having already been consulted, it seems).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, keir starmer and labour | 13 Comments

Economic growth in 2022 – root of all evil or economic nirvana?

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 21st November 2022 - 1:04 pm

Since the summer of 2016 the concept of economic growth has been less prominent in UK political discourse, until now. The objectives of the constitutional changes in 2016, involved a greater emphasis on nationalism, judicial independence, EU-independent trade policy and reductions in immigration – all at the expense of economic growth as a core aim. The Home Office became ‘top dog’ in the UK administrative system, displacing the Treasury. Although not expressly stated, ‘managed decline’ became an implicit civil service aim, not seen since the 1970s.

Perversely, it was anti-EU factions in the Conservative Party that brought economic growth onto …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged economic growth and sustainability | 14 Comments

An Afghanistan catastrophe Part 2 (of 2)

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 25th August 2021 - 8:25 am

In Part One, I offered a view of why and when the occupation of Afghanistan failed. In Part Two, I explore the future implications.

The first shorter term problem is the evacuation.

It could be used as pretext to keep a contingent of special forces in the country, and keep the conflict going. Liberal Democrats have emphasised the need for a land corridor from Kabul to Pakistan, but this would require negotiation with the Talebs, as yet absent.

A further dimension to this is the wave of Western media stories about ISIS and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite scant evidence on the latter, and formal ‘Western’ reports dismissing scare stories on the former.

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged afghanistan and liberal interventionism | 8 Comments

An Afghanistan catastrophe, Part 1 (of 2)

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 23rd August 2021 - 3:23 pm

It is tempting for UK political figures unfamiliar with the wars in Afghanistan, to view recent events as a ‘surprise loss for the West’ that is ‘all the fault of President Biden’. Neither is true. I will attempt a summary.

The war was ‘lost’ many years ago. Talebs and other insurgents controlled a majority of the country after the first five years. By the end of 2009 ICOS (Western-funded) reported that the Talebs had a controlling presence in 97% of the country, and had de facto control of Districts representing almost two thirds of territory.

Certainly when I first arrived in 2008 the Talebs controlled the road from central Kabul and the Compound to the airport, requiring a dangerous circuitous route. Driving to Jalalabad or Kandahar, there were Taleb road blocks, some taking ‘fees’. The game was already over. Why?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged afghanistan and nation building | 3 Comments

Myanmar’s simmering civil war – and the UK’s moral duty

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 17th June 2021 - 2:06 pm

Following the coup d’etat in Myanmar on Feb 1st this year, the ‘Tatmadaw’ military have killed more than 860 civilians and imprisoned more than 6000 people. Random bombings of civilians, burning villages and killing protestors, have made a full scale civil war likely. The de facto leader of Myanmar is now the brutal General Min Aung Hlaing, the Chairman of the State Administration Council.

The coup ended 5 years of ‘democratic’ governance. This period followed 53 years of military rule, which began in coup in 1962. Myanmar (Burma) was part of British India before 1948.

The colonial past is one reason why the UK has a duty to help. More specifically, the flawed legacy of the British contributed to 7 decades of conflict. After the 1962 coup, the oil and gas sector was nationalised, and oil & gas majors such as Anglo-Dutch Shell and British Gas, with the support of the British Government, have been intimately involved.

The UK can thus have major positive role to play.

Reducing violence, and preparing for the consequences from full civil war, necessitate understanding, however.

Two thirds of the population in Myanmar are Burmese (Bamah). From independence, and as part of the British legacy, the government has had a system of ethnic control centred on the peripheral provinces. This led to armed resistance, ‘justifying’ military rule. There have been nine major conflicts; four still persist – involving Rakhine/Rohingya, Shan, Kachin, Kayin, and Mon. Citizens have an ethnic designation written on their ID cards. The exception is the mainly Muslim Rohingya, who do not receive ID cards, on the grounds they are ‘foreigners’.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Myanmar | 2 Comments

Britain’s role in the world… of corruption

By Paul Reynolds | Mon 26th April 2021 - 9:15 am

Corruption is in the news again in the UK.

PPE contracts during the pandemic, the Greensill Capital scandal, and eye-watering local authority finance scandals, all serve to dent the historic public perception that politics and government in the UK is in the main ‘clean’.

In the early 1990s at a private lunch with senior civil servants I attended, one of them offered the view that the public’s perception of a broadly clean governance system in the UK, has been ‘the world’s most successful long-term government propaganda operation of all time’.

In my global project work, dealing with corruption at senior levels is just something you have to find a way of handling. Many times I have had to employ ‘forensic international accountants’ to trace missing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. It just goes with the territory. In some cases I have found corruption linked back to the UK; kickbacks for visas, a market for ‘blank’ British passports, kickbacks for projects and so on.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged corruption | 17 Comments

Open letter to the Foreign Secretary on global human rights

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 31st December 2020 - 5:17 pm

Embed from Getty Images

The Rt. Hon. Dominic Rennie Raab MP
First Secretary of State
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

Dear Foreign Secretary

Please accept my best wishes.

With the merger of the FCO and DfID in mind and the incorporation of development policy into your brief, I was encouraged by your statement in Parliament on July 7th 2020 which included the words:

‘As we forge a dynamic new vision for a truly global Britain, this Government are absolutely committed to the United Kingdom becoming an even stronger force for good in the world … on human rights, where we will defend media freedoms and protect freedom of religious belief; and, with the measures we are enacting and announcing today, hold to account the perpetrators of the worst human rights abuses.’

I wish to raise with you two examples where the UK has up to now supported EU efforts to impose sanctions and take other measures to apply pressure on ‘the perpetrators of the worst human rights abuses’ as you put it; Cambodia and Turkey.

As you will be aware the world’s longest-serving Prime Minister is Hun Sen of Cambodia, former member of the government of the genocidal Pol Pot regime. An international post-civil-war peace treaty in 1991, the ‘Paris Peace Accords’, set out a path to democracy, human rights and key freedoms, with UK support.

However, step-by-step Hun Sen consolidated power and eroded democracy and human rights provided for in the Accords, a process which accelerated after Hun Sen developed a close commercial relationship with Xi Jinping and his ministers in China. That is the same Xi Jinping that you condemned in an Oct 6th 2020 statement as committing ‘serious and egregious’ human right violations. The erosion of democracy and human rights in Cambodia was carefully documented by the United Nations Special Rapporteur.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged cambodia, dominic raab and turkey | 4 Comments