Embarrassing Spectacle Of New Labour’s Dotage
How old and tired and mentally incapable New Labour now looks.
Gone are the days when anyone thought that this was a party with a future, let alone a future connected with anything like the real world or a cross on a voter’s ballot paper.
We have the embarrassing spectacle of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary (admittedly an appalling public performer even when things might be considered to be going well, if anyone can remember those days) trying to pretend that it is full steam ahead with ID cards, when the message is that they are quietly being dumped as too much of an electoral liability to be associated with, as the time between now and the next election starts to look decidedly short.
Does this sound brave, like the orchestra playing on as the Titanic sank, or stupid?
For most people, New Labour and stupid are synonyms.
John Harris, in The Guardian, says this:
Insiders reckon the loss of Peter Hain has contributed to a change of weather. The zealous James Purnell has been given his head at the Department for Work and Pensions; Caroline Flint and Andy Burnham have been shoved up the ministerial rankings; good old Hazel Blears is reportedly joining them in pushing the PM rightwards. Their agenda boils down as follows: continue the pro-private sector and “choice”-driven approach to the public services, attempt to out-nasty the Tories on crime and immigration, maintain the idea that an emphasis on “aspiration” (or “ambition”) should sit at the heart of your armoury - and reject anything proposed by the unions or the Labour left as an old-fashioned irrelevance.
Caroline Flint, Caroline Flint, Caroline Flint? Why is the name utterly insignificant and yet oddly familiar?
Oh, yes, of course, she is the one who proposed that people living in council houses should have to sign contracts in which they would give their agreement to being evicted if they ever found themselves without jobs.
And now a fully-blown cabinet minister?
Does this mean that the rumours that Gordon Brown may appoint the dead General Pinochet and the un-dead Margaret Thatcher to his cabinet may be true? Along with Peter Lilley and that smart looking young man from the National Front whose name nobody can remember, but who makes Fascism look almost respectable?
These are exciting times for everyone, except New Labour.
They seem like a party of enfeebled inmates being wheeled out into the sunshine of the old people’s home (with the secret wing for holding the geriatric criminally insane) for an afternoon of gaga conversation in which nobody listens and nobody remembers. Then, as the light fades and the chilly wind of change blows, the nurses take them back inside; but the idiot inmates have all been fiddling with their bathchairs and one by one, the wheels fall off.
How funny to think that this was once a party which people thought had new ideas.
Nah! Same old New Labour. Same old Tories in disguise. Same old Nasty Party.
For another year or so, anyway.
wuhudo!
New Britain: Nation Of Shopkeepers And Bankrupt Billionaires
Hurrah! The people of New Britain are now bankers every one!
We all own a bank and can write cheques for whatever amount we want because it is our money and we own it!
Well, not quite.
Wonderful Gordon “Prudence” Brown and his puppet Darling of the Treasury have actually saddled almost every man, woman and child of this nation with a debt of £1000.
Yes, it sounds like Monopoly money and, of course, that is the way the bankers and politicians look at at when it gets to the level of squillions of squid. After all, they are hardly going to have to find that kind of money in the real world.
That job they leave, as always, to the ordinary taxpayer.
So, Northern Rock has now been nationalised. The choice of last resort.
The only saving grace is that we will not have the indignity of having high streets full of Virgin Banks, selling Virgin Mobiles and Virgin Atlantic flights and Virgin Cola and Virgin Condoms. We have been saved from the bilious spiv dream of Rodney Trotter in Only Fools and Horses.
So, does it feel as if you now have access to untold riches?
Or does it seem that your incompetent government has made yet another total and absolute mess of things and sold you a pup?
We had all better hope that there are no more runs on the banks as the recession starts to bite, otherwise we may all end up paying for their collapse for the rest of our lives.
Gordon Brown: your money unsafe in this man’s clunking iron fist.
Keep Eurozone Blair-Free
If you subscribe to the view that Tony Blair’s whole life has been nothing more than a desperate attempt to make people love him, it is, of course, both a monumental and abject failure.
Not in the sense of being a tragic, heroic struggle played out on a stage of vast scale, but just a petty waste of everybody’s time - and, of course, a great many lives lost in an attempt to bolster the mental instabilities of a fundamentally small and inconsequential person, suffering from simple delusions of grandeur.
The sigh of relief when Blair finally left office was only saved from being deafening by the fact that the process took so long that everyone had given up holding their breath.
Off he went to perform a non-job to perpetuate the pretence of being a statesman and then the overriding love of money appeared as if it would finally take over as expected. Everyone thought that the world would be a safer place if he and his cronies simply thrust their snouts in the trough and we could be rid of the spectacle of a grinning imbecile at the helm of anything more significant than a pedallo.
Then he saw the job of Emperor of Europe advertised and obviously, lacking any sense of his own catalogue of incapabilities and probably thinking that his mate God would want him to take the job, he starts making overtures to secure it, despite the fact that nobody else thinks he should be in charge of anything beyond an end of pier whelk stall.
In The Guardian, Malcolm Rifkind said this:
Ultimately, however, the question is whether Blair is the appropriate person to do the job. The answer to that has to be no. At the time of the Iraq war, he divided Europe in a way not seen for 40 years. His foolish decision to side so unequivocally with George W Bush has damaged his own credibility across Europe to such an extent that he would find it difficult to forge a consensus on political issues or to speak on Europe’s behalf.
Blair’s own political record on Europe is hardly covered in glory. He came to office promising to put Britain at the heart of Europe. He left office with Britain no closer to Europe’s heart that when he began.
Which pretty much covers the whole of Blair’s record in office: empty promises, spin, sound, fury and artificial nonsense. Except, of course, in the case of war, where his achievements in getting millions of people killed are beyond doubt, but where the purported aim of bringing about a better regime has been a total failure.
Despite the fact that the Blair legacy for New Britain is nothing but eroded freedoms and a government dominated by a class of avaricous idiot never before seen in politics, there are some chaps who are helping you to have your voice heard with regard to whether Blair should be allowed to play any part in Europe’s forthcoming top job.
Stop Blair! is brought to you by The European Tribune and you can sign a petition if you agree with what they have to say about the grinning tea-boy who got promoted way beyond his level of abilities, which is this:
We, European citizens of all origins and of all political persuasions, wish to express our total opposition to the nomination of Tony Blair to the Presidency of the European Council.
The Treaty of Lisbon provides for the new post of President of the European Council, to be elected by the Council for a mandate, renewable once only, of two and a half years. Under the terms of the Treaty: “The President of the European Council shall chair it and drive forward its work” and “shall ensure the preparation and continuity of the work of the European Council”. Further, “The President of the European Council shall, at his level and in that capacity, ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security policy”.
The future President of the European Council will therefore have a key role in determining the policies of the European Union and its relations with the rest of the world. This first Council Presidency will also have a major symbolic weight for both citizens of the European Union and for the image of the Union in the rest of the world. In this perspective, we believe it is essential that the first president embodies the spirit and values of the European project.
For some time now, increasingly insistent news reports have made evident a wish, in some quarters, to see Tony Blair appointed the first President of the European Council. This appointment, were it to take place, would be in total contradiction with the values professed by the European project.
In violation of international law, Tony Blair committed his country to a war in Iraq that a large majority of European citizens opposed. This war has claimed hundreds of thousands of victims and displaced millions of refugees. It has been a major factor in today’s profound destabilisation of the Middle East, and has weakened world security. In order to lead his country into war, Mr Blair made systematic use of fabricated evidence and the manipulation of information. His role in the Iraq war would weigh heavily on the image of the Union in the world, should he in fact be named its president.
The steps taken by Tony Blair’s government, and his complicity with the Bush administration in the illegal programme of “extraordinary renditions”, have led to an unprecedented decline in civil liberties. This is in contradiction with the terms of the European Convention of Human Rights, which is an integral part of the treaty.
The European Charter of Fundamental Rights formalises the founding values of the European project and is one of the pillars of the new treaty. Tony Blair fought its inclusion in the Treaty of Lisbon, and eventually managed to secure an exemption for the UK.
Rather than move European integration forward, the former British Prime Minister set a series of so-called red lines during the Lisbon negotiations, with the intent of blocking any progress in social issues and tax harmonisation, as well as common defence and foreign policy.
Furthermore, it seems unthinkable that the first President of the European Council should be the former head of a government that kept its country out of two key elements of the construction of Europe: the Schengen area of free movement of people and the Euro zone.
At a time when one of the priorities of the European institutions is to reconnect with its citizens, we believe it is essential that the President of the European Council should be a person with whom a majority of citizens can identify, rather than one rejected by a majority. Therefore, we declare our total opposition to this nomination.
- Treaty of Lisbon, Article 1, point 16, inserting Article 9 B into the Treaty on European Union, points 5 and 6 (2007/C 306/17, 18)
- Blair sets out EU treaty demands, BBC, June 2007
- Table 6 in FT/Harris poll, June 2007
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