Blair gone? Don’t believe it until you see his corpse dangling from a lamppost – or see him in the dock at Den Haag. But since he is making noises about finally resigning, might it be because he doesn’t want to be the first sitting prime minister to be indicted on corruption, for his part in the cash for honours scandal? Because surely he could count on his friends in the Metropolitian Police to tip him off once a charge is likely, yet still give him enough time to bollix up Labour’s chances in the upcoming election, to spite Gordon…
New Labour
Heh. Indeed.
Mass Killer: New Facts Emerge
“He blamed almost everyone except himself” – BBC News this morning.
Oh, and he liked posing with guns.
# posted by Ellis : 7:17 AM
Revenge of The Civil Service Cat-Lovers
Apparently the former head of the Civil Service has called Gordon Brown a Stalinist in the Financial Times. Oh dear, how very uncivil of him.
It’s revenge postponed, and personally I hink it all started when the Blairs got rid of Humphrey the Downing St. cat…
My efforts at political prediction are, like everybody’s, hit and miss. But even when my dire prognostications prove horribly right it’s still very satisfying. I predicted back in 2004 (good grief, is that 3 years ago already?) although I’d been saying it l since long before, that it would be the civil service that’d eventually finish New Labour and damned if that hasn’t come true.
One of the things that has fascinated me about New Labour in power has been their relationship with the civil service. It’s essentially been one of contempt; Blair and co swiftly installed their political apparatchiks in control of key departments, elbowing aside career civil servants and all pretence at impartial and effcient administration in favour of ‘sofa government’, decisions made on the fly, unminuted and unrecorded. HM Government swiftly became a loose amalgamation of incompetent call-centres run by loyal party droids with spreadsheets full of targets and no experience of management of any kind. You could if feeling particularly sardonic make an analogy with how the Republicans sent those Heritage Foundation kids to run the Iraq Provisional Coalition Authority; only with fewer rocket attacks and less jeebus and more tea, biscuits and equal opps policies.
They’ve pretty much managed to gut every department, from health to crime and even the legal system and judiciary. The government we had pre-97, imperfect though it undoubtedly was, at least creaked away with a semblance of impartiality and adherence to law, but New Labour have managed to break government and the social contract completely. The senior civil service cavilled privately, but went along with it mostly, despite uproar from lower-ranking civil servants’ and the civil service union, the PCS.
But then they messed with Sir Humphrey’s pension. Ooops.
“The attack on the convoy amounted to an assault. It was unlawful because there was no lawful reason for it and in that respect it was criminal.”
So said the coroner today at the inquest into Cpl Matty Hull’s death in the Iraqi desert at the hands of negligent US pilots.
Isn’t it handy for those pilots that this verdict can have absolutely no practical effect whatsoever?
The terms of the Blair government-negotiated US/UK extradition treaty allow the US government to extradite any UK citizen from Britain into to American custody without their having to show any probable cause whatosever that an offence has even been committed, let alone that the intended extraditee is a bona fide suspect.
No, the US government’s say-so (and we know what that’s worth)
is enough for Blair and his minions to give up their own citizens to who knows what fate at whose hands.
The reverse does not hold true for US citizens, who may not be extradited to the UK or Europe, or anywhere else for that matter, without a hearing in a US court showing a] that a crime has been committed and b] that there is probable cause to believe that the accused may have had something to do with that crime.
The practical upshot of this is that the pilots whose gung-ho, shoot first, ask-questons-later attitude led to this killing and its cover-up will, like their their torturing colleagues in the CIA who’ve recently been indicted in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, be sitting pretty on their government pensions, sucking up the approbation of the wingnuts, thumbing their noses at justice, all courtesy of that obscene sense of American exceptionalism.
Spin and Redemption – A Lenten Story
It appears that that paragon of all virtues, Cherie Blair, (or Cherie Booth QC when it suits her) is to bring Christian enlightenment to us godless proles by giving a Lenten talk on BBC Radio 4.
Cherie Booth
Wednesday 14 Marchrepeated Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 March
Cherie Booth QC finds the themes of restorative justice in the story of Zacchaeus
Which naturally gives rise to some immediate questions:
1 Why is the BBC spending licence-fee payers’ money giving the partner of a suspected criminal in an active investigation airtime to pontificate about private morality?
2 Why is an active member of the judiciary broadcasting their personal views on the nature of sin and redemption to all and sundry on the public airwaves? and
3 Can anyone tell me why any political spouse, unelected to any office, should be given a platform for their religious views at public expense? And of course the most important question,
4 Is the Beeb being manipulated by a professional spin job?
I’d be very interested to know the answers – and don’t give us that ‘she’s a public figure, it’s in the public interest’ crap either, Auntie Beeb. It doesn’t wash.
The Blairs have always modelled themselves on the Clintons and Cherie has always been politically ambitious. The parallels are obvious, particularly now Hillary is running for president. Has it given Cherie ideas? On a little further googling it seems that this little BBC talk may be but one tactic in a grand strategy aimed at the transformation of the much-loathed Cherie into Our Lady Of The Charity Photo-Ops.
Just in these past few weeks she’s done women’s rights in Uganda, made friends with Pakistan, smiled her letterbox smile at scared children in Rwanda and became a celebrity ambassador for the Howard League for Penal Reform. I smell PR micro-management.
Of course it may be that all this public do-gooding is just designed to rub off on poor disgraced Tony. There seem to be moves afoot to position the Blairs post-resignation as members of that inchoate class, the ‘great and the good’ – the people who turn up on Royal Commissions and quangos or heading acronymic international bodies that no-one knows the purpose of, drawing a fat stipend and expenses all the while. Or is it all actually about Cherie and her own future political career?
Cherie Booth/Blair’s position in British politics is a vexed one. While it’s absolutely her right to pursue her own legal career despite being married to someone in the public eye, rather than choose to be an anonymous sidekick this political spouse has chosen not only to embrace the limelight but to use it to advance her own career. She’s a private individual when it suits her and a public figure when she nees money, which is often. She now commands 30,000 pounds and upwards for a speaking fee. She’s a politician, but no-one elected her. Forbes calls her the 62nd most powerful woman in politics. Not bad for someone who’s never been put to the electoral test.
Carefully crafted as this PR strategy appears, the big question is: will it work? Well, it worked for the Clintons post-impeachment. Bill has taken a step backwards into benign elder-statesmanism and money-making, a fate Blair very much wishes for himself. Hilllary is now front and centre as a senator and presidential candidate, a position Cherie must envy, given that she reportedly set aside her own ambitions in deference to her husband’s.
Clinton at least is putting herself on the electoral line, but Cherie prefers to exercise her influence privately just now, amassing a fortune in the process. That’ll come in handy later should she consider standing for office herself. She wouldn’t dare to put herself before the voters any time soon- she’d be massacred – but ten years down the line, who knows? If she does stand it’s sure as hell it won’t be under the name Blair; there are some things even spin can’t make palatable.
And then there’s the cash for honours affair, which may yet throw Cherie’s plans totally off-course, though that rather depends on whether the the Met have the gumption and the evidence to arrest and charge a sitting Prime Minister.
(I have to wonder what Cherie would do if the plod came knocking at 6am at No.11 with an arrest warrant for her husband. Would she do a Tessa Jowell to save her career or would she stand by her spouse like a good Catholic ? The answer to that question will determine whether all this careful public positioning comes to naught.)
It makes me really angry to see the BBC complicit in a Blair rehabiliation programme. Was it the religion commissioning editor’s idea to ask Cherie to do the talk? If so, why the hell did they think that was appropriate? Or did Cherie Blair or someone who works for her approach the BBC? If so, it shows a remarkablly naive susceptibility to spin. Is she being paid? If so, how much?
You might ask whether dicusssion of Cherie Blair and her media manoeuvrings is very politically productive when Blair’s big war-crime, Iraq, looms over everything.
I’d say of course it is: it’s an object lesson in how politicians use the media as a form of revisionism. The history is being rewritten as it happens, The acid test of all this will come ten or 20 years down the line: will we be saying “Cherie Blair? Who? Oh, you mean Cherie Booth, the PM.” or “Cherie Blair? Oh, you mean the war-criminal’s wife”.