UK politics

“It Wasn’t Me”

UK politics, War on Iraq, War on Terror
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As part of his increasingly Spinal Tap-esque “Legacy Tour” ( Who does he think he is, Eric bloody Clapton? I bet he’s even had a tour t-shirt made.) Tony Blair made a speech on a naval ship my hometown yesterday in which he blamed, in front of an invited audience of military, academics (and for some obscure reason 30 local schoolchildren, who must’ve been bored out of their poor little skulls) everyone in Britain but himself for the inescapable fact that his illegal war in Iraq is one supersized clusterfuck and his tenure as Prime Minister a complete disaster for the country.

Somehow he managed to do all this without mentioning Iraq or his host city’s increasing toll of local military war dead even once. The grim faces of his audience on the video say all you need to know about how it was received, yet to read the local rag, the execrably bad Evening Herald, you’d never know it – the Herald never ever questions the staus quo unless it’s to complain about bus lanes or old dears slipping on dogshit – for instance you’d think a picture of Blair and the local Labour MP and professional sycophant and busybody Linda Gilroy, snogging, would be front page news:

But no, that would be hoping for too much. Evening Herald? News and comment? Don’t make me laugh.

Luckily The Independent has parsed Blair’s speech for us so we don’t have to read the whole self-justifying, narcissistic transccript at No 10’s webiste:

Tony Blair’s spin unspun

By Colin Brown

* BLAIR SAYS: “The parody of people in my position is of leaders who, gung-ho, launch their nations into ill-advised adventures without a thought for the consequences.”

ANALYSIS: No amount of lectures will erase the fact that Iraq is now a mess because of the failure to plan for the peace after Saddam was toppled, and it has made Iran the dominant force in the region.

* BLAIR SAYS: “Public opinion … will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy … to the effect that it’s really all “our”, that is the West’s, fault.”

ANALYSIS: Mr Blair is losing the propaganda war over Iraq, but blaming the media for covering the reporting of the horror of daily life in Baghdad is a sign of his desperation.

* BLAIR SAYS: “The risk here – and in the US where the future danger is one of isolationism not adventurism – is that the politicians decide it’s all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing.”

ANALYSIS: Mr Blair appears worried that after handing over power to Gordon Brown, his successor may come under pressure to do the “easy thing” and bring the troops home before the ‘job is done’.

* BLAIR SAYS: “The extraordinary job that servicemen do needs to be reflected in the quality of accommodation provided for them and their families, at home or abroad. So much of what is written distorts the truth.”

ANALYSIS: Mr Blair is clearly irritated not only at the media but also at defence chiefs for criticisms of the “overstretch” of the armed forces.

* BLAIR SAYS: “September 11 wasn’t the incredible action of an isolated group. It was the product rather of a worldwide movement, with an ideology based on a misreading of Islam.”

ANALYSIS: Mr Blair still linked September 11 with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But there is no evidence that Iraq was used as a training ground for terrorism. It is now.

If you watch the video you can see with your own eyes the depths of delusion and head-in-the sand-ism Blair has sunk to. He’s gone beyond self-parody and way off into total denial of reality territory and he’s becoming increasingy shrill, nervy and twitchy with it.

This is a man who looks temperamentally and psychologically unsafe to be in control of a car, let alone a country.

Read more: UK politics, Blair, Linda Gilroy, Defence speech, Plymouth

Untitled

New Labour, UK politics
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Well, It’s Just As Likely As Anything Else

True or false? We report, you decide:

Blair Foundation has been papering over the cracks in Tony Blair?s government since 1997. Now, for the first time, you too can enjoy the same experience at home.

Worried about the size of your debts? Fallen out with your interfering neighbour? Police on your back? Explore our website and find out how Blair Foundation can help you!

How to pay

There are two great ways to pay for Blair foundation.

Option one: Buy now, get something similar but not quite what you asked for, let your children pay in 30 years’ time (1000% APR)!

Option two: Make a donation now, get as much Blair Foundation as you like in a few months’ time and get your money back as soon as we can afford it!

Although all major credit cards are accepted, we prefer wire transfers from tax havens. Postage and packing is charged separately.

Note: Blair Foundation is an exclusive product, only available from select retailers. At present these are:

  • Lord Levy

We reserve the right to refuse orders, especially if your name is Gordon.
?2007

I wonder what the available shades are? Blair beige, Cherie caramel?

Blair to launch ‘Blair Foundation’ cosmetics range
8 Jan 2007

Tony Blair is to launch a range of cosmetics upon leaving office, DeadBrain can reveal. The first of those, Blair Foundation, has already been developed and was discovered by our intrepid reporter during a bored afternoon searching the internet.

Future releases are understood to include a concealer, given the codename ‘WMD’, and a range of aftershave. Early versions of the latter product were found to have the side effect of sending dogs berserk after being tested by David Blunkett, who has since made a full recovery.

Mr Blair is not the first politician to use his name to cash in. Former President Bill Clinton famously lent his name to a dry-cleaning product after leaving office, while Boris Yeltsin had his own best-selling brand of vodka. Not all politicians have been as successful, however. A range of hair care products launched by Boris Johnson after his first resignation were rapidly withdrawn after Trading Standards called them a “severe fire risk”.

Downing Street declined to comment, but a policeman standing outside the door of Number 10 told DeadBrain that he had had a full head of hair until he used Mr Johnson’s shampoo.

Read more:UK Politics, Blair foundation, Snark

Don’t Be Fooled By Cuddly Dave

UK politics, War on Iran, War on Terror
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It’s hard not to like UK Conservative party leader David Cameron. On the face of it he’s a very nice man: clever, personable, young; an iPod-loving, soaps-watching Head Boy who appeals to grandmas and skateboarders alike.

Call-me-Dave smiles a lot, his wife is pretty, he makes all the right cuddly noises, he talks about caring and sharing and children and the internet and the NHS and his disabled son and is swiftly becoming what many of his antediluvian colleagues would call ‘the housewives choice’.

Under Cameron the outward, media-facing aspect of the Tories has changed drastically – these days they even have a British Asian (I’ll leave others to dispute which of those descriptors takes precedence) party vice-chair.

This and their more principled, dare we even say liberal, stands on torture and civil liberties have won them many admirers amongst the non-aligned and Labour-loathers alike, as have Cameron’s own carefully calibrated public statements on Blair’s Iraq excursion.

He’s good on his feet too: even I’ve caught myself egging him on against Blair at Prime Minister’s Question Time. (video)

So far, so according to plan:

Party bosses want people to recognise, approve of and ultimately buy the Cameron brand first.

They will then glue that branding all over the old Conservative Party and, so, transform it into something the public will like and vote for again. It’s called brand extension in the trade.

All this niceness and market manipulation has led the Tories to poll consistently higher than Labour when voters are asked which party they’d vote for in a Cameron v Brown contest, something that common wisdom would’ve formerly have dismissed. But apparently the Tories are no longer percieved as the Nasty Party – indeed they’ve become so nice that some of their more rabid shire Tories have decamped to UKIP.

Not bad work for a lightweight former PR man.

But is there really change? Is Cuddly Dave just the palatable froth on top of the same old poisonous brew of Thatcherite free marketeers, neocon wannabes and bigoted Little Englanders as before?

In short, is Cameron lipstick on a pig?

Let’s look at foreign policy. The Tory party is as hawkish, belligerent and in thrall to the illusory ‘special relationship as they ever were. Doesn’t really square with the new emollient Cameron image, does it?

Tories back US action on Iran

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

Published: 10 January 2007

Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, has backed hawks in the White House by calling for “nothing to be ruled out” to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Mr Fox gave the clearest signal yet that the Conservatives would support military action, including the use of nuclear strikes by the US or Israel, to halt the alleged production of a nuclear weapon by Iran.

“I am a hawk on Iran,” said Mr Fox. “We should rule absolutely nothing out when it comes to Iran.

“They are notoriously good poker players and it is a very high stakes game they are playing.”

His remarks follow reports in the USthat Israel is ready to use nuclear “bunker buster” bombs to knock out the Iranian nuclear plants.

More….

But let’s give Cuddly Dave the benefit of the doubt rather than immediately cry hypocrisy. Maybe Liam Fox is a just a loose cannon. Maybe the disconnect between public utterances and policy means Cameron has lost control over his his historically backstabbing party’s policy and shadow cabinet (if he ever had it) and they’re all going off half-cocked in the media.

But no. There is no disconnect on policy and no difference between Fox’ and Cameron’s foreign policy views.

Neoconnery is Conservative party policy and Cameron policy too according to Dr Brendan Simms of the Henry Jackson Society , who ought to know it when he sees it:

[…]

His close allies and contemporaries, the new shadow minister for housing, Michael Gove, his shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, and Ed Vaizey all describe themselves as neoconservatives.

The new shadow cabinet is a clear sign of the way the wind is blowing on foreign and security policy. Some Conservative leaning observers had wondered whether Cameron might resile to classic foreign-policy “realists”, such as the sometime foreign ministers Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and Lord Hurd. Both of them had strongly opposed the Iraq war. In fact, Cameron recalled the former conservative leader William Hague – who was and remains an unyielding supporter of the war – to the front bench as shadow foreign secretary. Rifkind thereupon resigned his shadow post as work and pensions secretary in a huff.

In terms of the American party-political spectrum, all this places Cameron well to the “right” of most Democrats and many Republicans, who have gone cold on the Iraq war, but well to the “left” of the President himself. The closest match with Cameron is probably Senator McCain, whose staunch support for the democratic transformation of Iraq, and principled stand against torture makes him the least bland of American politicians. By contrast, the Democratic mainstream, and even its left-liberal grass roots, is now firmly “realist” in its scepticism about the democratic transformation of the Middle East. This means that if the British Labour Party goes the way of the Democrats, which is by no means certain, the best hope for progressives in foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic will be on the (party-political) right.

Anyone who votes Tory in the coming local, Scots and NI Assembly elections on the grounds that they’re not Labour and Cameron isn’t Brown is being wilfully blind. All the obfuscatory talk in the media – that the Conservatives have no policies yet, that Cameron is a nice man but an unknown quantity – it’s all PR spin meant to mask the Tories’ real agenda.

Cameron is no cipher. He’s a known quantity; a rightwing libertarian hawk who is committed to the same imperialistic, ‘freedom’-spreading principles as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and all the other architects of the destruction of Iraq and promoters of worldwide cultural war.

Cameron’s not the lipstick on the pig, he’s the pig’s lips.

Read more: UK politics, Tory party, David Cameron, Local elections, Neocons, Middle East, Iraq, Iran

Why Can’t Life Imitate Art?

New Labour, UK politics, War on Iraq, War on Terror
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I’d’ve posted this yesterday, but Blogger was playing silly buggers with Blogger Beta again and was completely inaccessible. (We have the blog all set up on typepad and ready to switch, but it just takes the will. Honestly we will do it. Soon.)

Anyhow I did a double-take when I saw this headline from from yesterday’s Evening Standard:

Blair in the dock for TV war crimes ‘trial’

By Alexa Baracaia, Evening Standard 09.01.07

Trials and tribulations: Robert Lindsay as Tony Blair

Channel 4 is to screen a hardhitting drama which portrays Tony Blair facing an international tribunal charged with war crimes. Robert Lindsay plays the Prime Minister, who is shown becoming increasingly unhinged.

In dramatic scenes shown at a private screening today Mr Blair hallucinates about dead Iraqi children, sees the coffin of a British soldier on his kitchen table and believes he is to be murdered by a suicide bomber.

The Prime Minister has a waking nightmare that he is found dead. In sinister echoes of Dr David Kelly’s death, he hallucinates that a newsreader announces that “it appears the former Prime Minister had gone for a walk on his own”.

The 72-minute film The Trial Of Tony Blair will be screened on Monday on digital channel More4.

Written by Alistair Beaton, who also wrote A Very Social Secretary about David Blunkett, it opens in 2010 with the vision of a distressed Blair, having converted to Catholicism, about to make confession for his “mortal sins””.

In Beaton’s account, the US and British forces have declared war on Iran, there has been a second terror attack in London and George Bush, deposed by Hillary Clinton, has entered rehab after being found comatose on his ranch.

Today, Beaton insisted he had no qualms about screening a film which could affect public opinion while a leader of state is still in power.

He said: That would be terrific if I’d contributed to the public perception of Blair having done something he must pay a price for.

I did set out, however, from the position of Blair as being fundamentally a man who cares but whose decisions have backfired and he is struggling to live with that.””

I really really want to see this, if only for the vicarious satisfaction of watching a fictional Blair getting his comeuppance. Bittorrenters and YouTubers, those of us without More4 are relying on you; don’t let us down.

Read more: UK, TV, Drama, Channel 4, Tony Blair, Iraq War Crimes Trial