Articles with the Tag Hazel Blears

Hazel sodding Blears

Labour sleaze
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Owen Hatherley shares his fascination of Hazel Blears with us:

Hazel Blears, benefit cheat

Partly because of a history that would surely once have assured her of a place on a Smiths single sleeve, Blears, like Blunkett, Prescott, Caroline Flint, fascinates me in a way other New Labour politicians do not. James Purnell, Jacqui Smith, Blair himself, these are apparatchiks who would fit into any party at any time, but who historical happenstance, youthful leftism and ruthless careerism elevated to positions in what was apparently the workers’ party. Blears and her ilk are different, and more symptomatically interesting – the New Labour proleface contingent, constantly ‘flexing their roots’ (copyright Julie Burchill). I know people in the Labour Party like Blears, old friends of my Mum’s who junked every serious element of their politics, from the egalitarianism to the opposition to imperialism to the respect for something as basic and elementary as habeas corpus, but who retain their implacable hatred of the bourgeoisie, or at least the liberal segment of it; those who supported tuition fees and the abolition of student grants, because they didn’t see why people like their parents should have to pay taxes for the children of the middle classes to go to college (conveniently forgetting their own entirely free education and its place in their self-advancement). Perfectly prepared to defend alleged working class racism, if not working class socialism as anything other than a sentimental memory, she is a Burchill column made flesh, minus the wit or the excuse of coke-induced brain damage (presumably, although we can speculate about what made her Blair’s ‘ray of sunshine’).

My Prog Gold coblogger Palau hates Hazel Blears with the passion of a thousand burning suns, as she has firsthand experiences with so many of these New Labour mock-prole women desperate to climb the greasy pole of local party politics, with no other goal than their own advancement. She have seen what that attitude does to local politics, with desperately needed unemployement projects being destroyed because they were set up without them in control or being abused to provide “jobs for the sisters”. But she also knows how seductive it is to go along with the game and how quickly doors open if you have the right, vaguely working class background as long as you are properly middleclass yourself and you play along. Seeing Hazel Blears for her is like looking in a distorted mirror, somebody she could’ve been if she was slightly less self-aware and events had fallen out somewhat different.

The Hazel Blears approach to politicies, that is, the idea that “my dodgy policies and ideology are justified by my proletarian background” is of course not unique to her or even the Labour party. Having spent much of the current decade being involved in socialist politics and in discussions with socialists of all stripes, I’ve seen this idea coming up over and over again. If you can’t win a discussion, just accuse your opponent of being too bourgeois or too studenty and not “in touch” with the working classes; excuse your own casual racism/sexism with coming from a prole background, and so on, undsoweiter. It’s as corrosive an attitude there as it is with Blears.

And I may be mistaken but I think it’s largely a generational thing. In my experience it tend to be baby boomers and the generation just after them, those who got into politics from the late sixties up to the early eighties, who’ve largely drifted rightward over time but still have a sort of tribal nostalgia for their leftist/working class background. In the media Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch are classic examples of the type; Harry’s Place is thick with them.

Legal advice on Iraq War flawed: No shit Sherlock

Law in action, War Lies, War on Iraq
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For some reason –probably all the hoohah over John Sargent– I missed the news last Monday that Lord Bingham, onetime senior law lord of the UK, criticised the War on Iraq as “a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law”:

Summarising Lord Goldsmith’s reasoning, Lord Bingham said: “A reasonable case could be made that resolution 1441 was capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in resolution 678, but the argument could only be sustainable if there were ‘strong factual grounds’ for concluding that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity. There would need to be ‘hard evidence’.”

Ten days later, in a Parliamentary written answer issued on March 17, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said it was “plain” that Iraq had failed to comply with its disarmament obligations and was therefore in material breach of resolution 687. Accordingly, the authority to use force under resolution 678 had revived.

The former judge then quoted the conclusion to Lord Goldsmith’s Parliamentary statement: “Resolution 1441 would, in terms, have provided that a further decision of the Security Council to sanction force was required if that had been intended. Thus, all that resolution 1441 requires is reporting to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq’s failures, but not an express further decision to authorise force.”

Lord Bingham was not impressed. “This statement was, I think flawed in two fundamental respects,” he said.

“First, it was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had: Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction, were making progress and expected to complete their task in a matter of months.

“Secondly, it passes belief that a determination whether Iraq had failed to avail itself of its final opportunity was intended to be taken otherwise than collectively by the Security Council.”

Which is more or less what every anti-war activist already knew anyway. Like the dirty dossiers and the claims about Iraq being thirty minutes away from attacking Britain, Goldsmith’s legal advice was always meant as a figleaf for a decision already taken. There was never the intent on the part of Blair to really test the legality of an invasion; his former roomie knew what he wanted and so he delivered it. Had Goldsmith’s argument been made in a court of law it wouldn’t have passed the laugh test. As long as it was good enough to convince the doubters in parliament and the press it was good enough.

The runup to the War on Iraq made hollow phrases of democracy and rule of law, as the first was ignored while the second was perverted to make possible this war. It made clear what the population’s role was: to shut up, vote every few years without expecting anything important to change and to let the important decisions be made by our betters. And then Hazel “bloody” Blears has the gall to lecture us about about political disengagment and the negativity of bloggers?