For some reason beyond my comprehension, Labour has decided to rehabilitate Tony Blair in an effort to help them win the election.
He made his first intervention criticising the Tories for inconsistency and indecision while praising Gordon Brown for experience, judgment and boldness at the Labour Club in his old constituency in Sedgefield.
He said that during his decade in power he had always been known as an optimist, and he was still optimistic about Britain. (So would I be if I have a hundredth of his money.) He said: "Strange as it might seem, the financial crisis does not diminish this optimism. We are not out of the woods yet; but we are on the path
out.” (Easy to say when none of it hurt you at all!)
Mr Blair's analysis is that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling made the right decisions during the financial crisis and should now be trusted to lead the recovery. (Except of course that if Brown wins the election, Alistair Darling won’t be anywhere, and we’re looking at Ed Balls for chancellor.)
"At the moment of peril the world acted. Britain acted," he said. "The decision to act required experience, judgment and boldness. It required leadership. Gordon Brown supplied it." (Ye gads, while he was swanking round the world making money with our security guards looking after him, did he even look at the newspapers?)
He accused the Tories of going to the right over Europe; going liberal when actually they should have stuck with a traditional Conserv
ative position on law and order; and on the economy, of worrying too much about public opinion (That’s rich!)
He further accused them of being confused compared to Labour which had “chosen its path. It is mapped out. It is consistent. It is solid. It matches a strong commitment to public services with a strong commitment to reform."
Mr Blair listed Labour’s achievements so far: reduced crime, higher standards in schools, hospital waiting lists reduced from 18 months to 18 weeks. (All English only issues. He didn’t mention illegal wars or soldiers’ deaths, or MPs who think that they should not have to face the courts.)
He said that the country needed strong leadership. (He seemed to have forgotten that it is Brown we are talking about here; Brown who is renowned the world over for his dithering, for his inability to decide about anything except when he loses his temper.)
I wonder how much Labour is paying him for this intervention. I’m not sure that it is money well spent. Many people see Blair at best as insincere, at worst as a war criminal with the deaths of hundreds of thousand
s of innocent Iraqis and British soldiers on his hands. Almost everyone must be disgusted at the way he has made money (estimated at £20 million) since he left office and that he had all his expenses paperwork destroyed, including repairs to his house the week before he left office.
I’ve never met anyone who likes him and the comments on the Times article which is my source for this post seem to bear that out.
I wouldn’t want him in my corner. Would you?
He made his first intervention criticising the Tories for inconsistency and indecision while praising Gordon Brown for experience, judgment and boldness at the Labour Club in his old constituency in Sedgefield.
He said that during his decade in power he had always been known as an optimist, and he was still optimistic about Britain. (So would I be if I have a hundredth of his money.) He said: "Strange as it might seem, the financial crisis does not diminish this optimism. We are not out of the woods yet; but we are on the path
out.” (Easy to say when none of it hurt you at all!)Mr Blair's analysis is that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling made the right decisions during the financial crisis and should now be trusted to lead the recovery. (Except of course that if Brown wins the election, Alistair Darling won’t be anywhere, and we’re looking at Ed Balls for chancellor.)
"At the moment of peril the world acted. Britain acted," he said. "The decision to act required experience, judgment and boldness. It required leadership. Gordon Brown supplied it." (Ye gads, while he was swanking round the world making money with our security guards looking after him, did he even look at the newspapers?)
He accused the Tories of going to the right over Europe; going liberal when actually they should have stuck with a traditional Conserv
ative position on law and order; and on the economy, of worrying too much about public opinion (That’s rich!)He further accused them of being confused compared to Labour which had “chosen its path. It is mapped out. It is consistent. It is solid. It matches a strong commitment to public services with a strong commitment to reform."
Mr Blair listed Labour’s achievements so far: reduced crime, higher standards in schools, hospital waiting lists reduced from 18 months to 18 weeks. (All English only issues. He didn’t mention illegal wars or soldiers’ deaths, or MPs who think that they should not have to face the courts.)
He said that the country needed strong leadership. (He seemed to have forgotten that it is Brown we are talking about here; Brown who is renowned the world over for his dithering, for his inability to decide about anything except when he loses his temper.)
I wonder how much Labour is paying him for this intervention. I’m not sure that it is money well spent. Many people see Blair at best as insincere, at worst as a war criminal with the deaths of hundreds of thousand
s of innocent Iraqis and British soldiers on his hands. Almost everyone must be disgusted at the way he has made money (estimated at £20 million) since he left office and that he had all his expenses paperwork destroyed, including repairs to his house the week before he left office.I’ve never met anyone who likes him and the comments on the Times article which is my source for this post seem to bear that out.
I wouldn’t want him in my corner. Would you?
Pic: Brown and Blair; Blair; Blair: Blair and Brown (And now I'll put my Iraq experience at the service of the Isaeli-Palestinian cause)
I think Labour are so far away from what the public are actually thinking that they believe Blair can turn things around. The man's actually an election liability these days, but no doubt they'll find that out for themselves soon enough.
ReplyDeleteI hope QM..... Do you know anyone at all who likes him?
ReplyDeleteMa first thocht when ah saw they were lettin' Tony oot o' his gilded cage was that they're daein' it awfy early, e'en afore the gun's been fired.
ReplyDeleteBut then ma second thocht wis that this is so they dinnae end up wi' a pack o' weans runnin' roon' efter Gordon Brown shoutin' "Where's Tony Mister?" Ye ken whit weans are like. Wan wis follaein' me aroond the Store the other day. Ah hud tae huv words wi' its mother. She works behind the butchery counter an' shes no got anybody tae mind the wean. Ah'm no gaun there for ma mince for a while.
So d'ye no think its so they can distance thersels fae Blair wance the campaign proper starts, but no completely, seein' as how thers still three men an' a dug that'll vote for him?
We'll have nae talk o' Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter in this election.
It must have been the first free speech he has done in a while. He looked a bit yellowy orange. Has he been tangoed ?
ReplyDeleteDunno Sophia. It just seemed weird to have a man like that speak up for you. It's certainly not what I would have wanted. I guess it depends on how many Labour voters are proud of the carnage rained on innocent people by that man, on the orders of a far right wing southern baptist moron...
ReplyDeleteThese politicians that buy cheap fake tan despite being pretty well paid.... There's quite a lot of them Anon, on all sides of the political divide. Tommy Sheridan, that nutter, Kilroy-Slick, who’s ben in that many parties it’s hard to pin him down; Labour, UKIP, Veritas..... and counting. He was scarily orange. You’d think with his dosh he could have got something a bit better.
ReplyDeleteIan Paisley was scarily orange.
ReplyDeletePeter Hain always has the 'jimmy calderwood' look about him aswell.
ReplyDeleteBoum Boum Sophia, very pithy!!!... quite correct though, particularly the "strange" bitty
ReplyDeleteYep Anon... that was the other one I was trying to remember. I saw a pic of him the other day sitting on the front bench pretending he mattered, and looking suspiciously like a big fat elderly satsuma.
ReplyDeleteTony Blair infuriates me.
ReplyDeleteHe had such potential in some regards, and squandered his reputation on liberal interventionist doctrines.
But, he has given us city academies, which is postive. He did role back the hereditaries in the house of Lords- this cannot be a bad thing... and the introduction was a postive step too, though it is far too low to be worth much.
My point is not to sing his praises, the Gods know I am not Blairs biggest fan. But he has a solid domestic legacy in some regards, and one which the floating New Labour voter would be comfortable being reminded of, and associating with the more hapless Brown regime.
sorry that should read "introduction of a minimum wage"
ReplyDeleteSoz
Well Dean he didn't give US city academies, but he did give us devolution, and although it was done in a cack-handed way that left England sharing the "federal" parliament, and many other faults in it, it is a start.
ReplyDeleteHe liberalised some laws, and yes he made a start on the HoL, but then gave up and stacked the place with his placemen.
His foreign policy was a disaster. He belonged to George Bush and HIS foreign policy was a catastrophe. I agree that restoring a minimum wage was sensible, despite the reasonable arguments against it(that the prices the terminally useless out of the market).
We all know he hates Gordon Brown; we know that he didn't think him a suitable man to lead the party, and the country.
Why on earth would we believe what he's saying now about a man of decision? It is a gimmick. They are trying to sell Blair's popularity. I think they will find that associating themselves with a man whom most of us want to see in The Hague, and a man who has shamelessly used his ex-position to make millions of pounds a year, is a mistake.
I think he looks a bit diabolic.
ReplyDeleteA bit of an insult to the devil there Bugger......
ReplyDeleteTris,
ReplyDelete"Well Dean he didn't give US city academies"
Perhaps that is why England has cought up with Scotland in education? We need to copy the English example,
1. Grammar schools rolled out
2. Introduce City Academies
3. Introduce more robust subsidy so poorer kids can go to public schools
4. Break the link between comprehensive schools and control by incompetent local government, direct funding through busary and grant systems [it worked for my old school, Jordanhill- the second best state school in Scotland]
So perhaps Blair did have some sensible ideas. But as for the minimum wage, well..I take the Ted Heath line and say the Tories should have supported it in 1997...
Actually Dean: I would agree that the socialist experiment with comprehensive education has been a disaster.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble in the UK (all parts) was that having the two schools system at 12 in Scotland and 11 in England was a snob thing. You “passed” or “failed” your “Qually” or “11+” and went to a school that was appropriate. These exams were academic. They didn’t try to sort out skills, they looked at intellectual achievements only. They were faulty in the extreme and spoiled millions of kids’ lives.
On the continent where they kept separate schools there was no “pass” or “fail”, you simply went to the school that was best suited to your talents. The whole attitude was different.
But then there is this great snob thing here. If you work with your mind and wear a shirt and tie then you are middle class and if you work with your hands and do not wear a tie then you are working class. (Lord knows where that leaves women who’ve never worn a tie.) And again being working or middle class matters in the UK. In Holland or Denmark it doesn’t.
So yes, we need to go back, but not to the days when the posh boys and girls went to the Academy and the kids from the estate went to the Junior Secondary, but a choice based on a whole range of things that allowed a kid to get the best education suited to HIM or HER.
That will involve removing the ingrained class divide, which will not be easy.
It’s not that I’m against telling people that they failed something, or that they are not suited for something, just not 11/12 year olds, where they haven’t, in any case, passed or failed anything at all.... There was an English test and an Arithmetic test.... not something you could build the whole future of a child upon.
If we bring that kind of thing back, it has to be an all round test, with crafts and sport and science and practical, artistic, and physical tests....