The living double of a single fiction
“Tipping point” is a phrase used frequently in connection with this cynical, morally bankrupt government.
Hutton, Butler, Tuition Fees, Iraq. It seems Tony Blair reaches a “tipping point” every few months. By tipping point they mean: “Has he finally reached the point where he’ll be tipped out on his arse?”
So, let’s hope he’s reached another one today. It seems the story about the Attorney General’s lukewarm advice about the dubious legality of the war in Iraq might be finally snowballing - earlier in the week I feared it wasn’t going to gain traction.
Blair’s dealing with the issue at his monthly press conference showed a slippery evasion we’ve come to expect from someone Roy Jenkins described as having a “second class mind”. But he also showed an intellectual degeneracy that was breathtaking even for him. The exchange between him and Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 news can be read here, although you really need to see the footage of Blair hissing his answers coldly through gritted teeth to get the full effect. Unlike other animals, Blair doesn’t have the fibre to fight when cornered. Instead, to change metaphors, he instead dodges, weaves and tells half truths like the naughty boy with crumbs round his mouth who denies he’s been at the biscuits. His lack of moral fibre and intellectual courage are two of his shortcomings that infuriate the most. You could at least respect a man who takes an argument head on.
This is, of course, yet another symptom of the hysteria that’s surrounding the run-up to the election. New Labour, like the rest of us, must surely know they’re going to romp the next election but they aren’t prepared to budge an inch just in case. No wonder Labour voters and activists are deserting in droves.
(Blair even tried to toss us liberals a bone today by announcing a rise in the minimum wage. From £4.85 to £5.05. If you can find enough nourishment on that bone - where the minimum wage remains a poverty wage and which the CBI said was “a sensible reaction to business concerns” - to return to New Labour, then you must be very famished indeed.)
And yet surely by this stage, most of the MPs who voted for war must know they’ve been had. First the caveats were removed from the intelligence on WMD and now we find the caveats were removed from the advice on the war’s legality. Like I said before, if they weren’t, the advice would be out there already.
But, as we saw when Labour’s backbenchers trotted through the division lobbies to vote for internment this week, Blair uses a culture of fear inside Parliament as well as out. He appeals not to MPs’ consciences but makes them fearful for their jobs and pensions. How else would they ratify the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children? Or PFI, tuition fees and a dozen other stakes through the heart of the Labour movement? In the final analysis, they put their jobs before people’s lives. They put their careers before their humanity. And they find, at the end, that they’ve been fucked but never loved. But still they look at their majorities and think, “there’s no way I’m rocking the boat”. It’s hard to respect a weathercock like Claire Short but she’s been one of the few Labour bods to show any balls this week and call for the release of the advice.
Maybe, like the majority of Labour backbenchers, you live in a moral twilight zone - like the crew over at Hove Labour who have got out their nosegays to do away with the stench of the bodies and are voting Labour right or wrong with fingers crossed that Blair won’t help Bush bomb Iran. “Domestic issues do not pale into insignificance,” they say. Look to the good New Labour’s done, others say.
But I’m sorry, no amount of sandalwood on the pyre ameloriates the fumes.
My eyes are still streaming.
Posted on February 25th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
| See also • The Vicky Pollard Defence • Unbelievable • Voting New Labour? |
• Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe |
|
• Filed under Blair, New Labour, UK politics |
• |
Nosegays? There are plenty of articles on our site (ID cards, Iraq) which are rightly critical of Labour, and I won’t say that Blair is anything but a tarnished figure with nothing left to offer.
What we want to do is give positive reasons for supporting Labour (and the Left), encourage political debate in Hove (and elsewhere), and elect an MP whose selection process has been opened-up to the public, and who is being held accountable.
There’s plenty of things I’d like to see changed, but I don’t see the prospect of any of these being achieved by the cynical and self-promoting people who think a Left-wing groundswell can be created by galvanising people around personal hatred and contempt for the Labour Party leader. That’ll be swept away the moment the Tories get their act together.
“Cynical and self-promoting people”? A classic case of projection if ever I saw one, BB.
If I’m cynical because I loathe the fact this government has washed its hands of the blood of thousands, then cynical I am.
And how my anonymous blog with a readership of about two dozen is self-serving eludes me.
Perhaps, you mean the Backing Blair campaign? A lot of people have put their time and money into trying to save the Labour party from itself. Something you and other micawberish Hattersleyites seem unwilling to do. The BB crowd are largely anonymous and at the time of writing haven’t appeared on chatshows or in the newspapers. Self-serving?
I think you should get your weasely leadership to count the bodies and release the Attorney General’s advice before you start using such epithets against other people.
You can give me your list of positive reasons to vote Labour if you like but my own list not to is long and getting longer everyday.
And it seems you want your cake and eat it. You say, “I won’t say that Blair is anything but a tarnished figure with nothing left to offer” but then decry those who want to see the back of Blair and a return to real Labour values. Which is it to be?
Apologies: I didn’t have you in mind; was indeed thinking more of ‘Backing Blair’ with their slick media campaigns.
We’re not about uncritically promoting Labour policy or the views of any one candidate, which is why you’ll see no ‘red rose’ logos on our pages. As we’re trying to get as many local members (and interesting others) to post, you’ll find posts that are pro-Labour-as-it-is, and others that are very critical. If there is one central thread running through it all, it should be left/liberal. Nobody is going to post anything they’ve been ‘told’ to.
If I could also get the leadership to listen, that would be great. Who knows what the best way is?
I’m optimistic (but no Hattersley - ouch) and believe that the Labour Party is viable and capable of being improved, as opposed to being a dead duck which needs kicking out of office.
Apology accepted.
But again, BB, I think you need to train your cannons elsewhere. “Slick media campaign”? Who perfected the art? Backing Blair is operating on a few hundred quid. New Labour’s propaganda unit runs on untold amounts of cash - even down to Alan Milburn being paid by the taxpayer under some shonky bait and switch about him being a “minister without portfolio”. He’s a publicly-funded New Labour campaign manager and very little else.
Backing Blair isn’t trying to usher in a Tory Government (I’d argue we’re under one anyway but that’s an argument for another time) - it’s about making people realise that under Blair there is no hope of saving the Labour Party. Sure, he can get you elected but what for?
You say there’s no way of getting to the leadership - why don’t you show Celia the Backing Blair website? Get her to talk to one of their guys? Surely looking at her risky majority and with the damage done by Ivor Caplin she’s open to new ideas and a reasoned debate? She might even pass some of it up the tree.