Poetry and flowers, pretty words and threats
I missed Blair’s speech at the Labour Party conference so, steeling myself, I sat down and attempted to read the transcript.
Blair’s avoidance of verbs is something of a cliche these days; those punchy verbal bullet points. His diction is like that of an IT recruitment consultant with ideas above his adequacy. Really, I’m the last to call anybody on their English, spoken or written, but Jesus.
Look at Britain’s cities. A decade ago in decline.
…
Muslims, like all of us, abhor terrorism. Like all of us, are its victims.
…
If people have a grievance, politics is the answer. Not terror.
…
Street fighters in local politics. Utterly unserious on the national stage.
What. Is. It. With. Those. Interminable. Bloody. Pauses. Between. Half. Sentences. Like. A. Policeman. Shooting. A. Brazilian. In. The. Head?
(Having recently studied shorthand, I have a theory as to why he. Talks. Like. That. It’s so all the listening journalists who generally have a shorthand speed of around 120 words per minute can. Record. Every. Word. Blair. Says. And accurately consign them to the history books.)
Are these speeches supposed to be picked over? I’m genuinely intrigued. (As Marina Hyde says in today’s Guardian, they’re certainly not designed to be memorable.) What about the factual errors and the bending of the truth? Yes, yes, I know all politicians lie and none more than Blair, but if these speeches are just to engender a sense of well-being in the party faithful, why doesn’t he do away with the ball-ache of preparing the speech and just buy a bloody big round of drinks instead?
I mean how about this: “I will never return us to selection aged 11 in our schools.”
In response, given the opportunity, I’d say: “What the Hell are you talking about? Look at this huge list of grammar schools. Selection at 11 never went away.”
Practically every delegate in the hall must have known that, even that old dear with the fizzy knickers they interviewed on BBC News 24 after the speech. Like I said, if the speech was designed to rally the faithful in a general sense, why go to all the trouble of putting in misleading specifics?
“I will never allow the NHS to charge for treatment.” What if you’re a, to pick an example completely at random, a victim of the London bombing needing specialist prostethic legs not available on the NHS? You’ve got no choice but to pay, if not the NHS, then somebody else for your treatment. His half of the story and my half come together to tell a tale that wouldn’t do on the floor of the rally. It’s a rally. If you thought it was a conference, as in “the party high command conferred with the rank and file”, then you are either dumber than you look or Alan Milburn.
The section of the speech on crime should have put the wind up anyone with even the smallest affection for civil liberties, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted.
Don’t misunderstand me. That must be the duty of any criminal justice system.
But surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety.
It means a complete change of thinking.
It doesn’t mean abandoning human rights.
It means deciding whose come first.
The significant word in the passage is the “but”. “Complete change of thinking” is also unsettlingly pertinent. Who comes first? Not, it would seem, the innocent suspects facing miscarriages of justice. They’re a bit like dead Brazilians - you’ve got to expect a few in this age of modern policing.
No, it’s the Daily Mail reader with his or her overinflated fear of crime that Blair has in mind. I say overinflated, as Blair says himself in the speech, “crime overall is down, burglary and car crime by big numbers.” To protect the innocent, we must increase the risk of banging up the innocent.
He also wants “a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities to take on the wrong doers”. Looks like Sir Ian Blair is going to get at least one thing from his wish list.
Looking eastward, Blair gazed upon Afghanistan:
Ten days ago, after years of struggle, finally in Afghanistan, six million people voted freely to decide their own future.
…is a pretty accurate statement without context, although the use of “freely” was pushing it a bit. But then Blair probably didn’t read the report in the Boston Globe the other day:
As voters choose among democratic activists, former Taliban officials, tribal elders, and local celebrities, election specialists say the electoral commission made only a symbolic effort to vet candidates and left the worst suspected criminals on the ballot.
“This is mind-boggling,” said Roxanna Shapour, communications and advocacy manager for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, a private Kabul-based think tank. “You’re not disqualifying the big bad boys with the drugs and the guns.”
Joanna Nathan of the International Crisis Group, said of the Afghan electoral system:
What this system has stopped is the formation of new democratic forces, parties that force people to appeal to a wide base.
It’s a question that will perplex both political analysts and philosophers for years to come: If an Aghan person casts a vote, is it democracy?
For Blair, it’s the mere physical act of voting that is the key. Oversight and accountability? Don’t be so bloody greedy.
It’s the same in Iraq. It’s enough that “eight and a half million Iraqis showed which future they wanted when they came out and voted in January’s elections”. Reports of intimidation and rigged ballot boxes are merely teething troubles, as if Blair would tolerate them on his own turf.
I could go on all night. How about the this flawless logic, oh mighty Aristotle? It has an inbuilt redundancy of some elegance:
How dare the terrorists justify their campaign of hate by claiming they are angry about Afghanistan? Was it better under their Taleban?
To which us affluent Christian crusaders, nodding along after a nice lunch, inwardly yelled, “No!” Osama, needless to say, takes a different view, which is the whole point. I think him and his mates really are quite cross about Afghanistan, hankerings for a caliphate aside. Unless he is at this very minute saying to his closest aides: “That’s it lads, off with the beards. It’s management consultancy for us from now on,” Tony’s argument is, well, a bit duff.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, you’ll have realised that this particular barrel is thrashing with fish. It’s not a question of bullets running low, more that the smell is starting to get to me. I should have used a blunderbuss not a derringer.
And we still haven’t talked about Charles Clarke and his vow/aspiration/vague hope/hostage to fortune to have “eliminated anti-social behaviour” by the time of the next general election.
That’s another big squirming barrel. Praise the Lord and pass the…careful now.
Posted on September 27th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
| See also • Is that good or bad? • Europhobia: Tony Blair - mediaeval madman? • Gordon Brown: pretty words and flowers, poetry and threats |
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I don’t know what medication you were able to take to manage to read the bile, lies and rhetoric of Blair’s “rally” speech. I just managed about five seconds of listening to BBC 5live coverage before the gag reflex kicked in.
Well done.
I should have said this in the piece really, but I have to admire the dark craftsmanship that goes into a Blair speech.
I remember when I was a kid and had to do readings in church, they used to put marks in the text to tell you when to pause. Blair’s speeches are written like that to the nth degree - his speech patterns have been taken apart and put back together for maximum effect, to elicit the optimum reaction. He could be reading a shopping list and many acolytes would still clap like seals.
There’s a simple explanation for his stilted non-sentences - he’s turning into William Shatner.
Now that would be coooool…
This plethora of “reforms” that make up New Labour’s constant change agenda is in danger of confusing the rest of us ordinary mortals.
Just what, for example, is to constitute a crime of “glorifying terrorism”? What behaviour will be deemed “anti-social? Will we be able to celebrate Guy Fawkes night whereas carol singers and trick or treaters knocking on doors will receive ASBO’s?
Outlawing “lack or respect” could also prove problematical. Will it be illegal to wear Che Guevara T-shirts? Will the children of “traditionalist” parents, who show a lack of proper respect to the change agenda by objecting to the teaching of “intelligent design” in their local school, be expelled? Will passing wind outside the privacy of your own home be outlawed as anti-social?
What we really need is some kind of Parliamentary Committee to spell out just what is and what is not allowed, when, where, and under what circumstances.
We could call it the “Committee for un-New Labour activities.”
It will, of course, need a Chairman to oversee it and rule on what is and what is not allowed. I understand Alistair Campbell is currently underemployed.
Local franchises could be set up of the suitably great and good to be known as the Parish Guardians who would organise and run local correction facilities to reprogramme errant consumers. These could be known as work houses and have a suitably inspiring sign above their entrance such as, say, “Work makes you Free.”
After all, as Tony himself so modestly proclaims, “Tomorrow belongs to me”.
I no longer listen to Tony Blair speeches as I find listening to him causes me to develop psychopathic tendencies almost as bad as his.
As for Charles Clarke, he has as much chance of eliminating ‘anti social behaviour’ as I, an ugly brute of a man, have of winning next year’s Miss World contest.
Still he could start my addressing the anti social behaviour of his colleagues towards the people of this country. But I hold little hope that he was thinking of that bunch of dysfunctional, lying, violent, never do well crooks.
I think we all knew Blair had gone to the dogs along time ago. Kudos to you for reading the damn thing: I caught bits and pieces of it on the radio, and was running at a choking on my tea as I spluttered out obscencities ratio of about three a minute.