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I think it’s time we faced up to a terrifying possibility. He’s had himself cloned, surely? Or he’s undead.

How can anyone want money this badly?

I have to say that I like the newly unveiled official portrait of Tony Blair. That the artist took the commission, took the money, and still stitched his subject up in the newspapers is an added bonus.

Of the painting itself, I’m very taken by the way Blair seems to be fading away, leaving only the blood red of the poppy and a pair of baleful eyes. You could say he’s doing a Cheshire Cat except, in a final twist, that famous grin has gone as well.

Press Conference, Room C, 1 Parliament St.
(just off Parliament Sq.)
Tuesday 15th January 2008 3pm

John McDonnell MP and members of the Campaign to Make War History will brief MPs and the media on allegations of war crimes committed against the people of Iraq by Britain’s former Prime Minister and former Attorney General.

read the rest

(Thanks to Hannah.)

Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon has written tenderly of ‘Blair’s innate Catholicism‘.

Now forgive me, and it’s just possible that I’m unique amongst Catholics on this, but I have never ever regarded my Catholicism as an inherent quality. Rather, the faith was forced into me by various teachers and priests via the good offices of fear and intimidation. Catholics are the foie gras geese of world religion.

As to the question of Blair’s faith, they say God moves in mysterious ways but in the matter of Tony Blair and the application of his ‘innate Catholicism’ to geopolitics, Our Lord was dancing the Watusi to Rachmaninov while wearing a purple tutu and howling like a gibbon.

I’ve said before that our erstwhile prime minister kept his Christianity almost miraculously well hidden during his time in office. It’s a wonder the military aren’t now begging Blair to consult on the design of the next generation of battlefield camouflage.

Imagine if you could shield a stealth bomber using his ‘innate Catholicism’. A fleet of these invisible aircraft could make our nation great once more. The application and implications of this technology are beyond the dreams of us all.

Britain, let us harness Blair’s Catholicism for the greater good of our country!

It’s official: Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism in time for Christmas. It’s a timely move – I took my Mum to midnight mass last year and we all got a bar of chocolate at the end. I’m sure Tony with his love for a freebie had that in mind.

Apparently Blair, when giving his first confession as a Catholic, took with him a crib sheet of his sins to help him remember them. It took six Hercules military transport planes to deliver it.

And you have to say that the Catholic Church is taking a big risk in welcoming Blair into the faith. Look what happened to the last organisation having Blair as a prominent member – there was a stampede for the door.

As collection plate donations dry up at grass root level, will the Vatican be forced to turn to shady practices in order to shore up its finances? I’m sure Tony could suggest some candidates for the job now that Paul Marcinkus has joined the Choir Invisible.

‘You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys,’ as the late Archbishop said. Who’d pay for all the chocolate?

On this post here, there’s been some small discussion of what might happen to Tony Blair in the afterlife and how he might avoid spending eternity having a special relationship with a red hot poker.

No doubt he’ll find this useful:

Pope Benedict XVI has authorised special indulgences to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s reputed appearance at Lourdes.

Catholics visiting the site within a year of 8 December will be able to receive an indulgence, which the Church teaches can reduce time in purgatory.

I wonder how many years off your sentence a visit to Lourdes gives you. If Tony visits every day he might only have to spend a couple of hundred million years in Purgatory.

How did Benedict decide to grant indulgences based on visits to Lourdes? Did God appear to him and say, ‘Ben, tell them to get their arses to Lourdes in the next 12 months and I’ll put a little bonus in their heavenly bank accounts’? I’d genuinely like to know how these things work.

As a Catholic (I’d say ex- but I don’t think you ever truly escape) whose religious education had that extra-special Augustinian twist, I’ve always regarded the faith as arbitrary, unjust and, to be frank, made up on the hoof (you can see why it would appeal to Tony Blair).

Take the concept of limbo for instance. It used to be that if a child died before it had its original sin expunged by baptism it couldn’t go to heaven. Instead, it suffered ‘lesser punishments’ in limbo. This injustice was certainly one of the (smaller) nails in the coffin of my Catholicism.

I say ‘it used to be’ that unbaptised babies went to limbo because Benedict XVI effectively abolished the place in April this year. I’d like to know why God told St Augustine one thing and the current pope another. It makes Gus look a bit of a heartless chump really. Whereas Benedict seems to understand the power of public relations in a kiddie-centric world.

Why he hasn’t also declared that ickle puppies have spiritual souls and all go to heaven, God only knows.

You know, I didn’t/don’t really have a problem with Tony Blair being a committed Christian. What bothers me is that, while Prime Minister and not hiding his devout faith very well if truth be told despite his recent protestations, he very rarely displayed any kind of Christian sentiment. Deporting people to where they might be tortured. Turning a blind eye to extraordinary rendition. Cluster munitions. Depleted uranium. Civilian deaths. And on and on.

It’s not the fact that he’s a Christian that makes him a nutter. It’s the fact that he think his actions are compatible with Christian doctrine that puts his sanity in doubt.

I was going to do something about Tony Blair doing his Churchill circa 1935 bit the other day. But Flying Rodent’s done it so much better.

I’d just like to note this from Blair’s speech:

“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again.

“This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”

Hmmm. Sometimes analogies (like Blair’s) are never properly accurate but (like Blair’s) not easily misleading either. Blair says Iran = Nazi Germany. It’s as clear as Blair’s conscience. We’ve been here before and its an essential plank in the case for war: Step 1 – dehumanise your enemy.

You have to wonder if Blair isn’t even more dangerous now than he was when his was in power. His potential as a propagandist now that he’s free to say all kinds of whacky, ill-considered crap (well, whackier, even more ill-considered crap) now that he’s not PM is terrifying. An influential cross-section of American opinion and power clearly love him. He’s like David Icke with better contacts.

Anyway, for God’s sake, don’t think of Iranians as individual men, women and children trying to live under a totalitarian regime. That way madness lies. Instead, it’s much more comforting to think of them as a homogenous herd in willing thrall to evil. That way you won’t be put off your dinner when the bombs begin to fall.

Everyone will have their own preferences from across the spectrum of science, politics, law, charity, finance, religion, sport, soldiering, the arts and entertainment. But I do not believe there is another human being over the age of 30 in Britain today who, with the entire populace as potential dinner companions, would plump, as Tony Blair did, for Vernon Kay.

read the rest

OK, I’ll admit it. Tony Blair finally did something admirable. Say what you like but the newly released list of guests that Blair invited to Chequers while Prime Minister reveals him to be an autodidact surrounding himself with some of Britain’s finest minds. Reading the list you can almost hear Blair’s neurons firing, forming new connections, massively improving his intellect to meet the exacting standards of his job.

Just imagine the contribution to the safety and security of the country that a conversation with Charlotte Church would have provided. The share price of UK Plc surely soared after the Prime Minister had absorbed the wisdom of Vernon Kay. No doubt Blair was invigorated with a new sense of purpose to plant a new Grove of Academe and Elysian Field of British culture after sharing a Creme Brulee with Chris Evans.

No, it’s clear that Tony Blair, to borrow from his successor, sought to build a dinner party of all the talents. He and his wife had nothing but the country’s best interests at heart.

At least, that’s the implication smuggled inside this weaselling piece of wriggling from the former first lady.

Asked whether her speeches would enjoy the same interest were she not married to Mr Blair the lawyer replied: “I really don’t want to answer that question, actually. I don’t know what it’s got to do with anything. There’s no way I exploited my position.”

Er, ok. If you say so, nice lady.

Denial. It’s a river in Africa, as ever.

This from the comments at Blairwatch: Prime Minister’s Questions on June 4 2003:

I say, with the greatest respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that the fact is that in the end there have been many claims made about the Iraq conflict. It was claimed that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die in it; that it would be my Vietnam; that the Middle East would be in flames; and — the latest claim — that weapons of mass destruction were a complete invention by the British Government. The truth is that some people resent the fact that it was right to go to conflict. We won the conflict; thanks to the magnificent contribution of the British troops, Iraq is now free, and we should be proud of that.

RealPlayer video here, Windows Media video here.

‘I’m tired’ I said
‘You always look tired’ she said
‘I’m admired’ I said
‘You always look tired’ she said
Fugitive Motel, Elbow

And so, his reign of terror is at an end. His wife was graceless to the last. It’s all been pretty anti-climactic – no matter how breathless and deferential the television coverage – which was probably the plan. Are you dancing a jig or feeling strangely flat? Where’s my street party? Did things just get better or worse? Was the tap gushing Iraqi blood miraculously turned off at lunchtime today?

Be honest now. Examine the depths of the fathomless pit that you call a soul, conscience or whatever. You know, that part of yourself where you buried what you did with that magazine you found in the woods or what you let that boy do to you at that party when you were 14.

Now, you might be a Amnesty International-subscribing liberal, wet of knickers and bleeding of heart. But wouldn’t part of you love to see Tony Blair’s head on a spike outside the Tower of London? His face contorted in a final agony that had even his executioners weeping and vomiting? There, don’t you feel better admitting it, if only to yourself? I know I do.

‘But think of all the good he did,’ say his vestigial supporters. The first ‘good’ to fall from their lips is his three general election victories. The thing is, the Labour Party isn’t like the Brazilian World Cup team – an election victory isn’t a trophy to put in the glass case until the next tournament. To hear most of Blair’s hagiographers speak, winning has been the end in itself.

Once you get past the three golden ‘historic’ election victories, the rest of the trophies accrued over the last ten years look small and brassy. What about economic growth during every quarter of his premiership, cry the faithful. Or the minimum wage? And tax credits?

The thing is, who really cares about such things? Especially when they’re administered in such cack-handed, inhumane ways. Who, now, says of Anthony Eden, ‘Forget Suez, what about the interest rates in 1956? That’s a legacy’? Or of John Major, ‘Say what you like about him shagging Edwina Currie, he bowed to no-one in his grasp of macro-economics’?

Anyway, Blair won’t be missed nor forgotten and a tenner on him slopping out at the Hague before the end of the decade seems a comforting, if not exactly lucrative, wager to make.

The only question left is, will there be so much spit on his grave when he dies that it’ll be an ice-rink in winter? Or will the salt in all the urine deposited there prevent the saliva from freezing?

As a souvenir, here is a cut out and keep guide to the Blair years. It’s an updated version of this. Let me know if you think anything significant’s been missed.

That Blair Legacy In Full
1997 – 2007

1. Iraqi deaths survey ‘was robust’
2. The Ricin ring that never was
3. “Blair saw legal caveats a year before invasion“
4. “Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification“
5. “Children ’starving’ in new Iraq”
6. “Tube PPP ‘cost public purse £1bn’”
7. Cooking the books
8. Lobbygate
9. “Blair broke code to keep war advice from Cabinet”
10. “Almost a third of the government’s arms sales machine is dedicated to selling to a single regime, Saudi Arabia.”
11. “Several hundred people plotting”
12. MRSA deaths double in four years
13. 700 hours to ban fox hunting, 2 days to ban habeas corpus
14. Outflanked on the left by Michael Howard
15. “Hard choices”
16. “It makes you wonder what the other ministers are hiding.”
17. 700 hours on foxhunting, 7 hours on Iraq
18. Torture flights
19. Tuition fees
20. Diego Garcia
21. Lakshmi Mittal
22. Foundation Hospitals
23. Bernie Ecclestone
24. Creationism in schools
25. Ozzy Osbourne but not injured soldiers
26. Our Culture of Fear
27. Imprisoned without trial
28. Straw wants to sell guns to China but Blair has no time for Dalai Lama
29. “We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.”
30. Privatisation of the air
31. “I have no doubt that he will be exonerated.”
32. Mandelson
33. Mandelson
34. Jackie Milburn
35. Blair the Stowaway
36. Turning unaccompanied asylum-seeking children away
37. Making corporate bribery easier
38. “Reforming” the House of Lords
39. Holidays with Big Tobacco
40. Democratic only when it suits
41. London Underground privatisation
42. Paul Drayson
43. Half-arsed Freedom of Information
44. Alastair Campbell
45. Alastair Campbell
46. Alastair Campbell
47. Alastair Campbell
48. Minimum Wage = Poverty Wage
49. “Tony Blair repeatedly intervened in a bid to deport asylum seekers to Egypt despite being told that they might be tortured and sentenced to death”
50. “Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see anything in return.”
51. Hawks to India
52. Craig Murray
53. Pervez Musharraf
54. Uzbekistan
55. ID Cards
56. PFI Hospitals
57. Outsourcing hospital cleaners
58. PFI Schools
59. A golden future. For some.
60. 45 minutes from Doom
61. The Dodgy Dossier
62. Ken Bigley
63. Margaret Hassan
64. Iraq
65. Why aren’t they counting the dead?
66. “Putting King Herod in charge of a maternity ward”
67. Astroturfing
68. Tax credits
69. Basra: “a mini-Iran-come-Sicily”
70. “Several hundred” terrorists was actually only 11
71. John Reid: Firebombs are better than napalm
72. Margaret Hodge to Rover workers: Get a job at Tesco
73. Stifling protest
74. UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 billion mark
75. Pisspoor computer system #1
76. Verah Kachepa
77. Walter Wolfgang
78. Memorandum of Understanding #1
79. Charles Clarke: “I welcome the decision” on allowing information extracted under torture.
80. Memorandum of Understanding #2
81. Sent back to Iraq by mistake
82. Pisspoor computer system #2
83. Innocence is no defence
84. The Respect Action Plan
85. Pisspoor computer system #3
86. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
87. Olive Mukaraguwiza
88. Pisspoor computer system #4
89. ID cards
90. The treatment of the July 7 bombings survivors
91. “A decent and honourable man”
92. Cash for peerages
93. “Here we are not tortured physically but mentally we are tortured.”
94. “Get away from me, I will not be insulted by you, this is an insult“
95. “Hoon plans curb on MPs’ questions”
96. “If this was anything to do with trying to appeal to the electorate, he wouldn’t be so excruciatingly honest”
97. Pisspoor computer system #5
98. Pisspoor computer system #6
99. A slight miscalculation
100. Maya Evans
101. Extraordinary rendition: ignorance is bliss
102. Pisspoor computer system #7
103. Pisspoor computer system #8
104. Sally Cameron
105. Pisspoor computer system #9
106. Immigration cells ‘like kennels’
107. John Reid: Be slow to condemn
108. The politicisation of the police…
109. …or maybe not
110. 28 days
111. The Politics of Fear
112. No inquiry into 7 July bombings
113. Project Allenby-Connaught
114. Charles Clarke
115. Charles Clarke again
116. Siding with torturers. Again.
117. Charles Clarke. Again. Again.
118. “…at worst an unacceptable disdain by the Home Office for the rule of law, which is as depressing as it ought to be concerning.”
119. £100m PFI windfall
120. RAF pilots ‘asked for tank foam’
121. Deep-sixing the BAE fraud inquiry
122. Iatrogenesis
123. John Prescott, unpunished sex pest
124. Alastair Campbell
125. NHS computer system
126. Charging for prisoner’s bed and board
127. Cutting compensation for the wrongly convicted
128. Abusers left without supervision
129. Summary justice
130. Baha Mousa
131. Elizabeth
132. Appeasing terrorists
133. 3000 new offences
134. Lebanon
135. The farewell memo
136. The death penalty
137. Cash for honours
138. Arms to Libya
139. A spiralling Olympic bill
140. Bunker busters to Israel
141. The Trident ‘debate’
142. Halima Basheer
143. Britain blocks Italy’s bid to ban death penalty
144. Blackmailing the police
145. Abdullah Tokhi
146. The Bokhari family
147. Public engagement
148. The Medical Training Application Service
149. Still no 7/7 public inquiry
150. Corruption
151. Every single useless, pointless, infuriating, nauseating, unedifying and unenlightening Prime Minister’s Questions where he never failed to sully his office by answering questions with evasion, obfuscation and petty insults.

What’s left to say that hasn’t already been said? I would suggest that Blair radicalised millions of people, just not in the way he would have liked. It’s because of Blair that I’m as political as I am. If it wasn’t for Blair it’s likely this blog and thousands like it wouldn’t exist. That’s another thing to hate him for.

Let’s end on a song.

He’s gone!

A sodding standing ovation at Prime Minister’s Question? Did I wake up in the Mirror Universe this morning?

I’ll comfort myself with the knowledge that in the real universe, Tony Blair, as we speak, is being tarred and feathered and thrown into the Thames.

It is a badge of shame for the parliamentary Labour party and the cabinet (and indeed his successor), who between them could have driven Blair from office, that they did not do so earlier. But it also reflects a moral failure by Blair that he leaves today believing himself to be a star, going out on a high.

read the rest

It looks like Tony Blair’s finally going to get a job to which he’s eminently suited: Middle East peacemaker.

It got me thinking about other people who are otherwise wasted in their current careers and what they’d be more suited to.

Obviously, I’m thinking along the lines of Pete Doherty as Drugs Czar, Gary Glitter as Children’s Minister and Stevie Wonder as Formula One driver.

Alastair Campbell as submissive gimp in a Berlin S&M dungeon. That kind of thing.

Please, join in…

…try smearing this:

The queen has been left “exasperated and frustrated” at the legacy of Tony Blair’s 10 years in power, friends have disclosed.

So how do you think the New Labour high command will do it, as they are wont to do? Will we shortly be reading in a sympathetic newspaper about a ’semi-detached’ queen with ‘psychological flaws‘, perhaps? How about destroying her career with trumped up charges?

One’s republican fervour wavers momentarily.

Tony Blair’s resignation speech, first draft

I was born decayed after the Second World War. I was a young man after I was a child. Before that I was a baby. Between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, I was a -teenager.

At that time, I looked at my own country, though back then of course it still wasn’t mine.

Magnificent country, wonderful history, splendid traditions, proud of its past, super people, lovely sense of humour, fantastic fish-and-chips, great train robbers.

But too reliant on old-fashioned verbs. And pronouns. Speeches back then, too wordy. With no mid-sentence pauses for.

Emotion.

read the rest

Steven Poole gives us the thinking behind Blair’s resignation speech.

That broiling Friday morning 10 years ago, with that massive parliamentary majority and unparalleled public goodwill, he had the most powerful starting hand dealt to any new prime minister in modern history. The one thing he didn’t need to do was bluff. The murderous thing about Tony Blair’s nature, and thus his leadership, is that he never knew how to do anything else.

read the rest

My six year-old daughter’s just been complaining that whenever I make up her lunch box for school, I ‘always’ make her jam sandwiches. This is a filthy lie clearly aimed at undermining my position as most popular member of the household.

Only when I have a particularly stinking hangover – and can’t face lingering over the preparation of food – does she get jam sandwiches and that’s happened about once in the last month. But she obviously only remembers the disappointment of the less exotic sandwich over the glee of a more exciting comestible.

And so, as you do, I got me thinking about the Prime Minister’s legacy. Has it all been endless jam butties? Sure, we’ve had the egg mayonnaise of Northern Ireland but what about the Quorn and cream cheese of Iraq? The rest is jam, isn’t it? Jam yesterday, jam today and jam tomorrow.

…another one closes.

If you hurry you can catch the BBC having its very own Leni Riefenstahl moment.

Update 3.40: Jesus, the BBC coverage is awful. The amount of gushing going on you’d think Stephen Fry had died instead of some raddled war criminal announcing his retirement. I thought Nick Robinson was having an asthma attack he was so breathless.

At least they gave Armando Iannucci a whole 90 seconds for sake of balance.