Looking increasingly vacant in that ravaged, glassy-eyed way, the widow’s peak stretching the hair-thickening sprays more by the day, his recent statements of intent - sorting out the Middle East, revolutionising university funding, saving the planet from climate change while continuing to star in Carry On Turning Left At The Stewardess - have been so barmily self-contradictory or plain delusional as to suggest the sort of character for whom the first question, on being hurriedly admitted to a clinic, is “Now then, dear, do you know who the Prime Minister is?”

In a vaguely sane political system, with a vaguely coherent written constitution and a vaguely effective legislature, the answer “Tony Blair” would trigger the appearance of a syringe and the whispered request “Straitjacket, sister, quick as you can”. But thanks to this weird, unsettling stasis gripping Westminster, it still qualifies as that rarest of commodities to emit from Mr Blair’s mouth, the literal truth.

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There is a real market in ex-leaders, people who’ve made genuine friends and contacts in their time at the top which can later be utilized at the service of major corporations and consultancies. I’m not so sure Mr T is in this category. It’s not clear to me that anyone’s going to pick up the phone to him in his capacity as a private citizen. It’s a bit like some executive who gets overpromoted, botches the job to the point of dismissal and then can’t find anything on his pay grade. The press release says he’s “decided to step down” but everyone in the know knows he’s a dud.

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The Prime Minister’s announcement this week that he wants a proper job after he leaves Number 10 was met with some approval. ‘It’s about bloody time,’ was the sane person’s response. ‘Whatever I do afterwards, it has to have real purpose to it,’ said Tony of his retirement plans. If he’d only said that all those years ago when he gave up being a lawyer to become a politician, we might not be in the mess we are now.

Meanwhile the Blair Premiership continued on its meandering, meaningless way, like an elderly, senile and incontinent tomcat looking for somewhere to pass away with a scrap of dignity. The Middle East was Tony’s destination to sprinkle the seasonal magic fairy dust of peace on earth and goodwill to all.

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Thursday, this week, was not the country’s proudest day, that much is certain. First, tens of thousands of Daily Express readers’ hearts were broken when it was announced that Diana was killed mundanely by a drunken French dickhead and not offed thrillingly by crack MI6 assassins under the orders of Prince Philip. Then we were told that our post offices - 2,500 of them - are to be culled like so many poor unfortunate badgers.

And then, despite the planet sweating like George Bush at a spelling competition, the Government announced that both Gatwick and Stansted airports are to get new runways. And then the Government announced that moody arms deals and ‘the national interest’ with Saudi Arabia trumped bribery investigations and human rights. You know, trivial stuff like that. After another body was identified in Ipswich, the announcement that Tony Blair was questioned by police as part of a corruption investigation - the first Prime Minister in history to be so - was the crowning turd on a big stinking pile of them.

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Let’s face it, as a nation, we’re on a bit of a downer at the minute, aren’t we? Where once Britain produced ships and steel and coal, we now produce buy-to-let landlords and website designers and call centre workers.

So, is it any wonder that Tony Blair wants to put some oomph back into the country’s spirits. Sure, our manufacturing industry is in the toilet and, thanks to the Iraq war, we’re a laughing stock on the world stage, but at least we’ll still be able to rain hot, radioactive death down on our enemies for generations to come. As if raining hot, ordinary death on our enemies hasn’t got us into enough trouble in the last few years.

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Are you sick of jokes about OJ Simpson and his musings of ‘If I Did It’ yet? Hell, a legion of newspaper columns and topical comedy routines in the last couple of weeks have been hung on nothing else. Imagine ‘If I Lied About WMD in Iraq’ by George Bush, they joshed. ‘If I Had Actually Had All My Enemies Killed’ by Vladimir Putin, they japed. ‘If I Could Dance’ by the one with a face like a robber’s dog but thinks she’s a sex kitten who got kicked off ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ (we thought last week while heavily drinking to drown out the cacophonous ejaculate that passes for Saturday night television these days).

And now we can add ‘If I Apologised For Slavery’ by Tony Blair. The Prime Minister came so close this week to saying sorry for the forced transportation of 12 million people and the deaths of three million of them. Without actually saying the ’s’ word you have to wonder what possible purpose his stating the obvious - ‘we condemn its existence utterly’ - actually served. He is, after all, a person who *loves* saying sorry for stuff he didn’t do. The Irish Potato Famine killing a million people? Sorry. The Guildford Four wrongfully spending 15 years in prison? Sorry. Until his slippery wriggling this week we’d have bet an apology for the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs was due any day.

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“Rights and responsibilities” is a current catchphrase of Blair’s government. The problem lies in its preferred distribution of each: rights accrue to the government, and responsibilities to citizens. That’s a dotted line we should refuse to sign on.

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What Blair is proposing, in forcing a literal, physical contract between the state and individual citizens, is a destruction of this collective obligation between citizens. He is proposing the destruction of society itself.

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The Prime Minister is having another of his little webchats answering question submitted by the Great Unwashed and posed on our behalf by journalists Anne McElvoy and Will Hutton.

Questions should be addressed to questions@pmo.gov.uk and the event will be broadcast live on the Number 10 website at 2pm on Thursday.

The last time he had one, I ran a little competition offering a prize for any one managing to have their question asked (if not necessarily answered). In the event, it was me who had his question asked (if not necessarily answered).

So, let’s do the same again. If anybody manages to have a question directed to the Prime Minister on Thursday, I will send them a small prize.

Update: Watch the webcast here. No winners, I think.

On a first viewing, Blair’s apologia for ID cards in particular struck me as a load of old cobblers and worthy of further scrutiny. Maybe later.

When Saddam was stringing people up and torturing dissidents, Tony launched a war in order to stop him (at least we *think* that was the reason). Now the new Iraqi regime wants to hang Saddam and government-sponsored death squads roam the streets of Baghdad using drills on their victims, poor Tony doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

See here for full hissy fit. And here for more.

This lecture by Henry Porter is vital stuff. Read it before it slides behind The Independent’s infernal subscription wall in a few days.

(Thanks to Tim for the link.)

Well, despite the laughter still echoing over its leaking, it looks like Tony’s farewell memo is being put into play:

If you’re watching Blue Peter this afternoon look out for a surprise guest - Prime Minister Tony Blair is making a special appearance on the show!

Still not aiming low enough though. Dangling in the human Hook A Duck slot on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway seem more in keeping. Tangential connotations of Nuremberg, maybe?

Update: Witness the full inquisition. Does anybody know why it happened?

(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)

Last year, after Tony Blair’s Labour Party conference speech, we said one or two nasty things about it. To be honest, it was tempting to cut and paste them here again this year. Tony did pretty much the same thing with his conference speech this week and he seems to have got away with it.

So, let’s get the perennially obvious out of the way first. Here’s the checklist of vital ingredients for a Blair conference speech as we’ve wearily come to expect them.

The. Halting. Delivery. Like a. Camp. William. Shatner. So that. Journalists. Can record. His. Every. Word. For. Posterity.

Check.

The strange, verbless sentences. Elevated to tedious cliché. Used again. This year. Oh, God. Again.

Check.

The weird make-up that makes him look like Data the android from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, only not as lifelike.

Check.

Admit it, when it comes to the battle of presentation against content, Tony’s always been more Lionel Blair than Eric Arthur Blair.

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[Pause for booing to subside] At least Gordon’s done OK with the economy, hasn’t he? Don’t make me laugh. Does anybody feel better off? We may have kept the inflation figures down, but higher taxes and mortgage payments have made even home owners feel worse off. And do we make anything in this country any more? You know what Dominique de Villepin said? ‘Over the years the English have wrecked their agriculture and then their industry. Now they only survive due to property inflation, financial speculation and their oil and gas.’ He’s right: Britain’s doomed! Want my advice? Buy that gite in the Dordogne and get the hell out while you can. [Glower at the Chancellor] Bang-up job, braniac.

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The Blair-Cameron continuum does not surprise me. Populism in Britain is systemic, involving a tacit complicity between left and right. By this I mean that the consequences of egalitarianism and the free market could, in practice, be remarkably similar, and that the main victims in both cases are likely to be at the lower end of society. For all their protestations to the contrary, neither right nor left really believe in meritocracy. At heart the left retains a gut opposition to selection in any form, while the right is in favour of competition everywhere except where it impinges on the educational and social privileges of the right itself, its sons and its daughters. But a situation in which talent finds no way forward while an elite of populist mediocrities holds power in field after field will, in the long term, prove damaging to the country.

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(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)

We were pretty sure that the last vestiges of this country’s dignity and standing in the world departed, like the friends and courtiers deserting Glenn Close at the end of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, after the Blairs gave this mind-scorching interview to The Sun on the eve of the last General Election:

Cherie: Oh come on Tony, strip off. Let’s see that fit body we’ve been talking about.

Tony: You can keep your hands to yourself, Cherie!

The Sun: So how fit are you Tony?

Cherie: Very!

The Sun: What, at least five times a night?

Tony: At least, I can do it more depending on how I feel.

The Sun: Are you always up to it?

Cherie: He always is!

Tony: Right that’s enough - interview over…Come on woman, time to cook my dinner!

(We didn’t make this up. Honest.)

You wonder, fleetingly, if their drinks had been spiked. Just why the public didn’t go on a rampage of disgust like they have in Hungary this week, we never quite fathomed. Perhaps there was something good on the telly that night.

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Come on, be honest. You’d have loved to see Tony Blair’s farewell tour, wouldn’t you? You’d have laughed yourself sick, bought the souvenir t-shirt, and had a big dumb grin on your face every time you had a cup of tea out of your ‘Never Apologise, Never Explain Tour 2007′ commemorative mug. Admit it, part of you is sad that the plans were leaked to the Daily Mirror this week because it’s now unlikely the event of the century will take place.

We’d urge you to read the Daily Mirror’s report on the leaking of Tony’s ‘Farewell Memo’ - you’ll smile for days. ‘He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore,’ was a particularly nice sentiment. If only they’d made that rhyme work properly, it could have been put to a squealing rock soundtrack (we’re thinking the theme from Thundercats) to be played as he strides on stage at each of the carefully picked venues.

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This week’s New Statesman just arrived in the post. I’m not a fan if I’m honest.

It’s like Guido Fawkes’ blog - there’s rarely anything worth reading but I feel compelled to keep going back just in case I miss something. I doubt I’m the only one. You can pretty much absorb the average issue’s gist over the course of a fairly relaxed tom tit. I wouldn’t bother with it but the current subscription deal offers 12 issues at just 40p each and a free book.

Being of puerile mind the only thing to immediately leap at me from the Stateman’s pages this week is this picture - accompanying his ‘it’s got to be Gordon’ interview - of boy wonder, David Miliband flicking the Vs:

I wonder if whoever laid out the issue is having a laugh because if you turn back a page in the direction of David’s V-flickage, you find this:

One for the Kremlinologists, that one. (Also, who does Miliband’s hair? It looks like it’s been chewed.) And then there was the Statesman’s website earlier this morning:

On first glance you think, ‘Bloody hell, Miliband’s let himself go’. Kim Jong-mil.

Not great political insights, I’ll grant you but I’ve got a hangover right now that would have made Oliver Reed weep.

One of them, who I was told was the head teacher, actually went through the crowd picking on particular people saying “YOU! Home now, or you’ll definitely be in trouble!” Several of them, knowing that many of the kids aren’t very assertive, were ripping posters and signs out of their hands, saying “thank you, I’ll have that, thank you, off you go, away you go…” Blatantly trying to shore the situation up for Blair.

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(via Tim who has more.)

Update: This from the Telegraph:

To hear Mr Blair’s words, it was necessary to rush away and find a television, which in due course played a tape of his vital announcement about his own future.

This included the words: “I think it’s important for the Labour Party to understand, and I think the majority of people in the party do understand, that it’s the public that comes first and it’s the country that matters, and we can’t treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their prime minister.”

It was odd to hear these words having just been treated by Mr Blair as an irrelevant bystander.

Actually, that’s what I think will do for him in the end. The giggling pity of his subjects, not their righteous anger. The ‘never mind, eh, Tony’ looks, the winks behind his back as he is led gently away and given his carriage clock or the zero-interest mortgage or the Executive Directorship of the oil/arms company, the keys to the Memorial Library, the Medal of Honour, the Red Arrows fly-past, the State Funeral ( hey, maybe that’s why he was angling for Thatcher to have one?), anyway, whatever he wants, just let him have it, and give him his slice of cake and his goodie bag, and someone close the door behind him as he leaves the party.

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‘You don’t give a damn! You don’t even know about the Palestinian families! You don’t even know that they exist! Tell me the name of one member of the seven members of the same family slaughtered on the beach in Gaza by an Israeli warship. You don’t even know their name. But you know the name of every Israeli solder who has been taken prisoner in this conflict. Because you believe, whether you know it or not, that Israeli blood is more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians. That’s the truth, and the discerning of your viewers already know it.’

That was George Galloway raining fire down on a hapless Sky News interviewer this week. (Watch the full spectacle here) It’s about time someone went on the telly and got all shouty crackers about what’s going on in the Middle East. Just a shame it had to be him, really.

The thing is, he has the uncanny ability to be both spectacularly right and mortifyingly wrong, often in the same breath. He can make a rousing, stirring call to the humanity in all of us with speeches like the one above while calling the deaths of Israeli soldiers ‘a bloody good hiding’. He calls for a just settlement of the Israel/Palestine/Lebanon bloodbath but insists that Hezbollah - while it’s firing rockets into civilian areas - isn’t a terrorist organisation. He’ll speak truth to the buffet of turds that is the Murdoch empire and whore himself on ‘Big Brother’. God knows it’s hard to find a consistent position on the Middle East, but George will say something that makes you punch the air in righteous delight one minute and have you with your head in your hands the next. It’s like he’s buying a round while drinking *your* pint.

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Tony Blair’s very pleased with his shiny new ‘arc of extremism’, isn’t he? After testing it at the G8 summit in July he used the conflation of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah no fewer than three times in the speech he gave in Los Angeles this week.

Something was clearly needed to replace the ‘axis of evil’, Iraq having left the group with nervous exhaustion and not being due to rejoin for the reunion tour until its second breakdown has really taken hold. The ‘axis of evil’ rolls off the tongue, the ‘axis’ part summoning images of the World War II’s Axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy. The ‘evil’ part metaphorically dresses Iranians, North Koreans and Iraqis in stormtrooper uniforms making it morally easier to shoot, cluster bomb and waterboard them.

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For political geeks with an hour or so to spare, Blair’s last monthly press conference before he swans off on holiday is about to start…

This from today’s Independent:

After his stop-over in Washington, Mr Blair will fly on to California tonight to attend a conference with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch. An ally of Mr Murdoch, Irwin Stelzer, insisted Mr Blair was not Mr Bush’s “poodle”, but his “guide dog”, particularly over the Middle East.

Blair’s visit to Washington is a ’stop-over’. Fortunately the Lebanon crisis has emerged at the same time as Rupert Murdoch putting on his Californian shindig. Blair was going to America anyway, so now he can squeeze in a quick meeting with George. Synchronicity in action.

The guest list for Murdoch’s conference is impressive, Al Gore, John McCain, Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton - faces you don’t see collected together outside Bilderberg Group jollies.

I also like the fact that Murdoch ‘ally’, Stelzer, His Master’s Voice in other words, referred to Blair not as a Bush’s ‘poodle’ but as his ‘”guide dog”, particularly over the Middle East’.

Now, you can get two types of guide dog, dogs for the deaf and dogs for the blind. Which of these did Stelzer have in mind?

Blair’s vision of justice is a medieval one - inflict so much harsh retribution on people who you think have failed to abide by the law that all live in terror of the power of the state, and only the most desperate or depraved resort to crime - only to be met by a system of justice that allows little or nothing in the way of defence (hence his mention of “curbing… the procedures and rights used by defence lawyers”). The summary justice apparently approved of by Blair is little better than branding, trial by combat, or throwing suspected witches into a river.

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