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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Had he lied? No. He will do something for Sport Aid. Had we been misled? Of course. Lord Hutton would have blamed the media.

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…nobody. Although I was fortunate enough to have my question put to the Prime Minister in his recent webcast, it just became part of the expected unedifying spectacle. I imagine everybody involved had far more important things to do and I’ll generously include the Prime Minister in that. You can read the transcript, watch the video or download the MP3 here.

The piece of cake that is having your question addressed to the Prime Minister himself looks fabulous. A huge slab of light, golden sponge, stuffed with fresh cream and jam, and a thick layer of succulent marzipan on the top. Needless to say, in his refusal to answer my question to any satisfactory degree, the Prime Minister denied me the pleasure of eating said delight. Ah, the giddy whirl of speaking truth to power. To finally get a sniff of how soul-destroyingly frustrating and pointless life as a lobby journalist must actually be, is a real privilege.

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I got an email from Number 10 alerting me, among others, to the “Question the Prime Minister!” (their exclamation mark not mine) webcast jamboree.

Not being the sharpest of tacks right now, I was momentarily foxed by the email when it said: “You should include your name and the town or city that you live in. Questions will be accepted up to 1200 BST on Tuesday 5 June.”

The email arrived at 12:14 BST on 5 June. Monday though, not Tuesday. I suspect a typo deliberately inserted by the security services in order to dupe dissidents.

Anyway. The email says:

He will be taking questions from two respected newspaper journalists, Sarah Sands of the Daily Mail and Michael White of The Guardian, as well as from users of the Downing Street website.

This is an opportunity for you to submit questions to be answered by the PM. The interviewers will select the questions and put them to the PM on your behalf.

The new forum is open to anyone and is an opportunity for the public to challenge the PM on any subject they wish, just as MPs do every Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions Time.

The interview will take place on Tuesday afternoon and be broadcast from 1700 BST that evening via our website.

And goes on to insist that “[t]he questions chosen to go to the PM will not be selected by his office” despite the email address for submissions being questions@pmo.gov.uk. So, above board or not, the whiff of a fix being in abounds particularly when you note the presence of Michael White who, unwittingly or not, is the voice of New Labour in The Guardian.

Still, one or two of us bloggers (two to be precise - Dave Weeden and me) have had some success in the past at sneaking questions into these online rallies. So, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and hold a little competition. If anybody sends a question to Tony and manages to get it answered, make it known in the comments here and I’ll sort out a small trophy as a reward. Feel free to advertise your question here in advance if you like.

I suspect only the most anodyne questions or questions cleverly worded to sound anodyne will be selected. Here’s my entry - I’ll be amazed if it actually get asked:

Dear Prime Minister,

There have been several allegations of sexual harrassment made against the Deputy Prime Minister, notably from Linda McDougall, the wife of MP Austin Mitchell who alleges, in 1978, that he “pushed me quite forcefully against the wall and put his hand up my skirt”.

Were these allegations to be made against a teacher, social worker, a doctor or anyone else, do you think they should be treated as “a private matter”, as you regard the Deputy Prime Minister’s conduct, or do you think that person should face disciplinary proceedings?

Kinds regards

Justin McKeating

Go to it - questions to be submitted by noon BST tomorrow (Tuesday). Think of it like being in the trenches and going over the top. If enough of us rush the guns surely a few will get through.

To judge by the reaction of some sections of the media and other members of the professionally offended this week, you’d think Cherie Blair had been cluster-bombing children and undermining human rights like her husband. If only the Prime Minister’s actions over the years had been scrutinised and judged with the level of vitriol that his wife’s have, he’d have been chased from Downing Street years ago.

So what had she done to have us, yet again, clutching our scented hankies to our faces and reaching for the smelling salts? She signed a copy of the Hutton Report which was later auctioned in a Labour Party fundraiser. Tasteless to be sure but at least some good came of the suicide of government scientist, Dr David Kelly: Labour Party coffers were swelled by a princely 400 quid.

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Before he answered a higher calling, Tony Blair was a lawyer. Given his much publicised infatuation with cash (cheap holidays at Sir Cliff’s Barbados hideaway, nuzzling with billionaires like Italian national joke, Silvio Berlusconi, parading endless celebrities through Number 10) and considering just how much lawyers can earn, you have to think that he must have been bloody rubbish at it or he’d be still in the trade.

When he says things like he wants to ‘de-rail the gravy train of legal aid’, it conjures the mental image of Deke Thornton in The Wild Bunch hunting down his old friends after they left him for dead. Reading that the Prime Minister was ‘called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1976′ makes you wonder if he was actually only summoned to the pub to get a round in.

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This from the Prime Minister’s monthly press conference in April:

Question: On Iran, Prime Minister, last week at Prime Minister’s Questions you refused to rule out the possibility of military action, including targeted nuclear strikes against Iran. Can we therefore assume that should the diplomatic process fail to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programmes, and the US decided to pursue a military option, you would consider lending British support to that? And also given that the Foreign Secretary has described military action as inconceivable and unjustifiable, is there a split at the heart of government over this issue?

Prime Minister: No, there is just a very, very obvious thing, which is Iran is not Iraq. Nobody is talking about military invasion, people do however want to send a very strong signal to Iran because some of the comments made by the President of Iran are totally unjustifiable, Iran is supporting terrorism in the region to the detriment of democratic governments, it is in breach of its nuclear obligations and people want it to comply. And so the real issue for me in respect of Iran is well what are you going to do about it? And all I am saying, as I said at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, is that it is not very sensible at this moment in time to send a signal of weakness, we want to send a signal of strength. But I repeat, Iran is not Iraq and people are very, very well aware of that here and over the water.

Notice how Blair changes the “military action” in the question to “military invasion” in his answer. The thing is, I don’t recall hearing anybody seriously talking about an invasion of Iran. “Nobody is talking about military invasion,” seems about right. The topic of conversation, rather, is of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities with (nuclear or not) bunker buster weapons.

So far, so weak case. Flimsy evidence of the Prime Minister trying to distract observers away from a bombing campaign by denying something completely different, that is, an invasion. (Although it is classic New Labour to deny something of which they aren’t being accused in order to deflect from the question being asked.)

The thing is, he did it again today at his May press conference:

Question: Why has Jack Straw gone? Is it because he ruled out bombing Iran and you want to keep that option on the table? What did he do wrong?

Tony Blair: He was my campaign manager to become Leader of the Labour Party, and what he will do as Leader of the House is far more than the traditional Leader of the House role. He will effectively oversee what is a difficult programme being carried through Parliament (party political content) and any notion that it is linked to a decision about invading Iran - which incidentally we are not going to do - any notion that it is linked to a such a decision is utterly absurd.

Who asked about invading Iran? The question was about bombing.

Anyway, it’s an interesting evasion but it’s doubtful we’ll ever see him pinned down on it. “Has bombing Iranian nuclear facilities with conventional weapons been discussed?”, for instance (the use of nuclear weapons in such an attack having been ruled out as “absolutely absurd” by the Prime Minister). We’ll all get to read that plans to bomb Iran were well advanced in early 2006 when the top secret briefing papers are leaked in a few years time anyway. No point in asking about it now.

Yes.

While reading around the Saudi/UK arms dealing piece I came across this:

The Campaign for Freedom of Information: Tony Blair presents 1995 Freedom of Information Awards
Individuals and organisations who have contributed significantly to greater openness are recognised in the Campaign for Freedom of Information’s annual Awards, presented on Monday evening, March 25, by the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, leader of the Labour Party.

Isn’t this one of those poacher/gamekeeper crossovers we hear so much about? Treat yourself to a grim, ironic chuckle this fine Friday morning.

I haven’t yet had time to read the second of Tony Blair’s three foreign policy speeches (Episode II: Attack of the Clones) to see if there’s any nutritional value in it. The way it’s being reported suggests not and anyway, the speech will now get zero coverage as the pundits ponder the Prime Minister’s unwise choice of words in a radio interview.

However, the speech was notable for the repetition of one of the Prime Minister’s favourite baseless smears. To wit: that criticism of the Bush Administration - implied, explicit or imagined - is anti-American:

But the strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in.

Most of us are, thankfully, capable of more sophisticated differentiation. George Bush, to pick an American at random, is a fool whereas Terry Gilliam is a genius. Dick Cheney (say) is the devil while Harper Lee is an angel. Of course, being an equal opportunities generaliser, Blair applies this same perceived failure to nuance to himself by prefacing the remark with:

I don’t always agree with the US. Sometimes they are difficult friends to have.

Not accustomed or inclined to hearing truth spoken to his own power, it’s not surprising that Blair is incapable of speaking it to others. We all know that “the US” means the Bush Administration but I suppose it was too much to expect the Prime Minister to say:

I don’t always agree with President Bush. Sometimes he is a difficult friend to have.

There’s always talk that Blair chooses to wield his so-called (and much vaunted) influence over Bush in private. To which the rest of us are entitled to demand: prove it. The softly, softly, catchy monkey approach hasn’t put many exhibits in the Blair zoo’s primate house.

The thing is, when talking about the Bush Whitehouse, Blair always sounds like a man at a party who’s brought a drunken rugger bugger with him. His friend is staggering around, insulting the other guests, breaking the furniture and throwing up in the corner but Tony says to everyone else: “Shhh! Look, don’t say anything horrible to George. He might get in a huff and leave.” Blair can’t admit that yet another rendition of “The hairs on her dicky dido” and the ostentatious farting accompanied by shouts “better out than in” from his companion offends those with better manners.

For the good of the Labour Party, for the good of the country, and for the good of the whole bloody world, Tony Blair must not leave Downing St voluntarily… and if he does, he must be forced to resign in shame. (And before anybody makes any smart-arse remarks about intervention, I would remind them that this measure is far from pre-emptive.)Why? Because someone has to be called to account or the next batch of power-mad bastards - here or abroad - will think they can get away with exactly the same thing.

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Pure coincidence. Complete coincidence.

If this was anything to do with trying to appeal to the electorate, he wouldn’t be so excruciatingly honest.

That’s Stephen Pound MP, speaking about Tony Blair’s latest only-God-can-judge-me gambit, inadvertently writing New Labour’s epitaph. I don’t think I’ve seen the mendacity, the arrogance, and the fear of the truth that is the New Labour project encapsulated so perfectly. It’s elegant in its simplicity.

And that it should come from as loyal a Blairite as Pound is the big plump cherry on the top. Write that quote down and put it in your pocket. The next time Tony Blair makes an appeal on any subject (”Look, I simply believe it’s the right thing to do”) whether it be Iraq, Iran, education reform, new nuclear weapons, even that the sun came up this morning, take the piece of paper out and read it.

So, Blair said:

In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people… and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.

Is the Prime Minister briefing against God here? Sharing the blame? That’s one for the lobby correspondents. I can see Nick Robinson on the Ten O’clock News:

I’ve been told privately tonight that while God still has the the Prime Minister’s full confidence, Our Lord isn’t out of the woods yet. Backbenchers are calling for God to go.

The problem with involving God in the decision-making process on matters of war is that he’s an unelected official. I mean, aren’t there constitutional ramifications here? He’s not even a government minister like Lords Falconer, Adonis and Drayson. He’s, at best, a special adviser with too much power.

As much as he should be pelted and mocked for yet another sweaty, weaselly attempt at wriggling from, shall we say, temporal accountability, I do have a nagging sympathy for Blair. A person so steeped in blood and horror would frantically search for even the slimmest shot at forgiveness and redemption or else surely go mad, wouldn’t they? I wonder if, deep down, if he’s truly frightened of what might happen to him when he’s finally gathered unto justice. I hope so.

(Maybe we could persuade a now idle Fathers 4 Justice activist to sneak into Downing Street and jump out of Blair’s wardrobe in the middle of the night dressed as the Devil.)

No longer having to face the court of the electorate, it seems the Prime Minister now deems only one authority now fit to judge him. Maybe he pictures himself as David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death, raffishly winning a second chance. Or has he been reading his Dostoyevsky and, after committing such terrible crimes, now sees himself as the reborn Raskolnikov:

He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story – the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.

Draw a line. Move on.

BBC News: Blair to miss key ID cards vote
He had been due to return from a summit in Pretoria, but his flight was aborted on take off when the pilot spotted a problem with one of the engines.

Engine trouble. Being of a somewhat cynical mien, my immediate thought was: Yeah, right. I wonder if the Whip’s Office, finally getting its act together, has been in touch. “Don’t come home. We don’t have enough bodies to win the ID card vote. You’ll have lost a vote you personally stamped your authority on.”

Or, of course, it could have been: “No need to rush back, it’s in the bag”.

It remains to be seen whether he can develop substance alongside style…

That’s Alan Milburn, taking a break from hurling rocks from his conservatory, writing about David Cameron in the Observer on Sunday.

…Or whether the Tories are so hungry for power they will digest an unpalatable diet of policy U-turns.

Don’t mention the (Clause) Four. Milburn is spectacularly lacking in self-awareness, principle, shame and, it would seem, long term memory. That’s how he can say what he does and why he can be safely ignored, except for the purposes of sport, as the political equivalent of John Mills’ character in Ryan’s Daughter.

You have to feel a little sorry for Tony Blair though, since Cameron’s arrival. The new Tory leader sheds his principles like, well, a power-starved politician shedding his principles, and sets about systematically alienating his party while u-turning on a sixpence, and the media are all like, “wow, look at him go!”, forgetting that Blair did it all before 12 years ago.

Tony must feel like the older sibling of a toddler. Sure, Tony can walk and talk but the little fella’s so much cuter, just finding his feet and saying the funniest things. It makes you wonder if all the fussin’ and a’feudin’ over the education reform bill isn’t Tony making some kind of jealous cry for attention.

“Look at me everybody”, he trills as everyone coos over the antics of the youngster, “I can still piss off the activists and tear up what little of my party’s heritage hasn’t been incinerated by my blowtorch vanity”. But those who do pay him any attention just tell him to stop being so silly. Maybe one or two people looking at Cameron say, “aw, remember when Tony used to do that, wasn’t he cute?”

But Tony’s not cute any more. Talking like a baby isn’t that endearing when you’re not a baby. People expect a little maturity and get cross when you don’t show it. David on the other hand can say he wants to be like Tony when he grows up and everybody laughs encouragingly as he shuffles round in his big brother’s boots. Just as we did when Tony tottered around in his mum’s high heels back in 1994. When he does that now people just thinks it’s creepy, like Norman Bates in his mother’s dress.

Oh, dear god. “Clinton backs Blair as UN chief.” This looks more like Clinton talking out of his backside rather than some kind of softening up exercise but was I the only one to feel a little bit sick at seeing the headline? I mean, what next? “Clinton backs Putin as Amnesty International chief”?

Now, I know the UN under Kofi Annan has its faults, not least in it’s failure under his stewardship to reform its approach to human rights and democratise the Security Council (or even take a step towards it). But is a man who bombs at the drop of a hat with or without UN sanction, the right man for the job? Or are we talking a “Nixon goes to China” moment where a man with manifestly so little respect for the UN, civil liberties and human rights can go there and shake things up?

If he got the job, would Blair bring a Respect Action Plan for the world with him? He’s already proved adept at evicting nuisance neighbours. Will a country found with nuclear ambitions late at night with no reasonable explanation DESERVE prosecution regardless of whether the UN can actually PROVE it is the result of wrongdoing?

In fact, the more you think about it, Blair’s respect agenda is actually his foreign policy brought home and applied on a local basis. The deserving/undeserving poor. Rights with responsibities. Do as I say or you’re going to catch it. Undermining innocent until proven guilty. The short sharp shock and awe. It’s all there.

Which has been terrifying enough on a regional level and looks as if it’s going to be something of a trial (metaphorical not literal, law and order fans) on a local level. Imagine the fun to be had if Blair’s vision were to bear fruit on a global stage. Will you be able to shop Sudan to The Sun? What if someone spits at Israel on her the way to the shops? Will Colombia be boarded up for three months?

Don’t go, I’m just getting warmed up…

“Will you be working until you are 67, Prime Minister?” He is backing a Pensions Commission recommendation that other work people should slog on an extra two years after the current retirement age. “Oh, for God’s sake Paul,” he snapped.

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ALMOST one in ten of the life peers created by Tony Blair since he became Prime Minister is a Labour party donor. Between them, the donors have contributed close to £25 million.

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The Prime Minister is understood to feel that the security arrangements that would have to be put in place if he did attend would detract attention from the funeral itself.

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The prime minister, Tony Blair, is today expected to make an application to avoid a court appearance after he was summonsed by the mother-in-law of a sergeant killed in Iraq, as part of an anti-war protest.

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The Guardian reports that Blair hits out over ‘absurd’ EU rules. Our great leader has decreed that the compensation culture has created an aversion to risk in the public sector. I thought it might be interesting to read the PMs speech while thinking about only one of our great leaders proposals. I decided to go for the National Identity Register and ID Card Bill. Please do try to play along at home. Do you have the bill in your mind? You do? Then we are ready to read selected highlights of: Tony Blair’s speech on compensation culture.

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Take the “respect agenda”, currently engorging huge amounts of Whitehall time. This is essentially a hobbyhorse of the prime minister’s, bundling together lots of different issues - a vague description of unease that reminds some of us of John Major’s back to basics. In private, it makes some ministers tear out their hair: how long before every act of street yobbery or classroom misbehaviour is used to mock Labour for its latest failure? But what Tony wants, Tony gets. “He’s digging in, you know,” say the ministers.

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I once wanted to know what the average rainfall in Mogadishu is. So I screamed at my four year-old daughter 18 times to tell me, until we were both crying. And you know something, after all that she still couldn’t tell me what the answer was. The slippery little get.

Let’s face it, “The Paxman Interviews” are pretty redundant exercises. The only thing that seems to have come out of them so far is that our leaders don’t have total recall or every scrap of information on the tip of the tongue.

It was always going to be unlikely that Paxman would get any real gravy out of any of them. As if Blair was going to suddenly put his face in his hands and wail: “You’re right! All those women and children and for what? A lie!” Instead, particularly from Blair, we got all the well-rehearsed lines on Iraq, Brown, etc, that he now can probably murmur backwards in his sleep.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the Independent’s Steve Richards getting the same slick platitudes as he wearily rakes over the same old coals once more. Iraq? “The only thing I would ask people to do is understand that it was a very difficult decision.” Brown? “It is important that the two of us work together and closely.” Everything present and correct.

At least with Blair, Paxman spared us the histrionics and tried softly, softly instead. Didn’t get him anywhere though and he (and we) wasted everybody’s time thinking he might.