Posts Tagged ‘Tony Blair’

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Libya is not Cameron’s first war. It is Tony Blair’s last.

22/03/2011, 11:30:43 AM

by Dan Hodges

In Saturday’s Independent, Robert Fisk, the venerable if jaundiced middle east sage, posted a missing persons bulletin:

“Why we have not heard from Lord Blair of Isfahan recently? Surely he should be up there, clapping his hands with glee at another humanitarian intervention. Perhaps he is just resting between parts. Or maybe, like the dragons in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, he is quietly vomiting forth Catholic tracts with all the enthusiasm of a Gaddafi in full flow”.

Unfortunately, about an hour after this latest condemnation of Western imperialism / inaction / barbarity / pusillanimity (delete as appropriate), up popped the man himself:

“The decision to impose a no-fly zone and authorise all necessary measures to protect threatened civilians comes not a moment too soon. It is a shift to a policy of intervention that I welcome. Such a policy will be difficult and unpredictable. But it is surely better than watching in real time as the Libyan people’s legitimate aspiration for a better form of government and way of life is snuffed out by tanks and planes”.

Fisk may know Libya like the back of Colonel Gaddafi’s hand, but he certainly doesn’t know Tony Blair. The clear implication of his jibe is that military intervention against Gaddafi is a rebuke to our former prime minister and his policy of enticing the Libyan dictator back into the international fold. A further shredding of his already tattered foreign policy legacy.

Robert, you couldn’t be more wrong. Libya isn’t an embarrassment for Tony Blair. It’s his validation. (more…)

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Cameron’s Blair delusion

24/01/2011, 04:15:22 PM

by Jamie Reed

Among the attributes any politician might both posess and publicly display, delusion is perhaps the worst. A product of vanity and arrogance, delusion is an attribute immediately detectable to the public. More importantly, public displays of political delusion mark the point where the voter and the politician part company; it is the point where the voter separates rhetoric from reality and where political language becomes hollowed of all meaning. Essentially, it is the point where the voter acknowledges that the politician in question sees himself, and the world, very differently.

The principal delusion which afflicts David Cameron is his conviction that he is “the heir to Blair”. This delusion is so deep seated that its effects are visible across the government’s entire programme – from Europe to the NHS and beyond.

LIke all delusions, it bears no serious analysis. Tony Blair (alongside Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson) transformed the Labour party politically, intellectually and culturally. This was a hard, painful process but it was done in the public glare and was very real. In contrast, David Cameron hasn’t changed the Tories at all; a largely unimpressive Parliamentary party is held together through inexperience and necessity, not conviction and belief. Even now, the old fissures are real and threaten, at any point, to erupt on issues like Europe, immigration and gay marriage. As a result, Cameron doesn’t have the authority he craves within his own party, let alone among the country at large. For at least his first two terms, the same could not be said of Blair. (more…)

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What would JFK have made of the Tories’ duplicitous weakness on 28 days detention?

19/01/2011, 10:30:27 AM

by Tom Watson

Tomorrow marks 50 years since John F Kennedy’s inaugural presidential address. When David Cameron attends the Nordic conference on behalf of the nation later in the week, his handlers will no doubt try to mark the anniversary by enveloping him in Kennedy stardust. My hunch is that he will want to talk tough, as JFK sometimes did: “let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill”.

Cameron is still looking for international recognition equivalent to that of Blair and Brown and Thatcher. Those television images of statesmen shaking hands in exotic places are the particles of political legacies that politicians crave. In all of Cameron’s grasping hunt for glory, he can only dream of a legacy as enduring as JFK’s. Yet there is a grim reality for our prime minister, one that is only now beginning to reveal itself to him. If you want to leave a positive political legacy in the age of the internet, you probably have to be shot or spend 30 years in jail for a crime you didn’t commit.

And if you don’t believe me, think about the nearest thing the Labour party has to JFK, Tony Blair. That man used to walk on water. The day after tomorrow he will be at the Chilcot enquiry for the second time, wading through misery, as the detail of his decision to take us into Iraq is surgically examined. It wasn’t meant to be this way.

It’s probably an understatement to say that I’ve had disagreements with Mr Blair, but his humiliating second appearance before the committee in some way seems an unworthy way to treat a former prime minister. (more…)

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Still getting to grips with life after Tony

09/12/2010, 03:00:23 PM

by Darrell Goodliffe

As a young political pup I joined Tony Blair’s Labour party. Few could forget those heady days of 1997 when he made a routine occurrence – a general election – feel like a social revolution; or at least as close as you can come without cutting off heads.

Fast forward 13 years and, after a “varied” political journey, I find myself in what was Gordon’s and is now Ed’s Labour party. Things are different but the sense of shell shock at our sudden ejection from power and the departure of a messianic figure still lingers. Left-wing Labourites view Blair with contempt, but, if we are honest, we would not say “no” to a left-wing Tony. Whatever you think of him, he has charisma by the bucket-load and that engenders a certain grudging respect.

We spent the entire leadership contest looking for a new Blair. My highest hope for Ed Miliband was the belief that he would do a “Tony” in reverse; that he would reach out from the centre to the left and create the opposite kind of party to Blair, forming a dominant centre/left axis (as opposed to Blair’s centre/right one). He might still, but the omens do not look good. (more…)

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Don’t call her babe: Dan Hodges interviews Hazel Blears

30/11/2010, 02:04:17 PM

“Hazel Blears? Good luck mate. She’s the most on message politician I’ve ever met”.

“Hazel is a robot. ‘Tony good. Labour good. Tony good. Labour good’. Scratch the surface and you just find another surface underneath”.

"I was asked to go and defend the government in some circumstances when no one else wanted to"

Hmmm. Uncut arrives at our meeting with the woman described by one Labour MP as the bionic Blairite with some trepidation. We like discipline and loyalty – in moderation. But we also like a peek behind the curtain. Will we be able to uncover what makes the bionic Blairite tick?

Let’s kick off with Ed Miliband. She voted for him fourth, behind Andy, David and Ed. According to reports, he offered her a job and she turned it down, although Ed’s office officially denies this. Hazel confirms that she had a meeting with Ed and told him she wanted some time out on the back benches. So what does she think of the new leader?

“I would characterise Ed’s leadership as calm, measured, steady, and actually, a surprise to people. I don’t think you have to come out as a brand new leader with fireworks and pazzaz. When Ed won, a lot of people said ‘Ed’s a blank page’. Well in a lot of ways that’s not bad for us, because we need to reflect on why we got the worst result since 1983. I don’t mind a bit of reflection”.

No fireworks. No pazzaz. This could be a long haul.

“But, if we don’t defend our record nobody will. If you walk round my city, it’s not paradise, it’s not nirvana, but it’s a damn sight better than it was. This narrative the Tories are getting traction with, that it was all a disaster, we bust the bank, spent all the money; it’s at our peril that we let that just be the story. People may accuse me of wearing rose tinted glasses, being gung ho; well sorry I’m not going to be snivelling and apologising for what I think in many ways was a damn fine government”.

A flash of passion. Not synthesised. Real, “I’ll see you out side”, anger. (more…)

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If reform means breaking the link then we will lose

18/11/2010, 03:59:42 PM

by Tom Watson

One of the most difficult meetings I have taken part in was when I defied Gordon Brown at a sub-committee of the NEC. He had been convinced of the need to impose a candidate in Nottingham East by outgoing general secretary of the Labour party, Ray Collins. The general election had been called and there was little time to organise a last minute selection of members.

Collins was worried about the amount of time that would be diverted from campaigning in key seats. On balance, he was probably right, but I felt very strongly that members should ultimately decide who their Parliamentary candidate should be, even if it was at a quickly convened meeting. The vote was won by one, after Dianne Hayter, in a last minute shift and out of deference to Gordon, conceded on her avowed opposition to impositions. I voted against him. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

Up until the Nottingham decision the last candidate to be imposed by the leadership of the party was a general secretary of a powerful trade union, Alan Johnson. I thought of that moment today when I read Alan’s comments in the Times newspaper. Alan wants to introduce full one-member-one-vote rules for electing our leader like the ones we have for selecting our MPs.

“It can be one member four votes and that’s wrong”, says Alan. He may be right about that. The current system of an electoral college allows multiple votes in different sections all having an unequal value, with a trade union levy payer vote having the least value and an MPs vote having the most value. One MPs vote was worth hundreds of trade unionist votes in the leadership election. Many people think that unfair. (more…)

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The real battle for the future of the English regions is just beginning

04/11/2010, 03:00:36 PM

by Kevin Meagher

THIS time of year, as the bonfires blaze and the fireworks bang, many keen regional devolutionists will commemorate waking up to find a different political revolution (albeit one with more modest aims) had bitten the dust. Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the ill-fated referendum on an elected regional assembly for the north-east of England.

As you may recall, back in 2004, Labour promised referendums would be held in the north-east, north-west and Yorkshire and Humber regions about whether each should have an elected assembly.

The powers on offer were not vast. At that stage, frankly, neither should they have been. This was never a call for mini-parliaments. Or regional prime ministers. Or declarations of UDI. It was about creating small, strategic bodies to democratise decisions taken by unaccountable public officials and act as all purpose galvanisers, instigators and cajolers for northern interests.

In the end, just the north-east, long thought to be the likeliest harbinger of regional devolution, was given the go-ahead. The government had got cold feet, fearing the message about “creating another tier of bureaucracy” was too potent. So it cancelled the other two votes.  The entreaties of campaigners in those regions counted for little. For a government hooked on winning things, the prospect of a triple whammy defeat was too much to bear, so they sought to minimise the political fallout. (more…)

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Labour’s relationship with the unions is not set in stone, says Peter Watt

21/10/2010, 09:00:42 AM

As Tony Blair once said, “I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour party. I came into politics to change the country.”

And that is why opposition sucks.  We all joined the party so that we could play our part in turning our values into practical policies. We want to actually be able to improve the lives of people and their families, raise aspiration, work to strengthen the economy and so on. And you can only actually do that in government. For 13 years we felt that we were making a difference – making a difference at our local party meetings, making a difference at national policy forums and making a difference at party conference.

Oh I know that we complained that we were ignored (and probably we were, although not as much we claimed) but ministers of the crown came to our fundraising dinners, spoke at our events and circulated around the policy discussions and fringe at our conferences. It felt that we were both important and that we were involved in doing something important. And I guess that we can admit this now – we enjoyed it. Even the wine was better at conference when we were in government. (more…)

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Tom Watson promises Ed Miliband that he’ll stop behaving like a child

13/10/2010, 10:03:38 AM

Ed Miliband is more like the early Tony Blair than either he or Tony would publicly admit. He is patient with his colleagues, considerate and engaging. He is irritated by complacency and policy inertia. And he is murderously ambitious for electoral success.

As Neil Kinnock once famously said “to lead a political party, first of all you have to establish whether the political party wishes to be led”. Ed’s got to put the band back together. Re-pitch the big tent.

And with what was a sublime re-shuffle – respect for defeated opponents, dignified exits for distinguished big beasts, early promotion of a cadre of new MPs – I think the band might soon, for the first time in many years, be playing in harmony.

He’s made some spectacularly audacious and very clever appointments that make it just possible for this happen. Anne McGuire joining the team as his PPS is an act of genius. She’s canny and well-respected by MPs. (more…)

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Making childish noises at the unions is not the way to lead Labour, says Dan Hodges

16/09/2010, 09:00:56 AM

Re-watching Tony Blair and Andrew Marr earlier this week reminded me of Denis Healey’s classic put down of Geoffrey Howe, in which he compared an attack by the Tory grandee to being savaged by a dead sheep. Perhaps Marr had on off day, or maybe he’s mellowed since his forensic and rigorously sourced examination of Gordon Brown’s mental health. Whatever the reasons, it’s safe to assume that ‘Marr/Blair’ will not be appearing at our cinemas any time soon.

But one exchange was revealing. When asked about his dalliances with business, Blair replied:

“I had far more trouble, if I may say this to you, with union leaders demanding something back than I ever did with high value donors”. (more…)

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