Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Blair bashing: "Hopefully this low-grade and wretched man will be out of Downing Street before long, because many of his party are starting to feel the moral humiliation that already grips the rest of us. The most sordid moment yet of Tony Blair’s increasingly despicable premiership came two weeks ago when, in a response to Sir Peter Tapsell at Prime Minister’s Questions, he defended the murder of hundreds of innocents in Fallujah. It was a deadly moment this, an apotheosis: the final fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s policy of complete identification, come what may, with the United States. Tony Blair’s dedication to George Bush is so total that he will follow the President into any killing field or torture chamber."

"All students of his life have noted his way of attaching himself to more cogent individuals — Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, etc. — as a method of personal self-affirmation. Blair cannot survive without such a crutch, as the government’s listless, drifting ineptitude since the departure of Campbell nine months ago demonstrates.... His policy as Prime Minister is best summed up like this: he is the partygoer who automatically sucks up to the most powerful man in the room.... Another of the mysteries surrounding the terrible and tragic events of the last 15 months is how the Labour party has tolerated Blair. It was led into war on the back of a monstrous lie about weapons of mass destruction (last week Tony Blair made John Scarlett, one of the primary perpetrators of that deception, head of the Secret Intelligence Service) and yet seems not to resent it. This is the most maladroit as well as malign intervention of modern times, and yet there has scarcely been a word of complaint from the party of Keir Hardie, of Aneurin Bevan, of Michael Foot. There is a disconnection here, a most peculiar inability to grasp or confront reality."

"Gordon Brown is seen everywhere as the successor. And yet it should not be forgotten that the Chancellor — like Michael Howard’s Tory party — supported the war as well as its disgusting aftermath. There are only two politicians in Britain today with the moral right to take the premiership from Tony Blair. One is the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, who lacks the capacity to do the job, and the other is Robin Cook. Cook’s resignation on the eve of the war was the most noble and distinguished act of its kind since Duff Cooper quit as First Lord of the Admiralty over Munich. The quality of Cook’s decision then has been matched only by the calibre of his conduct since. Realistically one must accept that Gordon Brown will succeed Tony Blair. But only Cook has the stature and the vision to lead Britain away from America, and out of the sewer into which Tony Blair has led us."

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