Skip to main content

So farewell then...

Watching Blair last night, it is tempting to be charitable. "He will be missed", "He had good intentions", "He had some successes". Indeed several fairly hard nosed commentators have been getting nearly as emotional as Blair himself- a positive chorus of E.J. Thribb-like commentary.
I, however, can not see it that way.
Blair's mistakes have been catastrophic:
"Ethical Foreign Policy"
Mishandling relations with the European Union
Wasting two pounds in every three spent on Health
Running up massive future debts in misconceived PPP deals
Running up massive future debts in misconceived PFI deals
Peter Mandelson as Trade Minister
The Millennium Dome
Freedom of Information Act farce
Jo Moore Affair
Estelle Morris
Failure to recognise that devolution applied to England as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Failure to budget properly for Olympic Games
Failure to budget properly for Infrastructure expenditure
School tables
Cheriegate
Betrayal of Robin Cook
Iraq
Alastair Campbell and lies
Centralisation of Power
Building houses in flood plains
David Kelly
David Blunkett
Ken Livingstone- first throwing him out, then letting him back into Labour
Iraq
Dodgy Dossier
Iraq
Hutton Whitewash
Iraq
Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay and illegal and unconstitutional imprisonment in UK
Iraq
Lord Levy
Iraq
Peter Mandelson as EU Commissioner
Cash for Honours
Supercasino fiasco
Iraq
Iran seizes British Sailors and Marines
Iraq
Iraq
Iraq

Off set?

Not Much.
Perhaps giving independence to the Bank of England (in fact a Lib Dem policy opposed by Labour until 24 hours before they announced it)

There is something curiously unBritish about Blair's emotions. We don't usually go in for being emotional, indeed we are famous for not being emotional.

Blair has been some kind of exotic alien: an English Edinburgh Scotsman with Middle Class French who spent his earliest years in Australia. Perhaps this is why his engagement with foreigners, despite his disastrous foreign policy, has been more consistent than his engagement with domestic affairs.

In any event, we can only give vent to a sigh of relief: Perhaps Gordon Brown will be a Prime Minister who actually cares more about the domestic than the international.

We can only hope so.
Labels:

Comments

Falling on a bruise said…
I do not hold out high hopes for Gordy, mainly because he is drenched in the stink of Blair and his disasterous adventures in Iraq.
Kinda stinks because i would rather suck out my eyeballs with a sink plunger than vote Tory but Gordon was as complicit in Iraq as Blair.
11:40 pm
Cicero said…
Yep
10:28 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop
Post a Comment
Read more

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo
Post a Comment
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas,
Post a Comment
Read more