Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. For a 55 year old man it was very Heaven to witness the Labour victory of May 1997, burying, as I thought the Thatcherite years, the meanest-spirited era of modern British history, and ushering in, to power, a party chock-full of able and well intentioned men.
What I didn’t know was that Labour Ministers were not team players, but
were divided into two factions at each others’ throats, that Cabinets did not
meet with the Prime Minister first among equals, to discuss issues . In fact
Cabinets did not meet collectively at all.
I’ve read the memoirs, and the political diaries of Chris Patten, an honest,
courageous and brilliant man, who served as a junior Minister. He is a man of proven
principle, as well as the least ideological. And for a Party man is trusted and
liked by those of all parties.
Tony Blair was the least loyal of bosses and appointed and dismissed junior
Ministers most casually. Rather than holding Cabinet around a table, he’d sit
on a sofa and invite the odd Minister to discuss an idea or a whim. The first
two term of his Government saw massive investment in Education and Health with
the modernisation of Schools and Hospitals, and
the end of the war in Ireland which had lasted nearly 28 years. The collapse of
the Soviet Union had resulted in Britain declaring it had no longer strategic
requirements there. Western powers stopped propping up the Apartheid Regime in
South Africa for the same reason.
The OBSERVER columnist Andrew Rawnsley traces “The Rise and Fall of
New Labour” in “THE END OF THE PARTY” and it
describes how, after the criminal attack on the TWIN TOWERS in New York, Tony
Blair and his cronies embarked on an unprovoked attack on a country that had
nothing to do with the New York atrocity, and killed more than a million people,
mainly civilians.
George W Bush and Dick Cheyney, the CIA and British Intelligence knew perfectly
well that Iraq had no part in the New York atrocity and that Iraq posed no
threat to the United States or Britain. Neither the British Labour Party nor
British Public Opinion supported the preparations for the IRAQ War.
A policy of Mass Deception was launched and when the BBC , which had apparently
been advised of the deception by experts, Blair’s Press Secretary, Alistair Campbell
went on the warpath. A senior expert on Weapons of Mass Production, Dr
David Kelly, a Civil Servant had his name leaked to the media and his body was
found shortly afterwards.
A Judicial Enquiry, conducted by Lord Hutton (whose Curriculum Vitae may be
checked on Wikipedia) .found Tony Blair and his cronAndies blameless for the
launching of a war on a false premise and the death of David Kelly. Alistair
Campbell launched a vengeful attack on the BBC.
Andrew Rawnsley’s book has 761 pages of text and a further 130 of notes and an
index.
It describes meetings of cabinet ministers, Civil Servants and Spin Doctors
where the foulest of language was the normal currency and where ethics,
morality and principle
were rare. Blair was charming, but shallow. He played air-guitar in University,
when other students had deeper
interests, he was interested in money and in awe of those who had loads of it.
At Davos he found himself seated between Bono and Bill Gates. I certainly
wouldn’t sit beside Bono if the guy paid me. And I doubt Bill Gats would
be fun be around, however clever he is.
Gordon Brown and his gang who were fanatically opposed to Blair, not on matters
of principle, were an equally sad lot.
Between them they discredited the Labour Party and it will not be resurrected
by a return to its New Labour stunts.
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