Blair's job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:





Blair's job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism
In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in. Now he can only emit a long wail of impotence

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 September 2010 20.30 BST


Who said books are dead? Did he blog or tweet, video or iPad? No, Tony Blair wanted to get a message across, so he wrote a book. He smeared the black stuff on trees, stitched it together and made people go out to buy it. Good for him.

Blair's mildly engaging stream of auto-eroticism shows him memoirising much as he ruled. He uses the first person singular a million times. He stages everything. He fixes on a theme and controls the narrative. The intention is to smother an Iraq apologia in endless quotables on Gordon Brown and his emotional idiocy and general hopelessness. It is cruel, but has worked a dream.

Blair was a politician of great talent, and a miserable prime minister. The service he did his country was considerable, but it was done by the time he took office in 1997. It was to anaesthetise the Labour party while he turned it into a vehicle to make him electable and his newly espoused Thatcherism irreversible, much as Attlee had made welfarism irreversible in 1945. The British left is still in denial on the subject.

When the Social Democratic party was formed in 1981, an ambitious young Blair abused them as "middle-aged, middle-class erstwhile Labour", with only "lingering social consciences prevent them voting Tory". When, a year later, Anthony Blair fought Beaconsfield, he was for CND, against Trident and for withdrawal from Europe. (None of this is in his memoir.)

When Blair arrived in parliament in 1983, he was eloquent in defence of clause IV renationalisation: "not a question of reinterpreting it … but a question of giving effect to it". There should be no curb on trade union rights, and privatisation should be abandoned "here, now and for ever". When Nigel Lawson cut income tax to 40%, Blair demanded Labour increase it to 60%. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/02/blair-job-done-1997-numb-labour

[avaistheone1]

1. I think Obama

is molding himself into the next Tony Phoney Blair.

[Jim Sagle]

2. The molding was done well before Obama ever announced as a candidate.

We are now in final shutdown.

These things take time, money, and planning. Carter, Blair and Clinton were earlier models; Obama will be the last version as the annihilation of the Democratic Party is completed and our descent into feudalization is made irreversible.

They came for the blue collars, and no one said boo. They came for the welfare system, and everyone said good riddance. They came for the techies, and we didn't know WHAT to say.

Now, in the end stage, they're coming for the seniors, and we have very little time, power or money left to fight them. Most likely we'll lose again, and for the very last time. But we've got to try.