MICHAEL CARMICHAEL, AAPC, EAPC, IAPC

archived: 1 - 7 May, 2005         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  May 3, 2005 

                        TONY BLIAR 

Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair possesses the highest levels of talent and intelligence in the political universe.  Articulate, charismatic, dynamic, Tony Blair’s premiership ranks with the all-time greats of British history:  Pitt, Peel, Disraeli, Churchill and Atlee.  Blair’s personal commitment to social justice is unassailable.  Over the past eight years, Blair’s New Labour government took a good economic portfolio and enhanced it at many levels while granting solace and support to the poor, the sick and the aged by implementing programmes never countenanced by the Conservatives. 

However, like Achilles who had a weak and vulnerable tendon, Tony Blair suffers from a deeply disfiguring scar upon his political countenance.  Since early 2001, he has clicked his heels to stand at attention eager to do the bidding of the neoconservative government of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.  During the build up to the war in Iraq, Blair served as America’s globetrotting Ambassador-at-Large as he was dispatched on a series of Missions Impossible that kept him whizzing from Islamic capital to Islamic capital passionately seeking military and diplomatic support for Bush’s war against Islam.  Bush was motivated by his blind faith in his version of the Judaeo-Christian god, as well as his all-consuming need for oil, gas and every other conceivable form of geopolitical power.  Blair’s political and personal motives remain obscure to this day.    

Blair’s subservience to the commands of neoconservative Washington are seen to threaten British sovereignty far more fundamentally than the European Union and its program of legal, political, monetary and fiscal influence ever could.  While Britain has long served as the most heavily burdened of several aircraft carriers and staging posts for American military bases, public dissatisfaction with the British role as subordinate frontline command post for the Pentagon is morphing into a morbid distaste for America.   

This new era of Anti-Americanism transfigured Blair’s image into that of an unctuous lap dog of the neoconservative trolls lurking in the underground caverns of Mount Weather.  Worse.  Today, the political centre of Britain woke up to the shocking headlines that Blair has secretly ordered a massive military expenditure to upgrade Britain’s aging and archaic nuclear deterrent that will be deeply disturbing to the core of his political power base in the Labour Party. 

This revelation is causing shock, awe and outrage throughout the political epicentres of Britain.  This is bad news for Blair, very bad, indeed, for we are in the closing days of a bitterly contested political campaign.  Last week, Blair was hit with extremely serious allegations that he had received secret legal advice to the effect that the war against Iraq would be illegal if there were no second UN resolution.  Reeling from that attack, Blair has spent the weekend inundated with a punishing cataract of criticism driven by a feeding frenzy focused on his sharp drop in credibility amongst the most likely voters. 

The polls suggest that Labour is losing traction.  At the same time, the Conservatives have been led by an incompetent captain, Michael Howard.  Had the Conservatives criticized Blair on his perceived subservience to Bush, they would be topping Labour in the polls today, but they did nothing of the sort.  They have moved to the right to focus on crime and immigration (read, racism and xenophobia) in a mad tactic to cling to their own shrivelling base of power, the hard right.   

The centre of British politics is occupied by a small, third party.  The Liberal Democrats are led by a man whose profile is virtually unknown outside of the UK.  Charles Kennedy has a gruff Scottish accent that appeals to working class Britons.  Known as a hard-drinking Scot in a political culture that is dominated by the English South, Kennedy opposed the Iraq War, and he spoke eloquently to the massive London anti-war rally in February, 2003.  Slow moving and laborious in sharp contrast to Blair’s quicksilver rapier of wit, Kennedy even advocates a rise in taxes to cover the costs of his policies for better education, health and social services.  If Blair were seen to be independent of Bush, or if Howard had a reasonable message with some momentum behind it, Charles Kennedy would have been left in the dust as usual.  Not any more, for he is gaining political strength with every passing hour. 

In broader terms, the revelation that Blair will launch a new era of nuclear weaponry on the back of the British taxpayer means that the defence policies of Britain have been outsourced to the neoconservative Pentagon in Bush’s Washington.  Soon after attaining power, the Bush White House announced its earnest desires to abrogate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in order to create a new generation of bunker-busting nukes, as well as its overtly preposterous agenda to introduce a new generation of nuclear weapons that are to be hurled into orbit in outer space. 

What military or strategic relevance these antiquated systems might have in an era dominated by terrorism in sharp contrast to the Cold War era - when superpowers faced off against each other with all the fingers of both hands poised and fidgety on the nuclear triggers - remains to be seen.  That they can serve no useful purpose whatsoever against the likes of Bin Laden, Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda is a dead certainty.  This development is especially significant in Britain which has such a rich history of nuclear protest encompassing the, ‘Ban the bomb’ movement led by Lord Bertrand Russell, the protests against US nuclear weapons at Greenham Common and the launch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). 

In America and Britain, the public is gradually awakening to the indisputable fact that this costly new arms race for a new generation of useless nuclear weaponry is nothing less than a massive waste of money as well as a dangerous and fundamental threat to national security.  Somewhere in the bowels of America, there is a Strangelovian administrator, possibly even the besieged Director of Los Alamos, known to his staff as, “The evil Dr. Peter Nanos,” who is orchestrating the strategic de-stabilization of our planet.  With 185 nuclear warheads, Britain’s strategic arsenal may now rank below that of Israel.  Outdated, unusable and strategically irrelevant, the purpose of this latest nuclear folly remains heavily obscured by the indelible fact of 9/11. 

That Tony Blair would agree to follow America’s lead into the next – stratospherically extravagant - level of strategic defense with no rational argument on the table simply beggars the belief system of the British voter.  At the same time it is a lavish gift to the neoconservatives in Washington, who will cite British resolve to muster political support for more massive arms expenditures which will top $100 billion for the US taxpayers. 

In this week’s British elections, I predict that New Labour’s towering majority in Parliament will shrivel significantly signalling the rejection of Tony Blair primarily because of his perceived obeisance to the deeply unpopular neoconservative policies of George Bush.  This development will foreshadow a resurgence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in next year’s mid-term elections in America. 

This electoral retribution of Tony Blair will portend the urgent need for his replacement as Prime Minister.  Blair actually should have resigned months ago to make way for the much more popular and – more importantly – vastly more credible Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.  That Blair refused to stand down represents a massive overdose of hubris.   

This Thursday, Tony Blair will receive the judgment of the voters.   From that moment until he leaves Downing Street, Tony Blair will be in the political pillory.  This need never have happened.  He responded to the wrong masters, and the public will exact its revenge with ridicule, revulsion and ultimately with political repudiation. 

At some point in time over the past five years, some wag dubbed the British Prime Minister with a most unflattering sobriquet.  For generations of Britons, our stupendously capable Prime Minister will forever be, Tony Bliar. 

RELATED ARTICLES (blue hyperlinks are active) 

Revealed: Blair to upgrade Britain's nuclear weapons - PM secretly signs up to new deterrent as UN tries to cut global threat 

Iraq war 'will haunt Blair's legacy like Suez' 

Experts leave 'chicken' PM in a flap 

Labour fears meltdown in marginals - Chancellor warns voters that his party's headline poll lead masks a deteriorating situation in many key seats 

Lib Dems poised to hit Blair's majority, poll shows 

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Last Update: 03/23/2006