Spin, bluster and premierships…

THIS week I was planning to write about the comparative differences between the philosophies of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer. Quite brief. Provocative. And thrilling. You’d have loved it. Trust me. I’m a …  Never mind!

But then something happened. My blood pressure started rising rapidly. Again. And not in a good way.

After a whirlwind week of arrests, political/police confessions and allegations of phone hacking, blagging and deleted emails by Murdoch’s News International, who unexpectedly emerges from the woodwork? Yes. You guessed: Tony Blair.

Delivering his most damning verdict to date on the government of former British PM, Gordon Brown, he claimed New Labour died when he left office in 2007: “I remain unremittingly an advocate of third-way, centre-ground, progressive politics that came to be called New Labour”.

Hang on there, Tony! You’re being unduly immodest about your achievements while in office. Let’s not forget all the other ‘politics’. An ‘illegal’ war. Unelected individuals making decisions. End of civil liberties. Overpaid public servants. Billions of pounds of debt for public sector pensions, the PFI school/ hospital programme (the national debt now exceeds £1.9 trillion). Not to mention approval of Brown’s financial decisions as Chancellor that have caused lasting damage to the UK’s economy.

But why is Blair making this statement now? Going on to claim his own electoral successes from his “pro-enterprise and business policy that took away from the Tories the mantle of the party of business”, what he’s really trying to do is to put a positive spin on being elected by, and having pursued the interests of, bankers and international mass media organisations like News Corp.

In fact, you can’t help suspecting that Blair is attempting here to divert public attention from his ‘sleazy’ relationship with Murdoch. And his proposal, too, that the UK join the Euro as his way of seeking the EU presidency job. Again.

Yes, Mr Blair. You’ll go down in history as having transformed the country. From something great and promising to something confused and poorer. Your premiership was all spin and bluster. What the country wanted and deserved was real policies about real issues – not sticking-plaster legislation and knee-jerk responses.

Really! Don’t we have enough problems without this fifth horseman of the apocalypse, blinded by his ego, fêted in the press every time he opens his mouth?

No phones were hacked or blagging carried out in the writing of this column. Promise! 

Photo credit: World Economic Forum

Nora Johnson’s novel, The De Clerambault Code (www.nora-johnson.com) available at Amazon in paperback and as eBook. Profits to Cudeca