Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Blair's egomania, part 34,763

Today at Prime Minister's Questions, responding to ex-Tory leader William Hague, Tony Blair said

"He and I stood in a democratic election in 2001 and I... remember the result"
The obvious implication, of course, is that in a democratic vote, the electorate chose Blair over Hague.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but in the 2001 election, Tony Blair stood for election in Sedgefield, County Durham, William Hague in Richmond, Yorkshire. Only 22 miles away from each other, perhaps, but entirely different constituencies. Hague and Blair have never stood against each other in any election.

In other words, yet more proof - as if any were needed - that Blair doesn't understand the concept of the British system of representative democracy. Hence the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill - wiping out the inconvenience of Parliamentary scrutiny once and for all. He genuinely thinks that everyone voting Labour was voting for him personally. He genuinely thinks that what he wants, he should get.

(Hey - it was in the manifesto, so ALL LABOUR MPs HAVE A DUTY TO VOTE FOR IT, as the manifesto is the Little Red Book containing all the unbounded wisdom of Chairman Blair. Unless the thing that was in the manifesto has subsequently fallen out of favour with the leadership, like the partial smoking ban or commitment not to raise university tuition fees, in which case it shalt verrily be airbrushed from the official history of the glorious reich.)

Welcome to our Blairite New World, where smoking is banned while greenhouse gas emissions rise; where foxhunting is banned but animal testing booms; where reading the names of soldiers killed in an illegal war gets you arrested, but calling for beheadings and terrorist attacks in response to some cartoons lets you wander free; where every British citizen is tagged and tracked while terrorists are ignored.

That one little throw-away remark shows that Blair genuinely believes that he - personally - has a mandate for all his vastly contradictory policy decisions, and that his cult of personality is progressing apace. It is also yet another example of why he won't step down until Gordon Brown has made himself sufficiently indistinguishable from the Dear Leader as to make any transition seamless.

Kim Il-Blair will be replaced by Kim Brown-Il. That time is coming, and when it does, the change will be all but imperceptible. It's time to get out, before they prevent us from doing even that.

Update: Unity at Talk Politics reads legislation so the press, public and politicians don't have to (not that, it would appear, they do anyway):
"If you think the votes that will take place over the next two days on the Terrorism Bill are about the 'glorification of terrorism', then like the BBC in this report, you have got things very badly wrong... The main amendment to this section of the Bill that the government will be moving today seeks not to reintroduce the offence of glorifying terrorism but merely to remove a definition of 'indirect encouragement' inserted by the Lords... What we have here is quite simply a framework for law-maling by propaganda; an attempt to define the precise parameters of this offence by banging away at the public in the press with their preferred definition - which does include glorification - in the hope that when the time comes and a relevant case comes to court, jurors will have swallowed their bullshit wholesale and deliver a precedent that suits their purposes."


Update 2: MPs are idiots. Passed by 315 votes to 277. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH.

7 Comments:

Blogger El Casareño Inglés said...

We'd had enough of Blair's britain in 2002.

The final straw was being told that if we pursued our neligence case against the hospital (for allowing my 42 weeks pregnant wife to me sexually assaulted by a nurse) our critically ill daughter would be removed from the GP's list - effectively a death sentence unless you can afford to go private.

You think I'm joking? Making it up?

PS: even though the govt. here 'banned' smoking in bars from 1 Jan, you can still smoke in practically any small bar. And the price of fags has come down. 'Mr Bean' as they call him here might be a socialist, but he ain't stupid.

2/15/2006 03:24:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rehabilitate these guys (and their right to get married).

Chris

2/15/2006 04:09:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thing is monkeyman, the majority of people are voting for the leader of the party. Ask a random guy in the street who they voted for.. and they'll say things like "I voted Labour cause I like Blair, but that Howard is a fucker..". The public aren't overtly interested in politics locally, if even nationally - they just vote for the face they like.. which is why Cameron stands a chance now cause he spins his spin amazingly well.

So, in essence, people do vote for Blair specifically; his comment to Hague wouldn't bother me, it's actually quite funny.

Many other countries have similar laws on smoking, I think it's a weak defence to say "uh but yeah um they make loads of money from cigarettes".

Meh I don't mean to come across how I'm coming across, I pretty much agree with your points. I dunno.

d

2/15/2006 04:33:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

nosemonkey - I agree with Dan here.
Although, technically Blair & Hague never stood against each other, the reality, as you well know and as everyone well knows, is entirely different.
You've made many fine points about HMG's wrongdoings that it really makes ones such as this seem daft and petty, especially when what you're talking about is something fundamental to the freedom of parliament, and I can envisage you doing it in far better ways.

Oh, and are you really equating foxhunting with medical research? For a start, this government (well, if you want to get pedantic, and I'm sure you do, the 1997 - 2001 government) ensured that no animal testing for cosmetics would take place in britain by telling the companies that do it to pack up and fuck off or else they would ban it (thus not wasting parliamentary time while also ending something that was fundamentally wrong).

If animal testing is booming (and the page you linked to had the following line near the top "The number of experiments involving live animals has halved in the last 30 years"*), then that merely means that there's a lot of research going on into new medicines. Call me old fashioned, but I think that's probably a good thing.


*I can testify to how much the animal research has reduced over the last few decades: a former colleague of mine used to have a license to experiment on 100,000 animals per year, just for himself. Now that sort of level is unheard of, that's more like what a largeish company would get for the whole company. Oh, and the animals would be around 90 - 99% rodents

2/15/2006 06:53:00 pm  
Blogger BondWoman said...

"MPs are idiots"

I'll take that as a big thumbs down for majoritarianism then. I look forward to tomorrow's thesis on democratic altneratives to majoritarianism.

Let's face it, you can't blame party politics (much) because they were given a free vote.

2/15/2006 11:57:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If Monkey does (as I do) want a directly elected leader of the commons (not head of state) then that is what we should have -- Blair cannot start to use misleading language just because the people are not careful in voting for policy over personality.

2/16/2006 09:46:00 am  
Blogger quarsan said...

After the votes last night, I took a wander down memory lane and I've come to the conclusion that we need to use the democratic process and vote, but vote for Anyone But Labour.

2/16/2006 09:55:00 am  

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