One again Tony Blair has done his Houdini act but the fault is not his. He was badly questioned and his uncompromising stance was unsurprising because it was his only option.
You must also remember that when we elect our leaders, we are delegating difficult decision-making to them. We elect them to make difficult decisions which will not always be the correct decisions.
Whatever Blair’s motives for volunteering the United Kingdom to ride shotgun for the USA will never really be known but we perceive that they were a mixture of misinformation, Blair’s vanity, a weak Cabinet, an incompetent Secret Service and a muzzled military High Command. The Chilcot Inquiry is as much an exercise in the Establishment’s self-justification as any half-hearted attempt to elicit the truth. We must also remember that “the truth” is not an absolute value but depends on where you’re standing. Yesterday, Blair was telling his truth.
Please click on the picture below. This is a speech by an American war veteran who is expressing better than any politician what the Iraqi war means to the ordinary soldier.
January 30th, 2010 at 11:52 am
I agree with most of your points, but “when we elect our leaders, we are delegating difficult decision-making to them” – well, no.
Putting a cross on a ballot paper doesn’t delegate all responsibility, particularly in the case when the elected diverge from their manifesto-stated aims (there’s a wee bit of difference between “education, education, education” and “war, war, war”). It’s not democracy when the views of the populace aren’t reflected in government.
I did vote for Blair in 1997, and soon regretted it – though even then it was clearly a lesser of various evils choice. Haven’t voted since, feels hypocritical to pay lip service to what is clearly a broken system.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Ace post.
I never have voted for Blair & never would.
I was one of the few people who saw through the polished politician. I never trusted or believed a word he said.
Re: The above comment: If you refuse to vote in an election, you have no right to complain about the result.
January 30th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
oops, that should have been “war, war, war, war, war” – Iraq (1998), Serbia(1999), Sierra Leone(2000), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003).
“If you refuse to vote in an election, you have no right to complain about the result”. Rubbish, everyone has every right to complain about the behaviour of the people in power.
Taking a trivial, but real case – when it became clear that Nixon was a crook, should all of the people that voted for him have dumbly accepted his dirty tricks?
Taking an artificial case: say the presidential candidates are Stalin and Hitler. Who would you vote for?
Usually the case is that horse has already bolted, there is no desirable candidate. The result itself is pretty irrelevant.
January 30th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
The sad fact is that in the UK election results are never decided by committed voters from either party. The decision-maker is the “floating voter” who has no particular affiliation and who will allow himself to be influenced by whatever is “flavour of the month”. For 10 years, Blair fooled some of the people (the floating voters) most of the time.
Also remember that EVERY government ultimately FAILS.By the time that Blair was leader of New Labour, the Tories, under John Major, appeared to have screwed up. Although it was Chancellor Ken Clark’s Conservative legacy which sustained Gordon Brown’s Chancellorship for ten years.
January 30th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Danny, The election immediately before the invasion of Iraq had the lowest turnout ever (59.4%). Labour held onto power with about 40% of the total vote. So, when you say “It’s not democracy when the views of the populace aren’t reflected in government.” is a difficult concept because Labour were only representing 40% of all voters which was only 25% of the eligible voting population.
By the way, you should understand that a Party Manifesto is not a contract with the voters – it is a sales pitch. Catchy litle numbers such as “EDUCATION, EDUCATION EDUCATION” are no more than marketing slogans and are written by people like Saatchi and Saatchi.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Trouble is that much of the deciosion-making was too influenced by unelected peole such as Alastair Campbell.