Swallowing Tony and Co's blatant deceptions

Published on 18/04/2004 01:00

"OURS is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. That is a prize beyond value." (Tony Blair, May 27, 1997.)

It’s the way he tells them - the lies, that is. The man who currently (but for how much longer?) controls the destiny of the United Kingdom is a stranger to truth. He always has been. It began with silly, pointless attempts to dramatise himself, of which the most notorious was his claim, in a wireless interview in 1997, to have watched his "teenage hero", Newcastle United football player Jackie Milburn, from a seat behind the goal at St James’s Park. As football fans pointed out, Milburn left Newcastle when Blair was four years old and there were no seats behind the goals until the 1990s.

Then there was his confession - to Des O’Connor, who else? - of how he stowed away on an aircraft bound for the Bahamas, at Newcastle airport, when he was 14. No flight from Newcastle has ever gone to the Bahamas: in Blair’s youth, the Isle of Man was as long-haul as it got. Blair is the most severe case of Munchausen’s Syndrome Without Proxy. The Scouse Spouse has also been infected by the fantasy virus. Without a trace of shame, Cherie chose a function run in aid of Centrepoint, a charity for the homeless, to relate how her husband had slept rough at Euston Station (actually for one night, during his ‘gap’ year between Fettes and Oxford).

In Number 10, truth is not an objective fact, but a subjective ‘spin’, defined by what is ‘helpful’ to the Leader’s aspirations or prejudices - the classic bunker mentality. In Blair’s case, the boy has become father to the man. Little white lies about watching Jackie Milburn have been supplanted by lethal mendacity over weapons of mass destruction. The Prime Minister’s proven dishonesty regarding the alleged casus belli in Iraq should be a resignation matter - arguably grounds for impeachment.

This is the primary issue in British politics today and at the various elections due in the next two years. There were strong bodies of opinion both for and against the war. In times of international crisis, a government with a democratic mandate has a right to demand certain sacrifices from its people; but the non-negotiable quid pro quo is that, in the most mature democracy in the world, the electorate should be told the truth.

Instead, the sneak from behind the Fettes bicycle shed devised a plan as cunning as Baldrick’s: let’s go to the United Nations and try to get the unreconstructed onanists on my back benches onside, with scare stories about WMD. By the time the New Labour lie machine had done its stuff, the public was anxiously scanning the skies, daily expecting a hail of anthrax-laden ICBMs on Sedgefield.

It was all lies and Blair knew it. The subsequent spin that there had been a misunderstanding in Number 10 about the distinction between strategic WMDs and battlefield ordnance is an insult to the public’s intelligence. Is it credible that Blair did not ask, or was not told without asking, what range the supposed Iraqi missiles could cover? In fact, in this instance, we have damning evidence from a Cabinet insider of Blair’s cynical attitude.

In his published diary entry for March 5, 2003, Robin Cook has related how he told Blair that day: "It’s clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?" Blair’s reply was: "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use."

There you have it: so far from being alarmed about strategic weapons of mass destruction, Blair was confident that even Saddam’s battlefield ordnance was no threat. Yet he took Britain to war on false pretences. Is there any more serious charge that can be levelled against a British Prime Minister? ("Hey, look! I mean - come on - one man’s death is another man’s photo opportunity...")

Corrosive Blairite deception has gone unchallenged for so long that it has coated itself in a carapace of self-righteousness. When Beverley Hughes was forced to resign, the legitimate convention that a minister who has misled the public must go was denounced as "misogyny". Credibility has long departed from the Blair Project. It was Jack Straw who made kidnapping trendy by his abduction of Pinochet; now the practice has returned to haunt him in the Middle East. The Prime Minister likes to pose as a dedicated leader of the war on terror: is that why Martin McGuinness became education minister for Northern Ireland?

Blair’s proclaimed ambition to introduce democracy into Iraq is being implemented in tandem with his ruthless elimination of democracy in Britain. The Iraqi electorate will be voting to decide its country’s future at the same time that we will not be voting on ours, as Blair railroads the European constitution onto the statute book. The modest delaying power of the House of Lords is to be reduced, being unacceptable to this Bonapartist dictator who cannot brook even one year’s postponement of his schemes for dismemberment of Britain.

Hubris has now deprived Labour of any understanding of the British voter. Alastair Campbell is to mastermind the general election campaign against the "rather nasty" Michael Howard (Campbell himself is universally regarded as an absolute sweetie). Twice-disgraced Mandy is already lurking in the woodwork, eager to wreak more mischief. The dogs are returning to their vomit, which is good news for the Tories.

It is a measure of how dysfunctional Blairism has become, that the kamikaze option of bringing back the Anti-Hunting Bill is being touted as a political coup. One Labour MP with an evident wish to spend more time with his family claimed "it will go down very well on the doorstep". Oh, yeah? Maybe with the anorak doing the canvassing; but what about the elector on the doorstep, worried about immigration, crime, house prices, pensions and public services? The Dangerous Foxhounds Act is a provocation, to a society with more mature priorities. How will the public react to the diverting of police from anti-terrorism work to chasing foxhunters? Nice one, Tony.

Whom the gods wish to destroy... The Blairite perception of Britain is as distorted as the Nazis’ imagining that the Duke of Hamilton and similar grandees ran the country; they had the excuse of being foreigners - what has blinded our home-grown fascists to political reality? This is not a government, but an infestation. It cannot be long now before a pest control programme cleanses Britain.