London Observer: 'Battered' Blair vows there's no turning back

[Jack Rabbit]

From the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited)
Dated Sunday September 28

'Battered' Blair vows: there's no turning back

PM pushes for a full third term

'We must hold our nerve'

By Kamal Ahmed and Andrew Rawnsley

Tony Blair admitted yesterday for the first time that he had been 'battered' by the events of the last few months, but said that to turn away from controversial reforms of Britain's public services would be 'catastrophic' and would lead to ultimate defeat.
In a wide-ranging and highly personal interview with The Observer ahead of the crucial Labour Party conference at Bournemouth this week, the Prime Minister gave few signals that he was willing to back down on reforms such as tuition fees for higher education or foundation hospitals, saying it was time for the Government to 'hold its nerve' in face of an onslaught of criticism.
He also said that launching military action against Iraq was entirely justified and that he would stand for a full third term at the next election.
'The worst thing we could do at the moment is back off and back away (on domestic issues),' he said. 'Whatever the battering you get, I actually feel more confident of our forward agenda. If we give up on that it would just be a catastrophic mistake.'

Read more.

[Maple]

1. Apparently Tony doesn't see that U-turn coming up

the one that also has the tunnel with the train coming straight for him.

[acmavm]

2. He can hardly admit the truth, that he was putz enough to let a thug

like Shrub lead him by the nose. And apparently he's not smart enough to admit that he was "had" and try to cut his losses. And by no means would anyone of these nuts, who are so convinced of their own infallibility, admit that maybe he should rethink his position on anything. And exactly what is his "forward agenda"? I doubt that he even knows. He has no credibility anymore, but it would be worse for the guy to admit he was wr-wr-wr-wrrr-wrong.

So the only possible course for him is to try to bullshit his way into another term. Maybe Bush can try to drum up some support for the doofus while he's there in November. But then again, maybe not since his political advisors are telling him he needs to "distance" himself from Bush and the other neo-cons. (Don't you think it's very telling that the last syllable of that word is "con"?)

edit: bad spelling and grammar skills.

[Cha]

4. Can you image the reaction when bush gets over there in Nov?

They let them have better demonstrations over there in England, don't they?

Aren't they more democratic than the USA, now? :-(

[T_i_B]

6. Welcome to the one-party state that is Great Britain

Britain is essentially a one party state these days, a democracy in name only. This is why Blair is so arrogant and high handed. Here is a good article by the late Hugo Young to explain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,821179,00.html

On the surface, Britain is a country politically doing what it should. The government has a big mandate. It continues to be tolerated by an unecstatic but untroubled public. The prime minister is better regarded than any of his predecessors at a similar point in their second term. The polity is evidently working. Yet in reality it is diseased. It lacks conflict. Britain has evolved into a mental as well as political one-party state. There's a uniformity of allegiance, under which the absence of organised disagreement legitimises, or at any rate readily accepts, a culture of easy opportunism.
The government rejoices in this, but the Tory disintegration is just as responsible for it. We see that the failure of the Tories stretches far beyond the party. It taints the entire quality of British life. For there is no alternative magnet of power, no competition for Blairism, and this means that contention is mostly futile. The establishment, whether in politics, in business or in intellectual life, is all of one colour. There is little point in being anything else.

The broad penumbra of public life, from which all such appointments are drawn, is now peopled exclusively by those who have made their number with the only orthodoxy they can see prevailing for many years ahead. Allegiance, in these days of apathy and opportunism, may not be strong. But it is all-pervasive.

This is an unhealthy, ultimately repellent, national condition, not found in any other western democracy. The one-party state of mind as well as politics doesn't seem to be making the country happier, or better governed. It is a direct, pernicious consequence of the collapse of the Tories as a political force. It has pretty well the entire establishment, for reasons of opportunism or comfort or idleness, in its grip.

But it is more an offence against than an endorsement of the British way of politics, and perhaps that is a reason why, below establishment level, something is stirring. The Tories may have nothing to say, and offer no magnetic pole round which alternative approaches to power may gather, but some trade unions can.

[dbt]

8. More democratic and a freer press to boot!

Who'd have ever thunk it?

:argh:
dbt

[Cha]

3. I'll have to start calling him "kamikaze blair"

blair sickens me and I hope the Brits oust the pretender. As we shall have to do our job and send bush back the brush in crawford,Tx

[arikara]

5. Do they have voting machines over there?

He might be able to pull it off...

[T_i_B]

7. Exactly how arrogant and two faced is Blair?

One minuite he's trying to say but the moment the electorate tells him not to carry on with hard right policies he starts spouting off all this stuff about "the left" which is quite frankly left over from the 80's. Blair is still living in a 1980's timewarp where the rest of us who actually have to live with his policies have moved on.

Blair is power mad, arrogant, out of touch and the sooner he is removed from Downing Street the better it will be for the Labour party which currently stands for nothing other than power for Blair at any cost.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Quotes from the Observer interview

"There are those who say that, after more than six years in office, any leader's best days and brightest ideas are bound to be behind him. Does he ever look around the Cabinet table and ask himself whether someone else might just conceivably do the job better? He laughs: 'No.'"

And there's the root problem, in my opinion. He's so convinced that he has all the answers, that he thinks it laughable that one of his colleagues could actually do a better job. Not a reply like "we're a team, and I was elected by the party to lead it", or "it's our policies that are important", but a dismissal of the cabinet that he selected. It's the way Thatcher was.

Time warp for the British: remember the Spitting Image sketch, where Thatcher takes the cabinet to a restaurant?
Waiter: "What would you like, madam?"
Thatcher: "Steak, raw"
Waiter: "And the vegetables?"
Thatcher: "Oh, they'll have steak too"