New Labour
Tony Blair and New Labour
Like many people in this country, I don’t consider myself ‘political’ in any sense - I have never belonged to any political party and, although my vote has usually been cast more to the right than left over the last 40 odd years, no particular party could ever been guaranteed my support in a general election.
Like my others, I suppose my antipathy towards politicians in this country generally deepened during the John Major administration, where money-grubbing inadequates appeared more interested in lining their own pockets than serving the interests of the electorate. Whatever some commentators choose to say about John Major, and leaving aside his leg-over with Edwina, I would maintain that he was an essentially decent, intelligent and honest individual. Unfortunately he was also weakened and at times utterly hamstrung by a razor-thin majority and, as a consequence, allowed himself to be surrounded by some shysters and outright crooks. Like everyone else at the time, I was glad to see the back of him and his administration – at the time I had a vote in Major’s constituency and even voted for the Referendum Party in protest.
Blair and New Labour seemed almost too good to be true, particularly his promise for a ‘whiter than white administration'. Time has shown that Blair himself is as bad as any of the sleezy creeps that infested Major’s administration. He and his dreadful wife are a pair of serial liars, who have spent much of their time in Downing Street trying to find new ways to bury their snouts in the money trough of crooked businessmen and corrupt foreign politicians. He is serially addicted to ‘willy-waving’ in his attempts to appear a front-rank international statesman and whilst happy to commit British forces here, there and everywhere, lacks the personal integrity to ensure they are either adequately funded or equipped for the task in hand.
With a major deployment to Afghanistan planned for 2006 appearing rapidly over the horizon, I think that the UK armed forces are facing a real personnel crisis. After being repeatedly lied to and betrayed by Blair, service personnel are now leaving the armed forces in record numbers. Of course some people will try and disguise the true figures, but they cannot hide the fact that far fewer experienced men and women are extending their service or they’re taking the opportunity to PVR or buy themselves out. The TA is also haemorrhaging experienced personnel at a rate never experienced before and, if current trends continue, will be even less than useless as an effective back up to the regular Army.
I would like to see the back of Blair and his incompetent, sleezy administration, but I frankly doubt that over time the Tories or anyone else would be any better. The sad fact is that in recent years almost everyone in this country has been badly served by the vast majority of the politicians we have chosen to elect, but unfortunately in a democratic country that’s what sometimes happens – but in time it might change. In the meantime, no matter what else he does whilst he hangs on in office, Blair’s own epitaph should be as follows: Tony Blair was a corrupt, serial liar who, despite quite limited ability, somehow managed to remain in office only because at the time the opposition were utterly useless.
“Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same old story” Lincoln Steffens