One of those moments where you look back at your previous voting record during the #Blair years (never voted #Labour during this era) and the protests you went on, including the big 1 million anti-war march on London…and think yup, zero regrets.
The man was a neoliberal Thatcher wannabe then and now just wants the UK to live up #Trump and the techbros collective arsehole.
Why has #Blair chosen today when we’re all melting from record May temperatures to tell #Labour to abandon #NetZero and just ‘drill baby drill’?
Does he never leave the confines of some air conditioned mansion now?
When was the last time he met someone earning the minimum wage?
Does he honestly want children from poor families to suffer for their parents deciding to give birth to them?
What’s his solution to AI taking huge swathes of jobs and endangering life as we know it?
I’ve thought for the last three decades this quote by Lord Acton (Victorian politician and historian) absolutely describes #Blair:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority."
#Blair never wanted to give up the reins of democratic power…so he decided instead to subvert it by creating the Tony Blair Institute. Opaque funding and furthering whose views exactly?
‘As prime minister, Tony Blair oversaw a few hundred Downing Street staff and one country. Sixteen years later, he is now responsible for more than 800 staff who help advance his policies in nearly 40 countries’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/17/tony-blair-institute-rise
Can you judge a man by the company he keeps?
Yes, yes you can in the case of #Blair and his enthusiasm to join the so called #Trump Board of Peace.
He just loves hanging out with these guys who are also members:
Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel)
Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia) Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (Qatar) Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (UAE)
Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Belarus)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Türkiye)
Javier Milei (Argentina)
And until recently Viktor Orbán (Hungary)
Hmmm…’peace’.
In terms of his dismissal of #NetZero he thinks it’s unfair on public who he claims are being made to make ‘painful lifestyle choices for minimal reductions in global emissions’
I’ve yet to meet someone in social housing who was upset/angry because their home had been retrofitted to make it more energy efficient. They have greater thermal comfort and their home costs less to run.
It was ‘so painful’ charging my car from sun for free yesterday. How I wish I could get fleeced at petrol pumps.
#Blair also believes in throwing everything at #carboncapture - not proven at scale and insanely expensive.
Whereas #renewables are proven, scalable and coming down in price year on year.
It makes you wonder rather loudly whether he’s been captured by any of those leaders of the Gulf oil states that he so loves to be in the company of on the #Trump Board of Peace?
But ultimately #Blair ‘s 5700 word essay is not aimed at Starmer, Burnham or Streeting…I assume this is about retaining the favour and ear of whom he assumes will be heading up the UK government in the not too distant future…Nigel Farage.
For the Tony Blair Institute to continue having influence at the highest levels (which frustratingly it does despite this latest missive) it needs to be selling a vision of the world that appeals to future leaders.
So I decided to reread #Blair ‘s essay this morning.
He finds the latest #Labour leadership battle very retro and ‘20th century’…but his prescription is still to do what he did to the Labour Party in the 1990’s.
What I missed last night was his narcissism.
His fawning over rightwing populists who have a ‘project’ is grotesque.
This is a man who admires the Trumps, Farages and Milleis of this world…for they will advance his neoliberal views (which he pretends are the ‘radical centre’).
I could see nothing for voters - real people in what he said. This was entirely about pleasing business - their growth, removing pesky red tape and assuming they will be the beneficiaries of efficiencies through AI.
It reminded me that #Blair allowed #Mandelson to rise, who was then most famous for saying he was:
"intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”
@JugglingWithEggs To be fair that was supplemented by ‘as long as they pay their taxes’
And Mandelson went on to help them by being part of an administration educing taxes and that never put resources into chasing the super rich for taxes.
Not a surprise, he's always been on the Right, there's a reason he was known as "Tory Plan B"
Almost his first act as leader of Labour was to repeal Clause 4 of the Labour Party's Constitution...
Even though nobody believed that it would be instituted at any point.
It was his government that disappeared down the "Public/Private Partnership" resulting in the UK saving a few pounds in the short term to pay massively for building hospitals etc for decades instead!
Attached: 1 image Nicola Jennings on Tony #Blair and his critique of #Labour policy @Guardian – political cartoon gallery in London original-political-cartoon.com
My dad sent me that cartoon this evening!
The board of piece-meal autocrats
Message from Blair to Henry Kissinger
The greedy git is really missing yer
Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas
same as Thiel and Musk.... He does not even try and hide his Thatcherism these days.
Is it because there might be vague stirrings (late, inadequate, unconvincing) that any contender for the leadership has at least to pretend to have something faintly progressive about them? This is clearly very worrying.
I'm sure Keir or Wes or Andy (the collective embodiment of pale, male and stale) will start taking his phone calls again, as soon as they are done making their ritual nod to the dwindling membership.
Deport Blair. Russia or the US, I dont care.
I think Blair should NOT be allowed to speak as a friend at labour related conferences, let him hire his own hall to push racism and war.
👆 👆 👆
Not allowed quietly.
Blair is an enemy exposing himself. He alwayscwas a turncoat, now he beteaysnot just rhe UK, but civiluzatuon itself.
I tend to agree. I would never have voted for John Major…but I do think there was more humanity in him than Blair. I was reminded of this recently when I listened to his Rosebud interview with Gyles Brandreth.
I just could not get my head around what many people of my generation saw in him. I found his every utterance flaky and false. The folks who went to his Downing Street ‘Cool Britannia’ concert celebratory bash - it just confirmed in my head their ick factor: Noel Gallagher, Mick Hucknell and Richard Branson.
I was in my 30s when Blair became Labour leader. Like @bms48, I was horrified. In substance, Blair was a further huge leap away from socialism and social democracy. In style, he oozed so much insincerity that I couldn't understand how anyone tolerated him.
I abandoned voting Labour, choosing least-worst alternatives. Then in 1997, the Conservatives launched this campaign poster. I loved it, tried to bey a copy, but my local Tories wouldn't help. I'm glad it reappeared online.
@JugglingWithEggs I’m also seeing red when I think about that period in history when reformists (“social democrats”) collectively sold out to neoliberalism.
The big neo con.
@JugglingWithEggs what continues to baffle me is why the media keep trotting this man and his opinions out every time he opens his mouth.
I know he has a whole machinery behind him. But it is also known that he is objectively extremely unpopular, across the spectrum. We might as well all Liz Truss what she thinks (or that lettuce).
Anyway, agree with everything you've said.
@considermycat @thecasualcritic @JugglingWithEggs @afewbugs might be Joe Kennedy, at least he has a book with that title. Haven't read the book but used to follow him on twitter for a stretch.
I associate 'Authentocrat' more with the working class affect of the reactionary labour politician - Owen Smith and 'Frothy coffee', Streeting saying that rejecting corporate sponsorship by McDonald's is snobby. John Prescott.
Not really with Blair though because he never pretended not to be quite posh.
Then the specific 'we must be racist because the working class (but usually retired petit bourgeois) is', would call that ventriloquism.
But there is only a fine line between them and one can easily bleed into the other.
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