XXIX
At home, the domestic arrangements
In the Blair family
Were constantly under strain
By the neighbour from hell
The Scottish minotaur
In the neighbouring house
Roared in his sanctuary
Sending frightened secretaries running for cover
Hurling mobile phones out of windows.
Every day Gordon Brown
Head lowered like a charging bull
Would enter the office of the prime minister
Swearing and ranting
A dark fountain of unexpurgated expletives
Claiming Blair had ruined his life
That he had been deceived by Blair’s promise
To bequeath the premiership to him, demanding
That Blair should depart immediately
Having already overstayed, insisting
That he, Brown, was far more capable
Of administering the country.
Every evening Blair
Having attempted to placate
His ally the paranoiac
Attempted to remain calm
With an effort of will.
Having seen off Mrs Rochester
He would breathe a sigh of relief
Observed by an amused Alistair Campbell
Busily making notes for his own diaries
Not averse to such entertainment
Until in due course
The emotionally exhausted prime minister
Would finally retreat
To the flat above his great office
And pour out his annoyance
To his sympathetic wife.
Every evening Cherie would suggest
With the same monotonous regularity
That he should sack Brown
Forthwith and without regret.
Whereupon Blair would let out
A terrible soul-rendering howl
That Brown was his only friend
That he could no more sack him
Than disown his own mother.
So like an absurd pantomime
The three parties in the marriage
Found themselves locked into
Their dysfunctional relationship
Each driven by their own demons
Each unable to break the impasse.
XXX
In the larger world
While Afghanistan seemed to be static
Saddam Hussein, the old enemy
Of the Bush family
Was causing increasing concern in Iraq.
Amongst the western intelligence agencies
Who were inclined to be sensitive
To the wishes of their political masters
There appeared to be a mutually reinforcing alarm
Over Saddam’s proposed weapons of mass destruction
Though none of them seemed to take note
Of the likelihood that Saddam himself
Far from attempting to cover his own programmes
Was keen to threaten others
Including the Americans themselves
With exaggerated reports of his military capacity.
To add to the volatile mixture
Blair himself was keen to develop
With President Bush
The same mutually supportive relationship
As had characterised Afghanistan.
With Britain the ideologue of democracy
America supplying the military power
The two governments’ apparent agreement
Carried more weight than the two in isolation.
So by a curious irony
Blair entered into a far more sympathetic relation
With George Dubya Bush
Than his own chancellor and political partner.
The closer collaboration between Bush and Blair
Added further fuel to the fire
Of an increasingly tense international situation
With British and US intelligence agencies
Vying with one another
To produce empirical evidence
Of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
XXXI
It now is widely believed
That in private conversations
There was already tacit agreement between the two leaders
As early as 2002, a growing sense
That Saddam must be replaced.
Bush spoke more directly
(And perhaps more honestly)
Of regime change, but
The legally trained Blair
Counselled that any invasion
Should seek the approval and imprimatur
Of the United Nations.
Blair believed that the United Nations Weapons Inspector
Hans Blix, should be granted more time
To compel the Iraqi regime
To open its factories
To international inspection. In the following weeks
Blair set out to achieve the UN’s approval
For military action, but was balked by a recalcitrant France
Whose scepticism regarding the threat from Saddam
Appears now to be vindicated.
Bush, who had always believed
Europe could not be persuaded to support him
Did not hide his increasing impatience
Unleashing his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
A pocket Napoleon with a talent
For annoying his opposition
(His invention of “Old Europe”
To describe the French and German opposition
To this day has the capacity
To send those country’s politicians
Apoplectic with rage). Rumsfeld, in characteristic vein
Announced that America was capable
If necessary, of acting alone
Forcing Blair’s hand
To increase the tempo of his own preparations
Compelling him to demand in addition
An immediate summary from British intelligence
On Saddam’s capacity to deploy
Weapons of mass destruction.
In order to add urgency
To the picture of potential threat
Blair, always happy to add rhetoric
Cited amongst the threatened countries
Saddam could strike with his missiles
The British base at Cyprus.
At first the document
Was somewhat tentative, covering itself
With conditional clauses about the veracity
Of claims regarding Iraqi readiness.
Suspecting cautious bureaucracy, Blair asked
His press agent and right hand man
Alistair Campbell, to reword the document
Eliminating the cautious conditionals.
Blair’s summary of the document in turn
Raised the stakes further, claiming that the evidence
Indicated Saddam’s capacity to launch an attack
On outside territories
Within 45 minutes — a figure apparently
Plucked from the air. Following these revelations
Blair recommended to Parliament
That the only responsible reaction
To Saddam’s multiple provocations
His persistent refusal to honour UN conventions
Was an allied invasion.
Based on Blair’s eloquent advocacy
The apparent support of the intelligence community
The British Parliament voted
To support the prime minister
Overwhelmingly endorsed by the Conservatives
With only the Liberal Democrats opposed
Under their leader Charles Kennedy.
Meanwhile the US and British forces
Began to prepare and assemble
A vast military invasion force
In the Gulf region
While in the background a nervous Hans Blix
Demanded further time
His plaintive appeals drowned out
By the rumble of military machinery.
XXXII
Within the US military
A fierce debate was taking place
Between Rumsfeld and his leading generals
Over the number of troops required.
The conventional view among senior generals
Was that to take and hold Iraq
Would require a force of some half a million personnel
A figure lampooned by Rumsfeld
Who argued that modern military forces
With their mobility and firepower
Could be successful in far smaller quantities —
A mere fraction of the half million advocated.
He and his senior staff planned the invasion
With a mobile force of 180,000 troops
Capable of rapid movement
Forcing his plan on recalcitrant generals
Who claimed, with greater plausibility
That to successfully invade the country
And defeat military forces
Might be achieved with a small force
But to hold the country afterwards
Maintain law and order
Ensure an effective administration
And secure the vital services
Would require a much greater presence.
Bush, in thrall to Rumsfeld and Cheney
Backed the smaller force option
With certain ineluctable consequences.
The invasion was set in motion
Its momentum seemed inexorable.
Protests died out in foreign capitals, replaced
By fatalistic foreboding.
XXXIII
The attack was named “Shock and Awe”
Suitably titled by the Defence Secretary
A war designed for the camera
And public consumption.
As the ground trembled
Flowers of flame first appeared on the roofs
And sides of the Presidential Palace
As the vast mechanised forces
Of the waiting allied armies
Crossed Iraq’s borders. The assault
Of cruise missiles and stealth bombers
Proceeded to disinter the country’s military structure.
Armies of American armoured units
Began to move forward from Kuwait
Advancing with brutal speed
Through the open desert
Into Iraq’s heartland. Saddam’s forces
Not highly motivated
To defend their savage tyrant
Proved less than fanatical.
Believing conquest was now inevitable
They saw no virtue in suicide.
After Nasiriyah they melted
Back to their homes and families.
The US 173rd airborne Division
Was airdropped in the north
Joined with Kurdish irregulars
And swept south.
On 9 April Baghdad was occupied.
Total casualties of the invasion
Were estimated at three thousand.
The invasion as a military exercise
Could be considered a textbook success.
But now what occurred amazed
Serious objective historians
And continues to perplex to this day.
There seemed to be almost no planning
For what would follow the invasion.
In Bush and Rumsfeld’s imagination
A grateful citizenry
Would pour onto the streets
Welcoming the invaders.
That appears to have been
The limit of their imagination.
As if in confirmation
Of this strategy, after the “hot war”
Bush held a triumphalist conference
On the great aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
(“90,000 tons of diplomacy”
As the US Navy liked to advertise)
With a huge sign behind him
Announcing “Mission accomplished”.
Bush preened before the cameras, while in Iraq itself
With its infrastructure destroyed
The Ba’ath party was disbanded and prohibited
At the orders of the Allied administration.
All civil order deteriorated
Into violent chaos.
XXXIV
Until then Blair’s spin machine
Had worked its magic, casting
Its glow over the British populace. Now it showed
Its darker side, demonstrating
That if it suited its purposes
It was not above hounding
A sensitive, introvert scientist
To suicide in a lonely wood. This in turn indicated
The strange, almost schizophrenic divide
Between Blair and the fascist machine
Which acted in his name. The story began with
Andrew Gilligan, one of those
White-faced journalists who work by night
Geekily following the truth
With a private mania, who threaten
To give obsession a good name. He
Asserted on the BBC radio programme Today
That Blair’s intelligence document
Attesting the dangers of
Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Had been “sexed up”, deliberately changed
To suit the purposes of the government.
In advocating war on Iraq, Gilligan added
That Blair’s claim that Saddam’s weapons
Could be mobilised in 45 minutes
Was known to be nonsense by its authors
At its inception. Like a human firework
Alistair Campbell exploded
At the insubordination of the BBC.
He wrote in his diary that he intended
“To fuck Gilligan”, setting about
A campaign of intimidation
Aimed at forcing the BBC to withdraw
All such allegations. With Campbell
Leading the charge, Blair’s office was determined
To assert his authority
Over the broadcaster. Instead,
To its everlasting credit, the BBC
Stood its ground. Campbell’s
Unstable moods became exaggerated. As his mind
Increasingly darkened, returning one evening
From watching the tennis
At Wimbledon with his son
He heard on the radio
Another assertion by the BBC
That certain sources in the Ministry of Defence
Had been able to confirm
Blair’s WMD document had been constructed
To provide a casus belli. Campbell’s rage
Became uncontrollable. On the spur of the moment
While in the car, he swung the wheel,
Making a sudden detour
To the BBC’s great rival, ITN news.
Four minutes into the 7 pm programme
Its surprised presenter, Jon Snow
Was informed through his earpiece that
Alistair Campbell had entered the building
And was headed for the studio
Like the creature in Alien.
The programme was hastily rearranged
To allow a live interview. Campbell appeared
Like a fascist bully, still panting
From his travels, repeatedly threatening the BBC
Thumping the table and waving his finger like Goebbels
At those who dared to question
The integrity of the Blair government.
Snow said afterwards he thought Campbell
“Was not long for this world.” Even
Blair’s office understood
Campbell had overstepped the mark. By now
It seemed almost impossible
To rein in Blair’s machine.
While the feud raged
At 10 Downing Street, Blair’s office
Received a phone call from Geoff Hoon
The Secretary of State for Defence
That a civil servant —
A certain quiet, introverted
Scientific adviser
Called Dr David Kelly —
Had admitted he had informed Andrew Gilligan
And provided background information
On the construction of the document.
The No 10 sofa government
Determined to accuse Dr Kelly of treachery
Believed they had found the perfect weapon
To strike at the BBC.
Blair’s functionaries were, as always
Happy to use all the levers of the state
For their own condign purposes.
Like a hunting pack
Which scents its quarry
They began to plot
How to give the name of the civil servant
To the press
While taking care to absolve themselves.
XXXV
Blair, even though warned by Sir David Omand —
Security co-ordinator at the Cabinet Office —
That he had a “duty of care”
Towards the conscientious civil servant
Presided over the meeting which decided
To “out” Dr Kelly, without leaving
Any trace to Blair himself.
So the plot unrolled. In a brutal game
Of hide-and-seek Geoff Hoon
Instructed his Ministry of Defence to announce
That though they would not name
The erring civil servant, if the press could
Guess his name, they would confirm it.
Thus challenged, the press hounds
Set out on the trail
Following the clues given to them.
Within 48 hours they
Had unearthed the name
Of the scientist
Who believed that he had done no more than his duty.
Like a shy creature he
Was flushed into the public fire.
Blair was determined
To place him on trial.
On 15 July, Dr Kelly faced a Foreign Affairs committee
In which he was brutally impugned
Dismissed by the Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay
As a “fall-guy”, as “chaff”
Abandoned by all to the firestorm.
His career ruined, he visibly wilted.
Offering no resistance, he seemed to fall inwards
Towards some private despair.
XXXVI
Two days later, on 17 July, an exultant Blair
Crossed the Atlantic
To address a joint session
Of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate
A rare accolade bestowed
On only three of his predecessors —
Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.
The address was a triumph, yet even
While the smooth-tongued orator
Raised nineteen standing ovations
From the assembled American senators and congressmen
In Oxfordshire a broken man
Clambered through brambles
To reach a secluded glade. There he
Swallowed twenty-nine tablets of coproxamol
Which his wife Janice used to ameliorate
The pain of her arthritis.
Then he slit his wrist with
An old, favourite knife
And prepared to die.
XXXVII
The news reached Blair
In his jet
On the return journey.
The secure telephone rang
Blair listened carefully
Appeared pale, put down the phone
Said to his wife
“David Kelly is dead.”
He slumped in his seat
Became silent
Seemed to sink into himself
Though whether out of regret
For his actions, or fear for his career
We do not know. He was heard to say
That if Dr Kelly’s family
Accused him of causing Dr Kelly’s death
His entire career was finished.
Afterwards, he phoned several lawyers
Asking for advice, reaching the conclusion
That his only chance of survival
Was to place himself in front of a judge.
Meanwhile he was savaged
By a virulent press
Who enquired at every opportunity
Whether he would resign. The doyen of liberal columnists
Hugo Young, charged him with using
“Every available particle of state power”
In order to silence his critics.
What followed demonstrated again
The peculiar nature
Of Blair’s character, his personal charm
And apparent lack of any private guilt.
Kelly’s wife Janice never made the accusation
That Blair’s outing of her husband
Led to his suicide. Even so, taking account of
Blair’s part in Kelly’s death
In a subsequent column Hugo Young advised
Blair to resign. But his advice
Assumed that his subject
Had a sense of shame.
In the end the same familiar pattern
Asserted itself. The fish moved on its own fixed path.
Widespread accusations of an official murder
Enough to cause the resignation
Of any other prime minister
Did not deter Blair. He rose again
Fire and air, ineffably light
Conducted himself with lawyerly brilliance
In front of the commission
Set up to consider the Kelly case
Charmed the presiding judge Lord Hutton
And waited
With inimitable calm
Until the press
Had grown tired of baying
Before resuming his life.
XXXVIII
In Iraq, the dismissed military and Ba’ath members
Finding no outlet, joined the evolving resistance
Intent on making the country ungovernable.
So from the jaws of military victory
Was snatched, if not political defeat
Then a long and terrible interregnum.
Even Saddam — whose eventual capture
Hauled from a spider hole
Like some eccentric hermit
Or elderly tramp
Forced to undergo a humiliating medical inspection
A torch on the lining of the mouth
Those dark eyes constantly watching —
Regained in captivity
With clean clothes, a shave
Some of his old, sinister calm.
Attempting once more to intimidate the judges
Sneering at their illegality
Pronouncing himself the true leader of Iraq
Saddam continued to deny all guilt
Frustrating the court
With strings of objections
Until finally the verdict was delivered.
The rope snapped his neck.
For those who opposed
The illegal invasion
The ignominious hanging of a great tyrant
And the lesson it transmitted
To all future tyrants
Was small compensation
For the terrible ineptness of the war
The infliction of unnecessary suffering.
XXXIX
Things did not improve. In the years which followed
The occupation stumbled
From crisis to crisis
Attempting to hold down the lid
On a full-scale civil war.
Having destroyed Iraqi civil authority
Without a replacement
The ancient feud between Sunnis and Shiites
Now erupted. All efforts to reconstruct society
Were set aside to attempt the containment
Of the contending parties. While
The vast expenditure of a huge standing army
Continued to drain US and British coffers
An intellectual American General, David Petraeus
Proposed that a change of military strategy
Could tip the balance.
He proposed to combine a surge of troops
With a shift of political emphasis
Wooing the local Iraqi insurgents
With promises of a moratorium
Aiming to drive a wedge between
The indigenous resistance and the foreign jihadis.
In the face of almost universal hostility
On the part of a world media who claimed
That the military solution had not worked
That this was throwing good money after bad
Bush demonstrated one of his eccentric virtues
The strength to back his private conviction.
Slowly the Petraeus strategy worked. Former
Ba’ath party members and army regulars
Who should never have been disenfranchised
Were coaxed back on side.
Slowly the conflict turned. Casualties began to fall
Consistently and sometimes dramatically.
New elections were held
In greater peace and security.
The blood-soaked tragedy of Iraq
Began to turn slowly, not into victory
But into something approximating normal life.
Markets resumed. The uncompleted work
Of repairing a broken society
Could at least begin.
XXXX
The later stages of the Iraq conflict
Had little to do with Blair
Who seemed increasingly marginalised
At home, his famous sang-froid
Was showing signs of strain.
With Iraq he had run out of mileage.
The public would not be persuaded again
To undertake new military adventures.
His spin-doctors did their best.
Meanwhile, his administration shuddered
From the repeated attempts of the press
To pin the illegality of the war
On his misleading statements
On weapons of mass destruction.
After nine years of controlling the news cycle
The media had at last grown cynical.
Blair continued as always
Demonstrating his love of the state
His simplified view of power
Creating new initiatives
His addiction to managerialism
Causing him to expend billions
On vast computer systems
Which were unable to fulfil their function
And were easily replaced by existing software
That could be bought off the shelf
For a few thousand pounds. The real explanation
Was different (though it led to the same result).
Blair’s centralised vision of government control
Demanded systems which would facilitate
Top-down management. In the case of the NHS
The computer system was highly efficient
At providing central control. Where it proved inadequate
Was in service to the doctors and patients who used it —
For whom it had not been designed. In addition
Blair, that ardent lover of bureaucratic solutions
Advocated a vastly expensive programme
Of identity cards, on the specious grounds
That it would increase security against terrorists
Unwilling to accept the evidence that
Of all parts of the population
Terrorists had the greatest incentive
To use and exploit the system
To camouflage their activities
Or that the worst terrorist attack in Europe
To date at least
Had occurred in Spain, which had
A strong system of identity cards.
So his administration continued
Much as before, attempting to control the narrative
Having jettisoned its principles, driven only
By its own addiction to power.
XXXXI
In a third election, Blair triumphed again
Though with a much reduced majority
Against the Tory leader Michael Howard
Who, though he might have
“Something of the night about him” —
In the immortal words of Ann Widdecombe —
Retired from the Tory leadership
With something approaching good grace
Arranging a Conservative leadership election
Deliberately prolonged to allow a full discussion
Of future strategy. So, perhaps strangely
A degree of credit may be due
To Rory Bremner’s favourite vampire
For allowing a promising ingénue
David Cameron, a liberal Tory
To assume the Conservative leadership. This in turn
Gave rise to a phenomenon
Of some surprise to the chattering classes —
Of being attacked from the left flank
By a greener, more tolerant Tory leader
A more sincere defender of civil liberties
Than any of Labour’s statist scions.
Apparently determined to complete
Thatcher’s economic revolution
With a modernisation of Conservative social policy
Her youthful inheritor
Set about creating a political party
More liberal than Labour
A party which, if the terms “left” or “right”
Had any rigour or meaning
Would have placed the rising Conservative party
To the left of Blair and Brown.
XXXXII
At home a new crisis occurred
Demonstrating the nature of Blair’s society.
A bomb attack in London killed 52 victims
Inflicted by home-grown British Muslims
Who justified their actions as a protest
Against British foreign military invasions
Giving rise in turn to the criticism
That far from protecting our security
Blair’s interventions abroad had generated new enemies.
In the wake of the attack on London
With nervous security forces
On a high state of alert
A police observation operation
On a suspected Muslim terrorist
Began to unwind. A wholly innocent
Brazilian, Charles de Menezes
Was followed into Stockwell underground station
By trained anti-terrorist forces
Who approached him sitting calmly on a train.
Before he could answer or raise his hands
They pumped seven bullets into his brain.
Afterwards the Labour administration
Shrugged its shoulders
At a regrettable mistake.
But the crude attempts by Metropolitan police
To destroy all evidence of
The innocent man’s murder
Began to incite resistance. The scandal
Of official denials and contradictions
Grew steadily, indicating to many
That a society in which an innocent man
Could be murdered with impunity
Symbolised the nature of Blair’s administration
Its arrogant self-confidence
Its elevation of security above the individual citizen
Its cavalier way with human rights.
XXXXIII
Back at Downing Street
The madwoman in the attic
Was growing ever more rancorous
Mrs Rochester was taking up more time
Forcing his way into Blair’s office
Sometimes for hours
Compelling the bemused staff to listen
Behind closed doors
To Brown’s constant screaming and shouting
About being deceived, asserting
With increasing mania
That Blair was a palpable liability
That it was time he left
The country to its true leader
The architect of its prosperity
The great chancellor Gordon Brown
Whose central claim was that he had banished
Boom and bust, that he had generated
A time of continuous prosperity.
(The myth of his economic prowess
Was still the established axiom
In a gullible chattering class.)
Meanwhile, Blair had always retained serious doubts
About Brown’s personality —
His strange cowardice when it came to decisions
His morbid fear
Of putting himself up for election, and his habit
Of disappearing when things got tough.
Brown’s apparent preference for working behind the scenes
Suggested a man who coveted power
But was nervous of seizing the crown.
There was some historical justification.
Blair believed Brown should have challenged
John Smith for the Labour leadership
That he should have challenged Blair himself
And accepted the party’s verdict
Instead of flunking another election
And then complaining about it forever afterwards.
Now, finally, almost as though to prove his point
By a physical demonstration
Blair was finally persuaded to retire from his office
Leaving Brown and his cohorts in control.
He allowed Brown to bully him further
Into not holding a leadership election
Instead permitting an effective coronation.
So the country was governed for a further three years
But a machinator who had not only
Not been elected by the country
But was not elected by his own party. Blair departed
Leaving a shaky legacy
To his old rival, who proceeded
To toy with the Conservatives
Threatening an election
In order to disconcert the opposition
Only to find Cameron accepting his challenge
Goading Brown to make good his threat.
This unexpected show of Tory spirit
At last caused a reversal
Of those opinion polls
Which had favoured New Labour.
Instead, the nation observed an indecisive prime minister
Back off once more from a direct election
Preferring instead to govern the country
Without any mandate.
XXXXIV
Brown’s only policy appeared to be
To continue to spend
Increasing amounts of money
Building up further vast debts in the good times
So that when the inevitable happened
A dip in the global economy
Britain was the most vulnerable
Of the major European nations
Entering recession first, and
The last to leave. Now at last
Brown’s policy of massive state spending
In answer to all perceived problems
Was finally exposed. To support
A fragile economy
He borrowed further celestial sums
Portraying himself as a decisive world leader
For attempting to shore up
An economy of his own creation
Letting loose in a grandiose Freudian slip
That he was engaged in saving the world.
Time ran out. Brown was finally
Forced to face a democratic election.
Despite his bloodcurdling threats
That any divergence from his policy
Of massive state spending
Would result in deep depression
He gained only 29% of the vote
The worst result for Labour since Michael Foot.
So thirteen years of statist administration
Came to an end
As Brown left by the front door
Mandelson, Campbell, Balls
And other New Labour henchmen
Slipped away like shadows.
The final word on the New Labour era
Emerged as a clumsy joke
In the form of a written note
By the outgoing Treasury Secretary, Liam Byrne
To his successor:
“We’ve spent all the money.”
XXXXV
Meanwhile, after leaving British politics
Blair, that ardent lover of all things large
Continued to express his instinctive brand
Of political theatricality. In another act
Of irony, this launcher of four invasive foreign wars
(Mussolini only invaded one country — Abyssinia
Thatcher defended one territory — the Falklands)
Was appointed Peace Envoy to the Middle East
By the United Nations and European Union.
Without any sense of shame, or self-awareness.
With that innocent enthusiasm, he worked
As a perma-tanned travelling salesman for peace
Making himself immensely rich
By charging vast sums for speaking engagements
In a global market where his infectious enthusiasm
Was paid for by the yard
Visiting old friends like Berlusconi
Grazing on expensive food and fine wines
Flying on the private jets of dictators
To urgent meetings about the well-being of the poor
In a virtual world of political celebrities
And elderly retreads:
Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, all still unarrested
All still at large, living like billionaires
With travelling staffs and expansive budgets
Paid for by tax-avoiding charities and commercial donations
At that vast convention centre
On the fringes of the real world.
XXXXVI
By a curious irony
One significant legacy
Of Britain’s first fascist premier
Is an important contribution towards peace in Ireland
Not a singular, commanding role
But a sincere and sustained addition
To John Major’s earlier attempts
To engage the feuding parties in constructive negotiation.
So by a strange alchemy, we observe
The complex and subtle consequences
Of a pathologically shallow personality
Played out in our rich history
As if the establishment of lasting peace required
The same manic single-mindedness as war
The same blindness to the obstacles
The same sublime disregard of opposition.
What then, we may ask, is Blair’s final legacy?
On the positive side, a kinder
More liberal Britain
Increasingly tolerant of social and sexual minorities
Though critics could argue, with some justification
That society was developing in that direction
Without edicts from Westminster
Or the Whitehall bureaucracy
Suggesting, perhaps more controversially,
That the very notion that politics
Drives social change, is part of
That same authoritarian assumption
Of top-down bureaucratic government
Which remains the Labour Party’s
Most lasting contribution.
And what of the country itself? The likelihood is that
It will survive, in due course shrugging off the vast debt
Of Blair’s grossly expanded state
Emerging as if from a dream
Of a darker world
Shaken but sober. But the finest legacy of all
Would be if we learned our lesson
Never trusting again
Some eloquent demagogue
Who claims our hard-won freedoms
Are merely encumbrances
To be swept aside
In pursuit of a greater vision. Meanwhile
If only for our own good conscience
Let us not blame Blair
That strangely innocent vehicle
Of vain dreams of power
But ourselves entirely, for gifting him our country
In three full democratic terms.
Let us instead teach history
About Britain’s thirteen years of fascist rule
To a younger generation
More cautious and wiser than we
So that they may be inoculated
Against the disease.
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