XIV
As if in confirmation of that shamelessness
That superhuman indifference
To any sense
Of personal responsibility
When Bernie Ecclestone, the perennial fixer
Of Formula One racing
Donated a million pounds
To New Labour coffers
Blair abandoned the party’s commitment
To ban cigarette advertisements.
With such indecent speed
And apparent lack of remorse that
Shortly after the donation
Blair granted Ecclestone
A special dispensation
To advertise cigarettes
As freely as he wished
On all the
Shiny, glamorous surfaces
Of Formula One racing cars
Generating many billions of extra income
For the already vastly rich
Formula One circus.
Ecce homo!
Such a flagrant quid pro quo
Would have brought a blush
To the cheeks of Lloyd George
That seller of knighthoods and peerages
To the highest bidder
And even to those biddable cheeks
Of that other egregious fixer
Horatio Bottomley, (whose own
Inimitable style is perhaps best
Illustrated by the story
Of his meeting the English peer
Lord Chalmondesley
“It’s such an unwieldy name,”
His lordship said with some kindliness
“Why don’t you follow all my friends
And just call me Chumley?”
“Thank you,” said Bottomley
Adding, favour for favour
“Why don’t you do the same with my name
And just call me Bumley?”)
Meanwhile, our own hero’s brazenness
knew no bounds.
When the press hounds
Began to howl
Citing the remarkable conjunction
Between the receipt of a million pound donation
And the subsequent granting of an exemption
For cigarette advertising
Blair appeared in a radio interview
Under circumstances where any other premier
Would have been forced to resign
Saying, memorably, on the record
“Look, I’m a pretty straight
Kind of a guy.”
Offering that sanguine statement
As exculpation, at a later date
To a surprised Jeremy Paxman
Whose handsome face grew longer and longer
In patent disbelief, until it resembled
A constipated gnu.
“I’ll say,” some wit responded
In the newspapers a day later —
“Straight to jail.” But he had not
Taken into account
That any sense of shame
Private morality, or personal blame
Had not merely been surgically removed
(As with Lorenz’s fish)
But almost certainly
Had never been present. Instead
Blair’s lack of remorse
Was so breathtaking
He seemed to inhabit
An alternative universe. Taking account
Of his numerous speeches in opposition
Lambasting the Conservative government
About small bribes given to
Several unimportant backbench MPs
The sheer effrontery of his behaviour
Discombobulated his critics.
It soon became clear
That he had no intention of resigning.
In a few days
The press, after a collective intake of breath
Passed on to other things
Leaving the prime minister virtually untouched
Lacking all clothing except
His perennial youthful smile.
XV
The Millennium Dome
Was a further indication
Of New Labour’s evolving persona
A shameless belief
In bread and circuses
That would rival the Third Reich.
Funded by the taxpayer
To distract the masses
They set about creating
At vast expense
A grand theatrical event
To celebrate a meaningless date
On the calendar — the year 2000.
As if further proof were needed
Of an administration of minimal intellect
Entirely lacking in culture.
The idea, first mooted
By that most philistine of politicians
The Conservative Michael Heseltine
In the dying days
Of the Major regime
Was enthusiastically adopted and expanded
By New Labour’s Minister of Culture
A certain Peter Mandelson
Whose own greatest contribution to the arts
Was to worship the rich
And to rub shoulders
With showbiz celebrities
At glamorous cocktail parties.
Sensing glory, he promised to display
The full panoply of British creative genius
In an exhibition that would be remembered for ever.
The building itself was designed by Richard Rogers
A talented architect in his own right
But so far up the arse of New Labour
You couldn’t see the soles of his feet.
The result of this conjunction
Of shallow ambition and empty rhetoric
Was a suitably ugly construction
A series of pylons holding a tent.
Lacking any sculptural virtue
Or aesthetic content, it would linger
Like a gross relic
Of the administration who formed it.
The predictable result was that the exhibition itself
Proved a remarkable embarrassment
An empty display of giant plastic animals
Fire-breathers and over-choreographed wire-dancers
Performing before an audience whipped into artificial enthusiasm
Like post-war crowds at a Butlins holiday camp
While a bemused royal family, dragooned
Into conscientious attendance, shifted uneasily
Under the patronage of New Labour.
The occasion would be remembered
Mainly for a faux pas
When the youthful, enthusiastic premier
Broke courtly precedence
By placing his arm in friendly
But condescending fashion
Around the Queen’s back.
After the performance
What remained?
An absurd and ugly building
Which lay empty for several years
Before it was sold at a knockdown price
To a commercial organisation
Which used its vast tent
To house a scattering of entertainments
Which continues to this day.
Let us remember Ozymandias
King of kings
By the ruins
Which he left behind in the desert.
XVI
There were other signs of uniqueness
As the government tightened its grip
Registering unusual data
In the body politic
Professional psephologists noted
With something like amazement
That the honeymoon period
Of the incoming New Labour Government
Extended indefinitely, that
Instead of dipping in the middle Parliament
As the electorate became more cynical
Blair’s own popularity
Showed no sign of subsiding.
He was unique in maintaining higher polls
Than his Conservative opposition
During his term of government.
(In the course of his subsequent
Nine year premiership
He would win no less than three
Consecutive general elections
Vanquishing several Conservative leaders —
William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith, Michael Howard —
Who could make no impression
On his soaring trajectory.)
During the first four years of triumphalism
There was only one significant exception
His address to the Women’s Institute
In the year 2000.
XVII
Invited to speak to that august institution
On issues which mattered to them
Blair, at the height of his popularity
Chose to issue a party manifesto
As though addressing his own ardent supporters
He began to set out yet another vision
Of a future of sunny uplands
Driven by his own political genius
But this time his audience was badly chosen.
Accustomed to effortlessly impressing his listeners
As his rhetoric rose, hitting the high points
The scripted applause did not rise. Instead
An unexpected silence filled the hall.
For the first time — like Ceausescu at the rostrum
Stunned by the angry murmur of the multitudes
Beyond the microphone and the Securitate —
Doubt entered that handsome, sunny visage.
As the rhetoric increased, slowly the murmur grew
An audience of mature matrons
Did not appreciate being patronised
By the young coxcomb. To his sudden surprise
A slow handclap began, faltering at first
Then rising in increased dissent.
The orator was forced to pause
Astonished at the crowd’s behaviour.
For the first time in that gilded political life
The crowd no longer appeared a willing supplicant
An extension of his own personality
His composure began to decompose.
The slow handclapping grew, until
His speech faltered and was drowned out
The first time the tide of his rhetoric
Had proved insufficient. That afternoon
A stunned politician returned in his limousine
To his redoubt at 10 Downing Street
Lost in difficult thought. Notwithstanding the loss
He had remarkable powers of recovery.
Like a great actor, he put behind him
A single bad performance, made certain that in future
He would address more closely the audience’s concerns,
And continued on his path. A year later
On May 6th 2001
He won a second landslide election.
His confidence grew. He had bucked
The tides of history
The first Labour Prime Minister
To reach two terms with resounding majorities.
His confidence rose to alarming proportions
He had triumphed at home.
Now he raised his gaze to a world stage. In the year 2001
He looked once more to the future
Towards an expanded horizon.
XVIII
In foreign policy
It appears a surprise
That a Labour premier
Should become the most hawkish of hawks
A fountain of foreign wars
Invader of sovereign territories
Ideologue of military intervention
Never knowingly passing up the opportunity
Of major military involvement. Yet
Should it be so unexpected?
The signs were surely there
For those who could detect them.
A mind without historical baggage
Rejecting the past
Unable to learn its lessons
Despising the wisdom of tradition
Focussed instead on a glorious future
Gazing on distant horizons
Propelled by its own visions
Is sometimes susceptible
To delusions of grandeur.
This, at least, seems obvious.
But there is another question
To answer, perhaps more uncomfortable
Especially amongst those
Who voted him to power.
Is Blair to blame
For his political actions
Or is a commentating class
Who supported him lavishly
Guilty of its own susceptibilities
To glib and shining rhetoric?
Here, we suggest, is the final, crowning reason
When we ask ourselves how
That nice Mr Blair,
With his sunny smile —
Every woman’s ideal son-in-law
So plausible, so humane —
Could launch British troops in four separate wars.
Is it not the case
That an unthinking advocate of
State intervention
As the solution to all problems
Should not apply the same principle abroad?
When compared with
Those who voted him to power
And then chastised him for foreign wars
Who was the more consistent?
XIX
A psychological note of some interest
Is “What would Blair have been
Without the fierce ambition of his wife
Or her socialist convictions?”
A complex and subtle question, not least
Since the relationship appeared
So important to both partners
One of those blessed marriages which
Though they have their strains
Appear as if the two parties in combination
Constituted that mythical being
A single complete person.
Even so the tensions continued
Cherie neurotic, angry, driven
Quick to take offence
Though utterly loyal.
By contrast Blair, more easy-going
More conservative in disposition, religious by nature
Appeared easier in his own skin
Less driven to ideological conviction.
In another world perhaps
Without the zeal of his marriage partner
He might have been
A reforming Tory
Together, though, a formidable partnership
A political alliance as well as a marriage
Each countering the other’s faults
Each sharpening their virtues
Cherie Blair that perfect example
Of a strong-minded ambitious character
Materialist, deeply competitive,
With an eye always on the main chance
Ruthless in the interests of her family
Assiduously feathering her own nest
Accumulating numerous properties
Defending jealously the perks of her position
Yet advocating socialism
The rule of the big state
As if it were a kind of mental compensation
For her own brand of selfishness.
Her acquisition of two additional apartments
At knockdown prices, through the offices
Of a dubious Australian intermediary
Brought her rampant materialism
To the attention of the tabloid press
Who began enthusiastically to pursue her
As a left-wing moralist, citing
Her practice of demanding large payments
For her speaking engagements
Always happy to take pecuniary advantage
Of her elevated position
As the prime minister’s wife.
Driven on by the palpable scent of hypocrisy
The press pack was maddened
By the sight of a self-righteous socialist
Who liked to live high on the hog
As greedy for gifts and handouts
As the wife of a former east European dictator.
So the campaign against her mounted
Steadily through the years.
There were other aspects of her character
Which did not please the reptiles.
They noticed how she
bristled like a cat
In the presence of the royal family
A hand grenade primed to explode
At the first sign of a slight
Real or imagined, from any member
Of the royal soap opera.
There seemed no capacity for humour
Or distance in her attitude
Just deep resentment at perceived privilege.
The press compared her unfavourably
With her husband, noting his easy acceptance
Of them and by them
His sincere admiration of the Queen
As a fellow committed professional.
Rumours began to circulate
That Blair dreaded accompanying his wife to Balmoral
A ticking time-bomb of sensitivities.
Such was his life, balanced precariously
Between the neighbour from hell
And a wife who excited almost universal antipathy.
Relying ever more heavily
On his own palpable charm
He attempted to assert discipline
Over the dissidents in his party
And construct his political legacy.
XX
The relation of writers to politicians
Is a cruel and difficult one.
The attraction of the writer
Is to the drama of politics
The thirst for action and courage
The hero who acts
Who seizes the moment
Who overcomes self-doubt.
All tyrants have their fervent admirers
Mussolini had d’Annunzio
Stalin had Auden, Day Lewis, Spender
Each willing to support the necessary murder
So the artistic enclaves
Of politically naïve writers and playwrights
The Jeanette Wintersons and Ian McEwans
So impressed by the early Blair
Formed supportive coteries
Delighting in the overthrow of the Tories.
Adept at describing deep motive, they appeared
Curiously incapable of recognising it in themselves.
Until then they had affected to despise
The Conservatives, maintaining
An attitude of lofty indifference
Toward the world of politics.
But the superficial attractions of Blair
Flushed them out from their lairs
They began to be seen at political parties
Encouraging one another to strike moral poses
About this or that foreign government
Demonstrating more often than not
Their credulous naiveté
Over some foreign tyrant —
Such as Chavez or Castro
Preferably draped in the flag of Marxism
That universal palliative —
Than any insight into the human condition.
In the somewhat febrile atmosphere
Of dilettante artistes
Occupying the edges
Of the fashionable new politics
There emerged a story
Considered by some to be apocryphal.
A movement occurred in the artistic heartlands
Of Hampstead and Primrose Hill
In which the subject, for once
Was not the latest announcement
Of our own domestic tyrant
But was instead
That great playwright Harold Pinter
Fierce critic of America, scourge of
The hypocrisy of western governments,
So remarkably subtle in his analysis of menace
Though yielding to none
In his love of Marxist dictators. Now he
Found himself the centre
Of an admiring movement.
A campaign began
To change the name of the Comedy Theatre
To the Harold Pinter Theatre
In honour of the great man
As a lasting recognition of his contribution
To the intellectual life of the nation.
Proceeding by word of mouth
The discreet and secretive campaign
Gathered the support
Of the great and good
In the theatre and arts world
Developing increasing momentum
A process observed with cool objectivity
By another great playwright, Tom Stoppard
That celestial, almost Shakespearean wit
Who discovered to his interest
That the campaign’s chief instigator and architect
Was none other than Pinter himself.
Setting himself down at his desk
Stoppard wrote: “Dear Harold,
In view of the campaign to change
The Comedy Theatre to the Pinter Theatre
Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone concerned
If you were to change your name by deed poll
To Harold Comedy? Yours sincerely,” etc.
No reply ensued, it seems.
A deep, Pinteresque silence
Overcame the airwaves.
The discreet movement of opinion
Seemed to halt.
The campaign, once unmasked
Quietly died on its feet.
But thereafter (according to mythology) the mention
Of the phrase “Harold Comedy”
Within Pinter’s hearing
Was guaranteed to result in an explosion
Of furious invective, accompanied
By explicit threats of violence
Unless the phrase was immediately withdrawn
And an apology offered.
XXI
Let us pass over
The pronounced sensitivities
Of the artistic establishment
And turn to the fourth estate
And in particular the contribution
Of that other institution
The British Broadcasting Corporation
As an unwitting arm of propaganda
To the rise of a genuine British fascist government.
Forgive us now if we consider
The record of the BBC
With the same rigour with which
It habitually conducts
Its own journalistic reports.
Here, then, is the indictment:
Every single one of the BBC’s news investigations
Almost without exception
Takes the form of a two-act play.
The first act is to explore
Some identified social injustice.
The second is to propose
Greater government intervention
As the only means of amelioration.
The case of the prosecution
Amounts to this.
In a lifetime of listening to the BBC
It is difficult to identify
One single instance of a BBC investigation
Which reached any other conclusion
That any injustice
Could and should be cured
By some form of further government intervention.
The very notion that too much government intervention
Might be the problem
Was so unthinkable
As to be beyond mention.
To call this “bias”
Is to understate the case.
It would be more accurately described
As a deep-seated psychological condition
A systemic prejudice
So profoundly written
Into the DNA of the institution
That the very notion
That such an assumption could even be questioned
Would be palpably alien.
Yet in the real world
During Blair’s rise and rule
The great axis of world politics
Was developing inexorably
Not through the fashionable top-down directives
Of shallow assertive politicians
But of its own accord
Following its own internal logic.
The chief elements of this intrinsic movement
Were not the conflict of “left” or “right”
(The BBC’s favourite words
To approach any political subject)
But the enormous gulf between
Statist or decentralist government
The power of the political establishment
Versus the rights of the people.
This should always have been
The main focus of BBC attention.
Instead that great former monopoly
Proceeds even now with its ludicrous doctrine
The term “left” including a vast swathe
Of different politics
From the British Liberal Democrats
To Kim Jong-il’s tyranny, while
The term “right” embraces the liberal arm of the Tory party
And the latest demented monarchic tyrant —
Truly, making the BBC an institution ripe for
The type of state intervention
Which it so enthusiastically advocates
To solve all political problems —
In this case a thorough Maoist programme of re-education
Including a term of imprisonment, followed by a
Gradual but cautious return
To democratic society.
XXII
It followed that the rise of the fascist Blair
That other great advocate of government intervention
Mesmerised the BBC, who
Far from criticising him
Shared his central assumption
That society can be moulded
By political diktat, is best organised
By top-down legislation. The corporation
Became an unwitting arm of propaganda
Slavishly reporting every new initiative
Conforming, like a synchronised swimmer
To his efforts to control
The 24 hour news cycle.
Even now, after New Labour’s
Thirteen-year fascist reign
Ended on 6 May 2010
The notion that government often causes the problem
Appears to be outside the BBC’s capacity
For conceptualisation, let alone understanding
Of the world it inhabits.
So it continues to this day.
When two parties, the Conservatives
And Liberal Democrats
Have combined together
In an historic agreement
Based on the assumption
That the era of big government is over
Even now, when the Coalition
Is living proof that the true axis of politics
Is not left or right but centralism or decentralism
The BBC
Like an ancient dinosaur
Lumbers on
Blind to its own faults
Incapable of self-correction
To who knows what terminus.
XXIII
Yo Blair, Dubya said
At a summit of world leaders
To a fellow mover and shaker
Following his own path
The implication being
“What are you doing now?”
Blair halting to give an account
To his old friend
And fellow equal opportunity invader
Of his latest initiative in foreign capitals
Cutting a dash
On the world stage.
So now let us consider
Another hoary myth —
The assumption that Blair
Was George Bush’s “poodle”.
History suggests an opposite interpretation.
Blair, that advocate of state intervention
At every level, domestic and foreign
Appears a far more plausible candidate
For the role of ideologue and driver
Of western military conquest
Than an American conservative
And natural isolationist. Bush began
His first administration
With little interest in the world
Outside US shores, appearing proud of the fact
That he could not name
The President of Pakistan.
Declaiming against his predecessor Clinton
For his internationalism
Dubya began his presidency
Advocating as little interaction
With the wider world
As was possible. In his view other countries
Were not America’s business.
When Bush first crept to power
In the election of hanging chads
Blair was the senior statesman
By a good three years
With a record of two invasive wars
He had personally supported —
Kosovo and Sierra Leone —
An arch interventionist
Who, unknowingly to both
Had met his future
Perfect partner.
At first the confluence seemed unlikely
In the innocent year 2000
The new president Bush regarded Blair
As just another exotic foreigner
With a strange accent.
So it might have continued
Until the vertiginous imposition
Of an unforeseen apocalypse
Tilted the world on its axis.
XXIV
There had been a small group
Within the Republican Party
Who claimed they had been driven
By history’s lessons
To an inexorable conclusion
That America’s life
As the earth’s greatest superpower
Was so bound up
With the external world, it must
Actively engage in the global arena
Or the malign forces arrayed against it
Sensing weakness, would strike at America’s core.
Called neo-conservatism
Because some of those who advocated
Strong international engagement
Had arrived through exotic intellectual routes
Composed to a surprising extent
Of former Marxist ideologues
Whose idealised conception of the working class
Had evolved towards an idealised America
It was a small clique, much despised
By orthodox conservatives
Who, like Bush, clung to a position
Of minimal foreign intervention.
Consider, then, the traumatic impact
On a conservative, isolationist president
Compelled to witness the greatest attack on America
Since Pearl Harbour
Of seeing his own assumptions
Flower into flame on the outside of a building
Two great iconic skyscrapers at the heart of capitalism
Collapsing into rubble
With over two thousand deaths
Spewing poisonous clouds
Over America’s financial engine
The great city of New York.
(Much amusement has been had
By commentators like Michael Moore
Re-showing footage of George Dubya Bush
Listening with a group of schoolchildren
To a story called My Pet Goat
His eyes glazed with thinking
While his mind contemplates the ineffable.)
Until then business
Had been America’s business
The old conservative goal
Of tilling one’s own garden
Separated from the world
Became bankrupt. Only one ideology
Had proved right in predicting such an attack.
The much despised neo-cons
Were suddenly plausible.
A deeply conservative president
Had, in the course of a few days, been subject
To one of the most devastating conversions
In the history of American politics.
The neo-cons realised
They now had his ear, that he was willing to take
War and fire to the perpetrators.
Pet goat had become big goat.
XXV
Blair, who had recently won a second
Landslide election in Britain, was
Searching for a new theme for his
New parliamentary term. Now he seized his opportunity
With typical élan.
He would become the ideologue
Mentor, Svengali and advocate
For an unprecedentedly active
New Western military policy.
This, then, is our counter
To the conventional wisdom
Of Blair as Bush’s poodle.
The truth (as often happens)
Appears the exact opposite. As the two towers fell
Spreading their contagion
Bush, America, the entire population
Of the Western world
(And most of those who read this poem)
Became, wittingly or unwittingly
The passive or active subjects
In Blair’s accelerating vision
Of western intervention.
XXVI
Smooth-tongued, fluent
Utterly reasonable
The rising statesman Blair
Ascended like a phoenix
Wholly convinced of his own rectitude
Preaching legality, with a mind
Precisely attuned to the doubts and fears of others
Advancing towards international fame
With two successful invasions behind him —
A perfect candidate for the post of world statesman —
Elegant in his studied suits
Made of air and fire
Apparently impervious to insults
An interventionist to his marrow
He found a US president
Now entirely committed to military retribution.
So the two found common alliance
An unlikely partnership formed
Bush admiring his silver-tongued advocate
Blair the president’s new certainty of purpose.
Commentators noticed an evolving common body language
Blair, the great actor
Blending perfectly, as always
To his new role
Sharing jokes at Camp David
Imitating Bush’s ape swagger
Moving down corridors side by side
Shoulders swinging, elbows out
Like a pair of Tarantino gangsters.
Other pressures were driving Blair
Towards his new role
Of international statesman.
At home his increasingly
Bitter and bellicose chancellor Brown
Ensconced in his redoubt at Number 11
Running his alternative administration
Observed his former protégé
Strut on the international stage
And seized his opportunity
To consolidate his own power
Tightening his grip
Over the domestic economy
Functioning effectively
As the prime minister at home.
So Blair, edged out of domestic politics
By his increasingly insubordinate subordinate
Felt compelled to travel the earth
Feted in the role of travelling statesman
Welcomed in foreign capitals
As a great player on the world stage.
His limitless ambition drove him.
Nothing, it seemed, could stop him.
XXVII
Admired by an American public
For showing sincere solidarity with America
In her hour of need, he would also act
As America’s foreign policy legate
Gaining greater kudos
As the greatest ally of the president.
So Ulysses, leaving Penelope pining
Travelled the distant horizon.
The response to 9/11 was impressive.
In an atmosphere
Of international sympathy
For the plight of New York
Diplomats fanned out
To the foreign capitals of the world
Blair leading the charge
Milking sympathy
For America as victim
Of Al Queda aggression.
Military pressure was exerted on Afghanistan.
A bombing campaign, steadily applied
To the Taliban’s front lines
Slowly increased, until the line broke.
A rabble army in pickup trucks retreated
To mountain fastnesses and remote villages
Leaving a power vacuum, in which
After several eerie hours
A BBC journalist, John Simpson
Entered Kabul like a triumphant conqueror
Ahead of the alliance forces.
Observed from doorways
By curious, turbaned men
And hidden, shy women
He paraded through the city
After which the military
Cautiously followed, almost sheepishly
Finding relative peace on the streets.
An uneasy interregnum followed
In which an administration was formed.
Corrupt officials gathered for the feast.
And so the lengthy occupation began.
XXVIII
The rest of the world continued on its path
Enjoying other confrontations
Of a more ritualised kind, such as
The Ashes cricket match.
Football too exerted its perennial hold.
On a remote mountainside
In the Ruwenzori range
In the central Congo, one morning
Two great primates faced one another
Across a mist-filled clearing.
The first was a five hundred pound
Silver-backed gorilla
The second was a six foot three
Former Controller of BBC2.
Who would give way first
David Attenborough or the silverback?
Would violence break out?
Or would the two great apes
Controlling their primeval impulses
Set an example to the world?
The two regarded one another
With a degree of suspicion
And heavy-browed fascination.
Eventually the silverback
Deciding to break the diplomatic impasse
Drummed several times on its chest
And moved past its rival primate
Into the prefigured mist
With studied nonchalance
Leaving the distinguished silverback from the BBC
Alone in the clearing
To muse upon the world.
[Volume 3 of BLAIR follows in the blog below --
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