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The many faces of Tony Blair Listening to Tony Blair addressing the EU parliament is a rather strange experience. He calls for reform of spending and recognising economic reality whilst at the same time declaring that he is a ‘passionate European’ and saying that he supports the idea of an intrusive welfare state.
That Blair’s views on the need to ‘liberalise’ makes him a Thatcherite radical in the eyes of many Continental politicians shows how truly doomed to long term stagnation and irrelevance the EU really is. It also shows Blair’s wish to be all things to all people and why in the long run NuLabour cannot help but choke on its own contradictions just as the Tories have.
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” …how truly doomed to long term stagnation and irrelevance the EU really is.”
All people here love to vilify and demonize the EU as a corrupt, undemocratic, bad, bad, bad monster.
Fine. I myself also don’t love them very much.
(Though you should not exagerate and compare them to some past figures, like Napoleon, the Kaiser or the white and red Czars – the current brand of Europeans aren’t murderous, and are rather impotent militarily).
What I fail to see is how Britain is so much different. Brittain isn’t the bastion of freedom and capitalism it maybe was once. There isn’t that much difference between Britain and the rest of the continent as far as most economic policies, and even civil liberties are concerned. So it somehow fits into Europe. (Ducking for cover!).
And: say after me: open borders, free movement of people and merchandise, and even a unified currency are GOOD THINGS. ( A pity they come bundled with a lot of socialist balast).
El Phonio also told the assembled Euro taxeaters that he had always been passionately pro Europe, which presumably means that the time he stood on the 1983 Old Labour manifesto of leaving the EC has now gone down the memory tube. It did not happen. Who will you believe, the Dear Leader or your own memory?
He was a big anti-war activist before he was pro-war. I remember reading that he and Cherie had been committed CNDers as a young married couple and only ditched it when they realised their membership was making them unelectable. (As it happened, nothing could render Cherie electable.)
According to Mark Seddon: “In 1983, Tony Blair described himself as a supporter of Tribune, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Michael Foot. His election manifesto called for Britain to “leave the Common Market” (now the European Union). “
This could be a brilliant, all or nothing gamble. If Tone, along with new French and German governments manages to haul the Eu to the right then guess who gets all the credit. Permanent presidentship will be Tones’ for the asking.
Just imagine, President Tone and prime minister Brown. What a world that would be.
Bliar is a weathervane, its his raison d’etre. He’s wriggling out of that referendum he didn’t want us to have by looking like he’s going to whip the fat out of the EU.
John East you have a vile imagination:-)
The assessment of TLTB is correct.
As I have written earlier, once the EU cannot ‘lock in’ these facts at a more remote EU level, it means the task of turning these issues around in the UK just requires effective UK politics.
Yes, yes, yes and no.
And free movement of merchandise within a tightly regulated system is not really that good
Bliar is going around the EU looking authoritative and “presidential”. I think his ambitions in that direction are undiminished.
And leave us not forget, the votes of France and Germany don’t mean anything any more, now that there are around 22 members. If he can persuade Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and those new 11 or whatever it was, that he has suddenly converted into being a capitalist, that’s all he needs to get his very own Airforce One. And people dressed in those poncy little European military uniforms playing little bugles as he gets on and off waving modestly.
Verity wrote:
ROFL!
Blair’s speech to the European Parliament said just that, that he had ‘always’ been committed to Europe. It was left to a number of MEPs to point out Our Little Tone’s error in his 1983 election manifesto …
Regarding Blair and Europe I’ve always inclined towards John O’Sullivan’s comments that,
Blair’s a coward. But he craves glory. He hungers for the designation “war leader” and didn’t want to be overshadowed by Margaret Thatcher who took Britain into a genuine war in the interests of British people living thousands of miles away.
He will not go down in history except as a peculiarity. Someone whose vaunting ego needed a stage even larger than Britain. The whole of the European continent, stage-lit for Tony. He craves a place in history, but there will be nothing for him. Only dust, because he has no substance.
Quoting John O’Sullivan, Julian Taylor writes:
“… unlike most of his countrymen, Blair is a passionate “European” who believes that the nation-state is inevitably being superseded by new supranational organizations like the EU.”
This is exactly right and comes about because Bliar is a perfect example of that generation which was intellectually inseminated by the Whig interpretation of history: the bizarre, wholly unscientific, doctrine which insists that history is somehow ‘heading’ to some glorious point in the future, when everything will be wonderful – almost as if it were being guided by some unknown hand.
It’s arrant nonsense, of course – but Bliar isn’t alone in believing it. Indeed I was rather surprised to see Brian Micklethwait teetering close to that heresy in a post, a few weeks ago.
Nothing (save death) is inevitable. The EU only appears that way because people are told it is by those whose psychology craves the dependence of the dog-pack. If only they would follow that instinct through, they would realise that no canine society can operate without dominance by an alpha elite.
I don’t want to live like a dog and I am appalled by the attempts of those that do, to force the rest of us into their pack.