Comment
Tony Blair has been widely pilloried and mocked for his absolute self-awareness failure during his appearance on the BBC’s Marr show on Sunday morning.
Discussing Brexit, the idea of a second referendum and Theresa May’s dismal Brexit ‘deal’, Blair said – with a straight face – that Theresa May’s deal is so awful that it would be “a bit like me having come in as leader of the Labour Party and suddenly deciding I’ve become a Conservative“.
But that was far from the only such failure Blair suffered during his interview with Marr – who surprisingly praised the wisdom of Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Brexit – nor even necessarily his worst or most revealing:
Blair’s failure to even consider that the EU referendum was supposed to be a ‘final’ event ‘for a generation’ shows how out of touch he is – unlike Corbyn – with the feelings and opinions of leave voters in Labour heartlands,
But even worse is his complete indifference to the suffering of millions under Tory policies – many of which she personally oversaw – in his opinion of her as a ‘decent person’ with ‘a lot to admire’.
Blair also told Marr that the need for a new ‘centrist’ party has not gone away – but is not now. But he showed during his Marr appearance that he is the living embodiment of the remoteness, blandness, sameness and indifference to the suffering of huge numbers of people that has made so-called centrism completely toxic to the millions in this country who are sick to death of ‘more of the same’.
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Tony Blair is now a parody of Tony Blair.
I’m just waiting for another hand of god speech, his apparent sincerity was particularly worrying. .
Check out May’s – I mean Blair’s – wry smile at Marr’s “… he’s been playing a very clever long-term balancing act” at 1:02 minutes.
The smile of a rich warmonger resentful of a fortune spent and favours begged/favours repaid to secure the downfall of a man he’d always dismissed as a nonentity in his world of elite untouchability – but who’s steadfastly refused to fall down.
“Fuck it, Cherie, stop laughing – this is serious – I might actually go to trial!”
Whilst I agree with the general gist of your post it appears that your references to leave voters in Labour constituencies may have been rendered inaccurate by recent polls.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zyn6cwnsqt/PeoplesVote_waves1,2,3_Merge_w.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/02/majority-in-all-labour-seats-back-second-referendum-study-says
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/poll-reveals-majority-brexiteers-constituents-13640744
Whilst I agree with the general gist of your post above it appears that your references to leave voters in Labour constituencies may have been rendered inaccurate by recent polls.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zyn6cwnsqt/PeoplesVote_waves1,2,3_Merge_w.pdf
and also
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/poll-reveals-majority-brexiteers-constituents-13640744
Such faith in remain sponsored polls is disturbing. My own polling, which is no more real than the others, suggests that: unlimited money for remain propaganda may have had limited success in areas where job security was threatened by global corporates. Other than that people just want to get on with it, they are sick to death of hearing about it. Also, people didn’t just decide to vote leave when they didn’t see Farage’s bus, they had 40 years to make up their minds.
I haven’t come across any Brexit sponsored polls for several weeks, have you? I am more than happy to have a look at any links you are able to post. The puzzling thing is why there appears to be a lack of Brexit sponsored poll.
Unless the Brexit side have suddenly stopped commissioning polls it is difficult not to conclude that the reason the Brexit side aren’t publishing their findings is because they are getting the same results as the remain sponsored polls.
That could be because there is no Brexit campaign. In the last two years since the result was announced the middle class suddenly woke up and discovered there was unlimited money for them to use in order to turn (frighten) the British public against Brexit. The media has been doing nothing else, yet no one will talk about the issues arising from membership of the EU, the problems with the Euro, the problems being stored for later with regard to fixed budgets being imposed, the problems with never-ending austerity, the fact that, should we remain in Europe our railways will be in French and German hands by 2023. And most of all, the problem of what do we do when the Euro crashes or Europe moves to federation. Never mind the geopolitical tension being stoked by Europe against Russia.
There was never a better time to leave but no message is being discussed or sent, all remain wants to talk about is “the lie on the bus, Russian money, and some nonsense about less than a third of people voting for Brexit.
Polls, who trusts them?
People who agree with the results.
Polls ask questions, its how those questions were posed gives the required answer, also people are not hearing the real debate only the shenanigans of the Tory negotiations, under real debate conditions with real knowledge of what is happening in Europe itself, I believe even you might look at the subject a little differently.
I voted remain at the referendum because I did not want to enter into this futile debate – as this is a complete distraction over Europe to mask what the Tories are deliberately doing here at home to this country.
If there is a another referendum I will vote out and here’s why:
Please spend time listening to the video of Professor Mark Blyth, who is a Scottish academic at an American Ivy League University, Brown’s University. Here in the Video he is speaking in Athens as he does all over the world.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2016/07/08/mark-blyth-roots-of-brexit-98159/
Largely mirrors my own thinking. I, like most others didn’t take much notice of the EU until the referendum, even then it was portrayed as right wing nationalists rocking the boat. It was only after reading the Maastricht Treaty and looking at Greece’s situation that I saw the whole thing for what it is. We should be having this debate up and down the country, not listening to “cliff edge” nonsense, trade will continue, we’re all Capitalists and money speaks loudest. Angry expats only speak for themselves.
a greedie traitor who really should answer for his crimes against humanity
ROFLMHO Just read Blair’s statement !
” suddenly deciding I’ve become a Conservative“
Almost choked on me scrambled egg this morning ,,, effing twat
He is a conservative. But that aside -what’s with the comment about feelings and opinions of ‘leave’ voters? Jeremy has bene less than deft and more than woolly on Brexit. Yes, leavers represent a mass of people who feel and felt completely excluded from London elitism, the ‘liberal esatablishment’ and all that, but that same mass was fed a load of tripe by Boris and Gove,& swallowed it whole & still do. Boris & Gove along with their friends in the Daily Mail and the Sun also pandered to the racist anti immigrant mythology (that immigrants drain welfare system) when in fact they do not. Leavers are lumpen proletariant abandoned by Thatcher represented by former colafield generations of hopeless poor such as in Mansfield. Meanwhiile the rich don’t pay enough taxes, shove their stolen loot into tax havens, cock up the economy, pay themselves huge salaries for failure, accept £billion bailouts for collapsing investment banks, take public contracts but destroy the company (Carillion) and many small companies dependent on it. Yet only immigrants will accept the meagre wages in the Lincolnshire potato fields and the apple orchards of Kent, and it is immigrants who form the backbone of our NHS whose latest crisis is massive short staffing as immigrants flee.
The problem is people only hear one side of the story, and that is the way in which the Tories have carried out the negotiations. There is a left wing Brexit that would take account of all the anxieties you have, whilst extracting us from the sinking ship Europe.
Why do we think fascism is rising in Europe, why are there riots in Paris that people hear so little about, do people understand the trade imbalances in Europe and how it is all linked to Neo-Liberal politicians writing rules that undermine the efficacy of the European Central Bank.
Please look at the video I posted earlier in this thread, it explains in detail what most know nothing about.
You’re mixing up immigrants, who will still come , when needed, from all over the world, with migrant labour flown in from eastern Europe and flown out again at the end of contracts who unfortunately, often decide to stay…with no skills, no money and only a tent to live in they end up in the black economy and there’s not much we can do about it.
As for the Lincolnshire potato fields, the quicker they invest in automated pickers the better. And the NHS crisis is caused by austerity not returning immigrants. Even Blair managed to recruit 50,000 nurses by providing full bursaries and giving them key worker status.
There is certainly a need to give ‘credit’ where it is due.
Whilst everyone seems to focus on Farage, Johnson, Gove et al over their role in the Brexit vote, the ammunition provided for them in terms of votes, particularly in large parts of the North with seats containing traditional big Labour majorities, can be found in the arrogant and egotistical disdain exhibited by the likes of Blair, Campbell and Mandleson with their “they have nowhere else to go” attitude.
Well they found somewhere else to go, as did large parts of the Scottish electorate for similar reasons. Those like Blair and their hangers on amongst the PLP malcontents need to be constantly reminded of rhis and made to own their part of the responsibility for where we are now.