Well it's been an up and down past month to tell you the truth. Why? Well the inevitable consequence of one spilling all the beans online and subsequently remembering you actually did it at the last morning, may have something to do with it. So I will be suitably vague but end cheerfully and leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling inside like Obama. Basically I left my last temp job which was due to end anyway a few weeks ago on a downer. Some frank words were exchanged, and then I moved on. Not exactly the warmest case of leaving a job. If you can't stand the vagueness then private message me. But for all viewing this wall, the rest of the information is classified. If I told you I would have to kill you. And survivors will be shot again etc. All a bit of a hastle really. The point of this (indeed there is one) is to say that I feel I have regained my confidence after it has taken a severe knock. I look back disappointed but not bitter, as JFK said "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".
Having a prolonged period of stability and success and then going into an unnecessary and thoroughly knackering downward slump which defies logic takes me neatly to..........Tony Blair! Recently I finished his book. Much like the individual himself the book half satisfied me and half infuriated me. Some of the usual arguments you would expect from him are there. But some controversial points (for him at least) are made. Likely trying to maintain moral highground he very rarely speaks directly against people, even those he was obviously at odds with. Such as Mo Mowlem. To a certain expect it appears to be an honourable way of saying he didn't get on with them, but it does come off as rather patronising in a curiously kind of paternal way as if to say "oh it's OK he's a good guy, just a little misguided. He'll learn when he grows up".
The actual political ideas expressed in this book share many striking realities with many of the centrist leaning people in the Tory-Lib Coalition at the mo, perhaps tellingly almost no venom is thrown at the current government. Most of the time in fact Tony Blair's criticism (people such as him rarely muster venom) is against the New Labour doubters within the Labour party who now apparently dominate the party (a viewpoint not without merit). The most prominent among them was his sometime friend and sometime political nemesis Gordon Brown, one of the most interesting and at times puzzling politcal feuds in our history. More on that later.
Tony Blair basically preached the gospel of New Labour, our expression of the Third Way politics that took it's lead from Clinton. In a nutshell an amalgamation of fiscal conservatism (eg. not spending more than one can afford) with preserving but reforming public services. Tactically sensing attacks about New Labour being perceived as just a media gimmick Tony quickly counter-attacks to attempt to assure the reader that New Labour represents a way of life more than it does a mere bumper sticker. But in a perhaps stereotypical Liberal messianic fashion, he continues the theme throughout the book of him as some kind of rejected reformist Jesus. Persecuted by the Romans in the form of the dregs of the old Labour Party, stopping them from seeing the light. I can imagine many of these elements reading this book and feeling as though they are being talked down to, by a school teacher they never liked.
It's not that I necessarily disagree with all of the things he did do or tried to do (many of them were honourable), but I just felt short changed reading with his meager excuses for leaving things the way he did. He harks on about irresponsible government spending and debt, which HE presided over! But he blames Brown! He tip toes around the strange issue of their feud several times until he sort of hits the nail on the head (not that I was satisfied when he eventually did). Basically he outlines a kind of gentlemans agreement between the two of them, for one leader to pass the entire country over to the other. He only remarks on how slightly it may (and indeed was in my many quarters) be perceived, to simply let party leadership elections take the place of actual general elections. So much for principle and going for broke on honest reform, when power is unexpectedly passed on in a blatantly onesided leadership battle. He practically ignores how short changed people felt in the beginning of the Brown era of government. Of course his ultimate downfall is mostly attributed to his abandonment of his New Labour baby, of which absolutely nothing is wrong.
And then we come to Iraq, this issue is faced off by him with a pincer movement of victimhood arguments (ie."what else could I do?") and some admittedly intelligent arguments (close but not completely air-tight). In a nutshell he claims that the original Gulf War UN resolution technically still authorised the use of force in 2003. Second he argues that Number 10 could not of 'sexed up' the intelligence in the Iraq dossier, because it was the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) not Downing Street that made it. More plausible, but perhaps not airtight. OK he's not an intelligence expert and neither am I. But surely the correct approach to finding out about a subject matter that you don't have much on (and the stakes are high), is to check and then recheck your sources. And appreciate that much like with the news, it matters who is telling you what and different interests exist. On that basis, some Iraqi dissident making Saddam sound like some kind of nuclear Genghis Khan when the truth is perhaps differnt, becomes a possibility.
He in many ways intelligently recognises that much of the criticism the public has for the Iraq debacle is nowdays more about how unprepared we were for the aftermath, as oppose to how we handled toppling Saddam himself. This is where I admittedly started to lose patience with the author in the book. He more or less ignore the background of Iraq being a country of years old tensions between rival ethnic groups. Basically his simple formula is power gap+Alqaeda-in-Iraq+Iran= chaos. I know Alqaeda and Iran played a part in stirring up trouble. But many of the prominent agitators in the near civil war were Iraqis representing grieviances many ordinary Iraqis faced in an uncertain future, shaped by centuries of leaders playing on ethnic divides. How could Blair be so naive of Iraq in this regard with our empire history there. Basically us putting the Sunnis on the pedestal above the majority Shias, albeit in a less extreme way than Saddam. I think his biggest mistake was not planning for the worst scenario, that unfortunately made itself a very real reality.
As if to make up for all that I disagree about him, there is also much to appreciate in his book. He owns up to some well known embarrasing moments, such as his "Hand of History" quote. The book is also very informative about complex issues such as the Northern Ireland chapter. Chapters such as this are often interspersed with light-hearted humour. For instance during one Northern Ireland negotiation Tony tried to keep calm with a particularly prickly person he was negotiating with, only to ignore insults to his position to have his aide leap up furiously in his place and do the "how dare you!" angry retort. Some of the controversial characters in his term of power are elaborated on, to make them real and often interesting people. This is particularly the case with Alistair Campbell, like him or loathe him, I bet you if you read this you may even respect him. And for my generation this book especially will bring back a lot of nostalgia, good and bad. The 1997 election, the millenium, Princess Diana's death, 9/11. In a sense I felt I had to read this book, and in many ways I am glad I did.
For now I am onto a book about the American Civil Warm, hence the wierd blog title. Thanks for reading.
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