The Debatable Land

Hague on Blair (and Brown)

It's possible I have posted this before, but William Hague's riff on Tony Blair becoming "President of Europe" also bears another viewing:

Blair's Appealling Modesty...

I'd have more respect for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation if it had a different, less egotistical, name. (And, if truth be told, if it were led by a different, less sanctimonious, person). To wit, as he told Time last week:

He can, no question, come across as a bit cocksure in the rightness of his judgments. But he swims in deep waters. He is convinced, he told me, that in the rich world, "without spiritual values, there is an emptiness that cannot be filled by material goods and wealth." He understands that faith is what gives meaning to the lives of billions, and he passionately believes that the world would be a better place if people of faith harnessed their talents together in aid of the common good.

Well, how many people really think that "material goods" replace the consolations of "spiritual values"? Precious few. And why does Blair suppose that these "spiritual values" are somehow necessary for a virtuous, decent life and that those of us who don't troop off to church each week are in some sense deficient? On the other hand, it's by no means an original argument to suggest that billions of people find consolation in "spiritual values" precisely because their temporal circumstances are so miserable. (The United States, of course, is, to some extent anyway, the great exception.) Anyway, does Blair really think Britain would be a happier place if more folk attended church each week? And if so, on what does he base this conviction?

Then again, if Blair is right, then we're doomed:

"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century."

That's something to look forward to, eh?

Where's Blair?

Of course he's off saving the world or, as Robert Harris puts it today, "He is already on to the next big thing in his career, with the premiership (in Alan Bennett's wonderful phrase) merely a stage in his spiritual journey."

Time to give this a fresh airing then:

Harris makes a serious point: the absence of any kind of Blair legacy is itself a problem for Gordon Brown. And it's also the case that despite Brown's hapless performance and his seemingly doomed ministry I've yet to hear a single person express the wish that if only that nice Mr Blair could return...

[Hat-tip: Clive Davis]

Has Blair Kinda/Sorta Endorsed John McCain?

Danny Finkelstein thinks so. Noting that Blair had said that modern politics is more a matter of Open vs Closed than Left vs Right:

And then I asked which politicians on the right he regarded as on his side, the open side, of the new argument. He replied:

I think you can see the Republicans in the US who are on the pro-immigration side of the debate, on the pro-free-trade side, the Americans who are Democrats but protectionist. I think the thing that has come home to me most since leaving office is just the speed at which the world is opening up.

Full interview - largely on Blair and his Faith Foundation - here.

It's his world, we just suffer in it

LOL-Cats are so yesterday. The new sensation sweeping the British blogosphere is the LOL-Blair. No wonder, given the former Prime Minister's modest ambitions:

After accepting a job as Middle East peace negotiator, a million dollar contract at JP Morgan, a high level role as a Rwanda advisor, a position on the Africa Progress Panel, an advisory position at Swiss insurer Zurich, a heavy-breathing flirtation with the idea of the EU presidency and an interfaith teaching position at Yale (which will be linked to the upcoming Tony Blair Faith Foundation),  Blair has today announced he will be leading an international team of global superheroes to produce a new global deal on climate change...

Who am I to sneer if Blair can secure a new global deal while simultaneously bringing peace to the Middle East and Rwanda (and progress to Africa), making a fair old mint at JP Morgan and Zurich and holding a professorship in faith and globalisation at Yale? He might even learn to distinguish between truth and sincerity on the way. But I do have a worry: with so many other balls in the air, when is he going to find time to run the Tony Blair Sports Foundation? And now especially, at exactly the time when it has just launched the Tony Blair Tennis Challenge, a tournament where budding tennis stars in the North East of England compete ruthlessly for the coveted Tony Blair Challenge Cup.

Make your own here.

Department of Political Slogans and Charlatanry

If you need a quick explanation for why Hillary Clinton is about to lose to Barack Obama, consider that her chief strategist is Mark Penn and that he boasts of this:

I have won about 70 major elections around the world, including many presidents, and I devised the simple message for Tony Blair in his last successful campaign: ‘Forward, Not Back.’

That's why Mr Penn is paid the big bucks! (More than $4m from the Hillary campaign alone, IIRC). "Good Stuff, Not Bad Stuff!" But if he thinks this is why ACL Blair won the last election then he's even more deluded than the average bloated political consultant.

Also: American readers still prepared to give Mr Penn the benefit of the doubt might remember that Blair's last victory came against the unelectable Michael Howard (and his previous election triumph was against the equally unelectable Iain Duncan-Smith; who, exactly, did Tony Blair ever beat who was in any way any good?). Secondly, voters could plump for Blair happy in the knowledge that he'd be gone in a year or two.

Now, it's true that there may be an element of Sellers Remorse now that we've been lumped with Gordon, but that's another matter entirely...

Blair and Brown Part II: This time It's Continental

Great stuff from William Hague in the Commons as he imagines the terror of Tony Blair, President of Europe. American Anglophiles will also like it, since Hague's ability at the Dispatch Box trumps anything the United States Congress can offer.

[Thanks to the ever-redoubtable Mr Eugenides. As th eGreek says, David Miliband's genuine and unforced laughter is worth half a raised eye-brow too.]

Religious politicians: kooks or not?

Rod Dreher asks:

I agree that it was stupid that Romney should have had to have given that speech, but American political culture really left him little choice. As silly as that may seem -- as silly as it is -- is Britain really better off? This, from Jeff Jacoby's column on Romney today:

It was on Sunday that the Romney campaign announced the forthcoming speech, saying the candidate would discuss how his "own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected."

On the same day in Britain, as it happened, the BBC broadcast an interview with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that his Christian faith had been "hugely important" to him during his 10 years in power - but that he had felt constrained to keep it a secret for fear of being thought a crackpot.

"It's difficult to talk about religious faith in our political system," Blair said. "If you are in the American political system . . . you can talk about religious faith and people say, 'Yes, that's fair enough,' and it is something they respond to quite naturally. You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter."

Apparently that was more than Blair was willing to risk. The fear of being thought ridiculous was why his press secretary had snapped, "We don't do God," when an American reporter asked the prime minister about his religious views in 2003. It was why Blair's advisers vehemently protested when he wanted to end a televised speech on the eve of the Iraq war with the words "God bless you." American presidents routinely invoke God's blessing on the nation, but Blair's spinmasters warned him against annoying "people who don't want chaplains pushing stuff down their throats." (Blair told his flacks they were "the most ungodly lot," but bowed to their demand and ended the speech with a limp "thank you.")

Rod concludes:

Personally, I'd vote for a wise and trustworthy atheist over a brother in Christ who struck me as neither. But I'm in the minority here. Still, I prefer a political culture where politicians are expected to make some kind of respectful gesture toward God than one in which they are afraid to do so for fear of being thought a kook.

Well. There are a number of things here. First, from a political view Blair's press handlers were quite right to stop him "doing God". The consequences would have been calamitous. It is not insignificant that when Private Eye was looking for a successor to its splendid Adrian Mole rip-off The Secret Diary of John Major Aged 47 and 3/4 they settled for lampooning Blair as The Vicar of St Albion. Blair always had this trendy vicar side to him (the sort of vicar, incidentally, that I think Rod would despair of) and it is hard to imagine him failing to make the worst of that had he taken to talking about religion in public.

(As for being a kook: well, the Blairs are a little kooky. Cherie believes in crystals; they go in for re-birthing and spiritually cleansing mud-baths and all the rest of it. For a particularly mean  - vicious in fact - compendium of Cherie's eccentricities see this Daily Mail piece subtly headlined Is Cherie Blair Misunderstood or Bonkers?)

More importantly, however, Blair was only the hired help. Who is he to proselytise in this or any fashion? The only non-ordained person in Britain who can invoke God without fear of ridicule is Her Majesty herself. Her Christmas message each year frequently touches on religious themes and always ends by asking that "God bless you". The Queen can get away with this not just because she's the Head of the Church of England, but because when she does talk about religion she does so in a way that is modest and unassuming and, above all, transparently sincere (a trick, frankly, Blair could never have managed). She has the authority to do this, but also the sense to know her limits: Britain has no desire to see a televangelist in Buckingham Palace.

Then again, other politicians have found it possible - even in modern Britain - to talk about faith-based issues without seeming kooky.  People, I think, generally accept Gordon Brown's Church of Scotland background, just as they did Margaret Thatcher's small town Methodism. (Which reminds me of that famous old line about how the British Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marxism: true.)

But Brown and Thatcher had the good sense to keep their religion private. In part this is simple good manners. Religion, after all, is one of the three subjects you're not supposed to talk about at table. But it's also a recognition that religion is easily counterfeited and never more so than when it enters the public realm. At that point - as, surely, the American political system helps demonstrate - religion easily becomes just another form of advertising. Worse still, it's cheapened by the campaign process and, surely, risks seeming little more than a perjurous character-witness for shameless hucksters peddling the latest miracle cure.

Give me the modesty and sincerity of private worship over that.

PS: Blair's handlers were also right to prevent him signing off a war address with the words "God Bless You". Given that Blair was suspected, however unfairly, of being in George Bush's pocket, the last thing any sensible, non-crazed Prime Minister would do is start importing American religio-political rhetoric on the eve of war. To do so would have risked people assuming that he and Bush had indeed agreed that th ewar was God's wish and all the rest of it.

Bleak House, being the matter of the interminable case of Blair vs Brown?

Tony Blair has engaged the same lawyer - Robert Barnett - that negotiated Bill and Hillary Clinton's respective books deals. Blair is reported to be wanting as much as £8m for them (please lord, let his book be better than either Bill or Hillary's).

My mate James Forsyth asks readers to submit working titles for Blair's memoirs, here. Previous such Spectator contests have awarded bottles of champagne to the winner, so there's that too.

Of course, leave your ideas for suitable titles in the comments here as well.

Supper with Rupert

I've defended Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal, but that's not an endorsement of his political sensitivity. From the Campbell diaries:

Thursday January 17th, 2002:
Murdoch was coming in for dinner and... brought James and Lachlan [his sons]...Murdoch was at one point putting the traditional very right-wing view on Israel and the Middle East peace process and James said that he was 'talking fucking nonsense'. Murdoch said he didn't see what the Palestinians' problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live. Murdoch was very pro-Israel, very pro-Reagan. He finally said to James that he didn't think he should talk like that in the Prime Minister's house and James got very apologetic with TB, who said not to worry, I hear far worse all the time. Most of the discussion was a run round the main foreign policy blocks, Israel, Saudi, Iran, Indo-Pak, a little bit of why does Britain have to bother so much?...Murdoch pointed out that his were the only papers that gave us support when the going got tough. 'I've noticed,' said TB.

The wages of spin...

Mr Eugenides reminds one that, appallingly, you're better off trusting Muammar Gaddafi than Tony Blair.

"The Thick of It" in Real Life

Via my friend Fraser Nelson, I see that Alastair Campbell's (expurgated) diaries, demonstrate the essential accuracy of the terrific BBC series The Thick of It.

The scene: Clare Short, the left-wing Secretary of State for International Development, is boring on during a meeting of the War Cabinet. Tony Blair is not amused...

“War Cabinet. Clare Short rabbiting on more than ever. I slipped Tony a note about the time Saddam shot his health minister at a meeting because he was annoying him and did he want me to get a gun? ‘Yes’, he scribbled.”

'Twas the best of times, the worst of times...

The good news? It's Tony Blair's last day as Prime Minister. The bad news? It's Gordon Brown's first day as Prime Minister.

All in all, I'd rather have Blair stick around than subject the country to Iron Broon's tender mercies.

In which we praise anonymous sources for their entertainment value.

I know that one's supposed to decry the use of blind quotes from anonymous sources. But they have their uses you know. Take, for instance, this delicious prediction from a "Downing Street advisor" analysing the likely course of Gordon Brown's ministry:

"I actually  think he'll go mad, he'll be the first prime minister to be carried out of No 10 by the men in white coats."

That's just a marvellously spiteful and utterly gratuitous verdict, delivered, presumably, by one Blairite advisor whose had enough of the Chancellor's frequent tantrums.

Then there's the "former Cabinet minister" who observes that:

"Gordon's idea of a debate is to talk to a mirror."

Yes, yes, this is all taken from an entertaining piece in the Telegraph, a paper which holds no brief for Iron Broon. And yes, you may say that it's not terribly high-minded or complain that this sort of anonymous sniping and back-biting does little to elevate politics or advance the public interest. (Except in as much as it shows us how much the Blairites and Brownies hate one another.) But come off it. Politics should be entertaining; it should involve intrigue and drama and treachery. It should, in other words, be rather like going to the theatre. The psychological quirks  - or, if you prefer, flaws - ought to exercise the press.

PS: I confess I also enjoyed this aside:

Even Mr Brown's closest friends admit he has a furious  temper. "He will shout and scream - but after a few days he calms down," says one. His emails are written in angry capital letters and are full of spelling mistakes as he bashes the keyboard with two nail-bitten fingers.

"Bashes" and the specificity of "two nail-bitten fingers" are what makes it work, of course.

Meet the new constitution, pretty much the same as the old constitution. Fancy that!

Just when you thought the EU Constitution was deader than dead, back it roars to life. Well if that's what people want, they might as well get it, even if there seems little pressing need for the constitution. Still, as an example of our lords and masters' determination to thwart the will of the people, the EU constitution barney bears watching.

The BBC's Mark Mardell reports that Tony Blair is keen that a revised treaty not really be, like, a treaty thingy at all. Britain wants to suggest:

The idea that this is “a consolidating treaty” - Blair wants it to be "an amending treaty". This sounds technical but is politically vital because the government will argue that no Conservative government ever gave a referendum on treaties amending existing texts.

Indeed. That nice Monsieur Sarkozy seems to be on board already. As Downing Street confirmed:

"The Prime Minister and President Sarkozy did discuss the EU Treaty. There is broad agreement in the sense that they both think that any treaty must be an amending one rather than a constitutional treaty."

In this respect at least - ignoring the clearly expressed will of the people who want nothing to do with Giscard's constitution - Blair would demonstrate that he really is a true european., capable of putting Britain at the heart of the continent.

Beware the spin however. This will all be talked up to sound very, very bad. Britannia will be sold to Brussels and the like. That way Brown can "bat for Britain" and win some last-minute, meagre concessions from the euros who will mutter, helpfully, about bloody British intransigence and suggest that it's about time that foggy island made up its sodding mind.

The new treaty is Angela Merkel's idea:

A leaked letter from Mrs Merkel revealed last month that the treaty would have much the same "legal substance" as the failed constitution, but that it would make "presentational changes" and use "different terminology".

In other words: business as usual and shiny democracy in action. When Blair was bounced into declaring that the EU constitution had to be approved by a referendum he declared: "Let the people have the final say". How times change, eh?