If I were to choose a person from the last hundred years of history and select a single event that analogously represents what Mr Blair has shown himself to be, it would be a member of the crew who manned the Titanic. Not one of the noble ones, I hasten to add, who stood by their posts prepared to go down with the ship as they helped passengers climb aboard the life boats but one who would be prepared to dress up in a women’s dress, push his way to the front of the life boat station and smack people round the head with whatever oar might be available, so that what he considered to be his personal life boat wouldn’t sink. Thus he would reach the safety of the home straight situated on the other side of the election channel although at present this channel must look more the stretch of water between the rocks of Cylla and Charybdis from Homers Odyssey than the innocuous waves of the English Channel. Needless to say there is no similarity whatsoever between Tony Blair and Odysseus. Tony Blair plays vicarious soldiering with the same ignorance that Mr Bush displayed on May 2nd 2003 when he gave his infamous speech aboard the USS Lincoln “Fellow Americans operations in Iraq have ended …the United States and our Allies have prevailed”.

Definitely not the most perspicacious observation but one that has a sense of the bizarre equalled in quality by Blair’s natural flair for mendacity which competes with any of the histrionic political farces that Bush has directed. George Bush is no hero and likewise neither is Tony Blair, except perhaps in the eyes of Cherie and the numerous women from the suburbs who are infiltrating every department in the upper echelons of his cabinet. It is fairly obvious that Blair feels safer among the ever increasing number of skirts which swirl in the Cabinet room where new in house labour treachery can strikes at any moment with the venom of pre-emption. Real men who have ethics like Robin Cook had, clearly frighten him which is why he selects his lieutenants carefully and gets rid of them when their existence becomes an embarrassment and a danger to his own seat on the throne of power. There is nothing safer for a man than to surround himself by ordinary but pushy, ambitious women who have nothing to fear from the testosterone male! Such a ploy is even safer than encouraging a coterie of old friends and acquaintances who often have the longest knives of all. Blair’s babes aren’t exactly powerful operators but they certainly move about from one ministry to the next and some lucky ones get elevated into the House of Lords when it becomes obvious that their value has zeroed ,Estelle Morris being a prime example. Blair selects and disposes with the tyranny of a 19th century Victorian. He might have a smile and appear to have a twinkle in his eye but do they relate to the word sincerity? Not in the opinion of a vast number of the voters . The recent Blair version of the night of long knives was pretty callous and if, in his eyes, he is the 21st century Caesar, he is certainly making sure there is no Brutus lurking behind him on the front steps of the stage where the latest obfuscating political farce is produce. Blair the mafia boss of New Labour waits and watches and plunges the knife before any potential Brutus can sharpen his dagger and hide it among his person until he is ready to stab.

So where do we go from here? As the first decade of the 21st century yawns into the part 2 we have new boy David Cameron, Sir Menzies Campbell and Gordon Brown all dreaming of the same goal. To move into No 10 and all that entails. Unless Tony Blair stops taking his pills which he must be very close to taking, I don’t think even he will risk going for a fourth term of office. Sir Menzies Campbell is a gentleman of the old order which is more than I can say about Cameron for all his Etonian / Oxbridge passport advantages. Unfortunately, Sir Menzies lacks the dynamism that will impress the public enough to induce them to put a cross against his name at the next general election. Add that to the discrimination against old age and Sir Menzies is a dead duck in the water although it must be said that if Sir Menzies ,or Ming as he likes to be called, were to become prime minister he would make a better one than either Gordon Brown or David Cameron .

And, speaking of Cameron, man of the people with open shirt and a bike to ride, good choreography but will these distinguishing qualities get him into number ten? Yes, it is possible that he might make it although the unctuous manner and “I am one of you” style of hustings will only fool a percentage of the voters. Regrettably those who aren’t taken in by his calculated activities and speeches are more than likely to represent the almost 60 percent of the polling list who wont vote because of their burnt out political souls which never caught fire in the first place ! The political apathy of the English is incredibly powerful in its implied negativity and yet as students the British are capable of violence and social disruption until they are finally absorbed into the establishment and become tame and emasculated, desperately trying to catch up with the image of the middle classes.

In the last six months I have been to two serious conferences. The Annual General meeting of the Fabian Society in January and the recent Power Commission conference at the Elizabethan Hall beside Parliament Square. At the Fabian Society Gordon Brown made long speech in which he basically set out his concept of politics according to the Gospel of Brown, heir apparent to the throne of power. It was a long speech for which the applause was proportionately long and sustained but it was a “look at me, look at me, hear what I say, wouldn’t I make a great Prime Minister?" type of speech that we all made as children when seeking approval. He even cracked his lugubrious face into a simulacrum of a smile. A rarity indeed not often observed by the public who are used to an occasional front bench lip stretch and a flash of his teeth . Brown also flew the Union Jack at the back of the Fabian stage to keep up with the BNP party hoping to show that the pride of England was not an emblem exclusive to the BNP party whose political rumblings seem to be putting the fear of god into the present relatively new establishment. Brown spoke as if he had it in the bag but I am not so sure. He has made similar speeches before .

At the Power Commission conference both Cameron and Sir Menzies, two contestant “heir apparents” to the throne of power, had obviously, at the last moment obtained a high profile promulgation speech slot and were able to give their respective new political images to an enraptured audience who were members of the public, thirsty for change in style and governance. People with new and fresh dreams, ready to be motivated by the heady words of political rhetoric, wanting to believe that England was on the pivotal moment of 21st century politics and at the brink of the next stage of political evolution . Sir Menzies’ speech contained the mellow words of political wisdom by someone who had been there before and would give his pragmatism to the office of Prime minister if the public were to choose him in the next General Election. I believed in his sincerity which I didn’t feel was present in the first speech of the conference during which David Cameron promised the earth and went through the full gamut of political fantasies with something for everyone like a Father Christmas playing out the fantasy factor in Harrod’s Christmas grotto.

Cameron was going to make right all the wrongs in our society if he got into office and listening to his carefully honed script I had the impression of a man born with the privilege of wealth getting carried away with his own fantasies which are easily acquired if one has the privileges that come with money, the right connections and the silver spoon is present at birth. I also wondered who had written his speech and what group of advisors had fed the magic formula to the speech writer. But I wasn’t convinced that this was a man who knew , who understood, who sincerely empathised with the man in the street. He might have his own personal problems but the very style he is adopting indicates that he has been briefed of the political necessities of which he must be aware. It must be understood that being technically aware does not give the empathy which is required to produce efficacious policies and a government which will cure the ailments of a society.

George Osborne his shadow Chancellor side kick, gives me a similar but even more apprehensive feeling. The recent inclusion of Zac Goldsmith puts the finishing touch to this merry band of privileged men dedicated to eliminate poverty and endorses John Prescott’s appropriate nomenclature when he said “ these members of the “Old Etonian mafia” And as with all mafia groups what they say is the way they will insist that things will be. Apparently they have the answers but then doesn’t everyone who aspires to be Prime Minister and isn’t it a fact that the big mouth who claims to have the answers is more than likely to resemble the self invented war hero who never stops talking about his incredible bravery which didn’t actually exist as opposed to the genuine war hero who did perform feats of personal bravery doesn’t talk about it, blow his trumpet or repeat after the second whiskey, how he and his friends won the war single handed.

Cameron and his buddies are all there waiting impatient to go into action but there is something troubling me. Is it the bumptiousness of Osborne or the humility of David Cameron and that I find unnerving. For someone who was going to put an end to the ya booing in the house he seems to have picked up the habit rather well. Cameron is young enough to believe what he says but not old enough to know that his words are simply the regurgitated bull shit which politicians have been saying for over a hundred years. Every generation thinks they have discovered sex and in a similar vein it rather looks as though the new boy in the chamber thinks he has discovered the ultimate panacea of all political ailments.

Copyright Dorian van Braam May 2006