According to leaks, the Chilcot Inquiry Report, finally due out in July, will be very bad news for Tony Blair. Such as is left of his political reputation, and that is not much, will apparently be shredded by disclosures and judgements about how on earth the decision to attack Iraq, to defend against the imminent use of non-existent ‘weapons of mass destruction’, was taken. So Tony is trying to get in early to build a new consensus about some equally fictitious political strong-point called the centre. The problem is that for a centre to exist it has to be central to something. It might be a circle, or a square, or a forest, or a crowd. In politics it has to occupy the no-man’s land where consensus can be built between the priorities of left and right.
But a political centre without powerful left and right wings will not fly any more than a wingless plane fuselage. We have been governed from the centre since the demise of Thatcher and have ended up in never ending austerity, the rich getting ever richer at the expense of the poor, failures of strategic military and foreign policy, failure to secure power supplies, failures in health, eduction, care for the elderly, the vulnerable and the mentally ill, failure to solve the housing crisis, failure to control excessive inflation of housing costs, failure to end the budget deficit, failure to reduce the trade deficit; the list is all but never ending.
So now this extraordinarily arrogant man who seems a stranger to humility, remorse, clear thinking and a sense of when the time has come to shut up, dares to tell the country that to elect a Corbyn Government would be a dangerous experiment. You may recall he made some fatuous comment about heart transplants which ensured Corbyn’s landslide in the Labour leadership election, so it looks as if a Corbyn government is an increasing certainty in 2020. The reason is simple. Corbyn is a man of integrity whom people instinctively trust. Or put simply, the opposite of Blair.
I couldn’t resist commenting. Exceptionally well written!