'The way to deal with Ukip is to stand up and take them on, because what
they're putting before people is a set of solutions that anybody who analyses
where a country like Britain has to be in the 21st century, knows they are
solutions that are regressive, reactionary and would make all the problems of
the country worse, not better.' Tony Blair
TONY BLAIR HAS given an interview with the BBC's Today
programme, attacking Ukip as "pretty
nasty and unpleasant"; calling on Ed Milliband to "confront and expose
reactionary forces".
He must have been carried shoulder high by the BBC Guardianista[1]
as he left the studio. His intervention is however unlikely to endear the wider
British public outside of London.
He said that; "… if
it [the Labour Party]tries to follow
either Ukip on its anti-European platform or, even worse frankly, on its
anti-immigrant platform, all that will happen is it will confuse its own
supporters and it won't actually draw any greater support." Tony Blair
resides in many places and has a sizable property portfolio if what we read in
the press is to be believed…which it often as not can be.
In the 19th century there was an anti-Semitic
phrase aimed specifically at Jews who were referred to as "rootless
cosmopolitans" doomed to wander the world without a homeland of their own, seeking respite, but finding only persecution, in whatever lands
they found themselves in - now, having found their historical homeland there
are those who wish to send them wandering the world once more. But, you ask,
what does this have to do with Tony Blair's intervention.
Well, Tony Blair is a modern example of a rootless
cosmopolitan. He sits, like the rest of his kind, at the apex of the social
pyramid with nothing more than a passing glance at the British who live outside
the M25. I wonder in fact, how many visits has he made to his old Sedgefield
constituency since leaving politics?
Before I tackle his opinions as a voter of Ukip (for I, as
a member, I am deemed by him to be " pretty
nasty and unpleasant") I would like remind the
electorate, if they ever get to read this, what Mr Blair has accomplished from
his post prime ministerial globetrotting,
selling himself as a statesman par-excellence. This rootless traveller has
garnished a £2 million pound year consultancy with the investment bank JP
Morgan[2].
Tony Blair Associates has also signed a £27 million deal advising the Kuwaiti government
- no doubt another perk earned from the Iraq conflict.
Since
leaving office in 2007, and up until 2011; the personal wealth of Tony Blair
has passed the £20 million mark. Today Blair's estimated net worth,[3]
denied by Blair's office, is set at £75 million; he nevertheless entered the Sunday Times rich list for the first
time.
In
May of this year the Blair's properties stood a nine[4]
with a total worth of £15 million, which according to the Daily Telegraph, comprises; "… their £3.7 million
home in central London and an £800,000 mews house attached, a £5.75 million
country home in Buckinghamshire, Mr Blair’s old constituency home in County
Durham, flats in Bristol and Strasbourg, and London homes for each of their
three eldest children. Nicky Blair, 24, who works as a sports agent, co-owns a
£1.13 million town town house in London
with his mother."
Blair
begs and scrapes the world to increase his fortune; not from manufacturing
anything useful like Bill Gates, who employs hundreds of thousands of people
and their families, but from his international reputation. I wonder if Blair,
like several other celebrities, has indulged in tax avoidance. As a good
Catholic, Cherie would draw the line - and being pussy-whipped as he is; I
doubt very much if Tony would cross it…but you never know.
I VOTED UKIP, and will continue to
do so. For the sake of Mr Blair's argument, I will give a brief résumé of my
political past. I am 64 and from the time I was given the vote in 1968, I had
always voted Labour (even if, for a brief period, when in my youth I was a
member of the British Communist Party) and therefore resent myself being
described as, "pretty
nasty and unpleasant"[5];
or worst of all, reactionary. Which I know I am
not, as assuredly as I know I am not a racist.
I
vote Ukip first of all, because of the EU and the way it is gravitationally
dragging the nation states of Europe into a federalist concoction of European
wide provinces to replace the nation state with each province divided into
regions. Why am I a reactionary for opposing this? Simply because I seek to
hang on to this country's national
sovereignty and the power of each nation throughout Europe to make their own
laws; decide their own economic prospectus without it being dictated from
Brussels?
If
anything, Blair is the reactionary, to go against the nation state. It is,
according to Blair, now reactionary to believe in democracy; for their is very
little of it in the EU.
Who
elects the all powerful commissioners who are represented by appointed pensioned-off
politicians like Neil Kinnock? Who, it must be said served up very little of
substance while the leader of the Labour Party - only to make himself look a
buffoon in British politics when, during the 1992 general election, his
Sheffield rally performance caused a great deal of embarrassment to many Labour
voters like myself, and allowed John Major to continue in office.
It
is the European project that is reactionary; for it stinks of a kind of Napoleonisation
of the European continent; and you cannot get more reactionary than that. In
the corridors of Brussels, a phrase in popular use (and one with which Peter
Mandelson has sympathy with) is the term "post-democratic era". Can
you think of anything more reactionary
than to deny democracy, whose only replacement could ever be dictatorship. Even
the European parliament which is elected, only acts a rubber stamp for the
commission.
IT IS ON THE ISSUE OF MIGRATION,
that Tony Blair reserves his view that us Ukip supporters are "pretty nasty and unpleasant".
First
of all I am not against migration. It is about numbers. I am however against
multiculturalism because sooner or later it will lead to social conflict; no doubt not in London
(although I would not even hold my breath there); but this wretched ideology
(for that is what it is) will prove its valuelessness. Its main flaw is that it
keeps cultures apart and breeds resentment between them. "Diversity" is
the word on the lips the metropolitan elite, and their eyes always seem to
light when they use it
Since
2004, but even more so since Blair opened the floodgates in 2008, this country has
had to absorb an increase in our population of some five million people. Now,
if you believe, as Blair obviously does, that such waves of migrants are a good
thing economically, you must also talk about the social consequences of such an influx. For migration on such a
scale is a two edged sword.
The
social impact can be found on our public services such as the NHS, education,
and housing. Politicians like to blame old farts like myself for living to long;
and hold us responsible for creating the ever widening fissures within the NHS.
In fact it will be another decade before the aging population has such an
impact. The elephant in the room today within the NHS is migration; mainly from
Portugal and eastern Europe.
The
impact of migration on the NHS is never, or hardly ever, referred to. But a
visit to a doctors surgery, or a waiting room in any hospital will tell a different
story. The NHS's problems must be discussed in the context population increases,
which means migration - but it never is.
In
education, there are too many pupils chasing too few places in our schools; and
even the liberal middle class are finally coming round to why this is.
As
far as housing is concerned; we need to build between 200,000 - 400,000 homes
per year over the next decade to placate the demand. This means houses now
having to be built in places of natural beauty which we have sought and fought to
protect in the past.
You
never hear the argument these days for the requisitioning of brown field sites
- that has passed. And once more, it is the demand from migration that has
created this desire for such an increase in new homes.
I
will not go into the issue of welfare payments being made to the families of migrants
living in their own homelands; or any other aspect of the negative impact on
the welfare state wrought through migration; but it is there and is felt, but
is unspoken of.
TONY BLAIR'S life is free from any kind of social
impact made by this, I would like to say, criminal behaviour; but of course it
was no such thing. The free movement of peoples within Europe is perfectly legal, and Tony Blair
believed in it to such an extent that he ignored the seven year transition
given by the Commission to prepare an accommodation for such a large influx. Blair
pooh-poohed a period of grace and allowed migrants from the east into the
country almost immediately from 2008 - mainly Poles.
Tony
Blair is truly free from any of the social consequences of his actions. He can turn
up in the south of France at a moment's notice, or any other global safe haven
on the planet. He is rootless and free. We " pretty nasty and
unpleasant" people on the other hand, have to live with the consequences
- literally so; as we have not amassed the Blair's fortune. The migrants he
meets on a day to day level are probably the Russian oligarchs who are now
resident in London. Or the multicultural rich from whatever country now living
in London, who he can earn a crust from; who also support multimillion pound
mansions within the confines of London's decadency.
Tony
Blair has lost the attention of the British people outside of London; and even
in London he provokes a throaty delivery of mucus among the idealistic young of
that great city. To them he is a war criminal. These young Guardianista may
agree with him on migration, but cannot forgive his "war-mongering".
Still, he could yet advance to sainthood; even among such hostile youth.
TONY BLAIR'S intervention after the European
elections will have no doubt spurred on the New Labour Blairite's on the back
benches, still wistfully thinking of the past, and still grieving Gordon
Brown's ascendency.
But
such melancholy is a minority emotion, even within the modern Labour Party; let
alone the rest of the country. New
Labour is thankfully dead, even if it still remains active in David Cameron's
"Conservative" Party. But its creator still seeks a part in its resurrection
via the populism of Ukip.
If
your are wealthy and rootless, you can flit form one part of the world to the
other seeking further wealth or safety; even if, in Blair's case, you fuck up
the indigenous culture you were born into.
I
doubt if Tony Blair's father would have been proud of what he has accomplished
regarding the social cohesion of the country he believed in. As a Tory, would
Leo Blair, Tony's father have voted Ukip? It is a question only his son can answer;
but if yes, then Leo Blair like the rest of us Ukip voters would, according to Tony
Blair, and by his own logic, be regarded as "pretty
nasty and unpleasant".
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