So... what do you think Tony Blair is thinking these days?

[FlemingsGhost]

:shrug:

[Fenris]

1. He isn't

[johntao]

2. ache

I don't know what he's thinking, but I'm sure those stomach aches are returning.

[newyawker99]

19. Hi johntao!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[rpannier]

3. About...

what he'll do when Kerry is elected and the truth comes out. Can you "Tories" I thought you could. (Which just sickens me. But, it's Blairs fault)

[Minstrel Boy]

4. The blood of David Kelly, I hope.

But I doubt it.

[adjwilli]

5. I bet he was thinking this....

At some point, he was probably thinking this...

<img src="">

[newyawker99]

20. Hi adjwilli!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[adjwilli]

23. Thanks!

I've gotten a few little welcome messages. Much obliged. This seems like a real cool forum.

[roguevalley]

6. You'd have to ask Carole Caplin. She's his brains.

Check out the new Vanity Fair. It will scare you.

[U4ikLefty]

7. Where he'll take asylum

n/t

[Ksec]

8. Whats Blair thinking?

I say hes trying to figure out a way to get out of the predicament he got himself into but it aint happenin. The Brits would never let him forget what hes done and the fact that he went against the entire country which knew Iraq shouldnt have been the target of the war on terror. The people knew it was bogus but Blair was stupidly standing by Bush . The creepy bastard should be in prison along with his buddy bush.

[Zinfandel]

9. Where's my buddy Clinton when I really need him...he got suckered

with the promise of greed (oil, a base, a real say,) that only the republicans can seduce you with...HaHa...he's paying and will continue...

[Michael Harrington]

10. Unlike Bush...

He's a real fully formed person. Unfortunately, people like him like to pal around with guys like Bush. They think it gives them Edge.

Right now, Blair is like the virtuous girl who let the captain of the football team (Bush), go all the way on Prom Night, because he said he loved her.

Now, it's the next morning, and the whole school knows he's let Bush go downtown. His virtue is ruined.

[truthspeaker]

15. great analogy

And Blair is still convinced the football star loves him.

[T_i_B]

11. How to stop people looking at the mess in Iraq

That and how to cling onto power at any cost. :eyes:

[Dead_Parrot]

12. That he'll get away with it all.

Wanker.

[leftchick]

13. I recommend he not read Clarke's interview in the Guardian today.....

it could reaally ruin his day....


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1175790,00.html

<snip>

JB: Do you think Britain had much influence in the run-up to the war?

RC: They would have done it without Britain. I don't think it made a lot of difference. I think the British were able to help Colin Powell to persuade them to go to the UN. It did go to the UN for a period of time, and it may have helped a little. It may also have forced president to issue a statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He went out there and read the words like he was seeing them for the first time. There hasn't been a lot of follow through, and I don't think the Brits got very much. They got the minimum possible out of us. I think Blair tried to influence the decision making and thought he could do better inside, but his influence was small.

[Spentastic]

14. Really?

Tony is probably wondering what song to play when he gets re-elected.

I note that there's a feeling on this particular forum that Tony is in some sort of electoral danger. This flies in the face of the reality of the current British political landscape.

The Tories - Noone has forgotten their bad points and noone can remember their good ones. They are led by a dinosaur who looked out of touch ten years ago (Prison works) and is getting further out of touch as time passes.

Lib Dems - Not a force to be reckoned with. Charles Kennedy's day's are numbered and there's no shining light to replace him. Their recent conference seemed to involve pointing a gun at their electabilty and pulling the trigger.

New Labour - King Tony is still in a strong position. Brown is never really going to threaten him. If he was he'd have done it by now. All effective opposition has been quashed. He has lied the country into a war, sold off public assets and yet he's untterly unassailable because the masses couldn't give a flying fuck about anything but Pop Idol and Ben Sherman shirts.

[T_i_B]

16. I keep trying to say as much on here.

Even if Blair is not all that popular the common view over here is that there is no credible alterative. British democracy at present is not in what I would call a healthy state.

Blair's landslide majority means that he pretty much can't lose the next election and he knows it. That is a major part of why "new" labour has become so out of touch and arrogant.

[Spentastic]

17. Yes

Until people come to terms with the reality of the British political landscape NOTHING will happen.

It's not enough to say Hutton will harm Blair, Butler will harm Blair, GM will harm Blair etc. etc. etc. Without solid actions to acheive if not his destruction at least a comprehensive weakening such talk is just that, talk. The Tories and the Lib Dems have proved utterly ineffective and there is no viable figure within the Labour party who will risk their careers by opposing Blair.

I see so much wishful thinking here it hurts my brain.

New Labour has damaged democracy in the U.K. Effectively removing choice from the electorate. The choice now is centre right or right.

[AP]

21. New Labour is slowly removing the raison for the Tories' d'etre.

And that's a very good thing.

It's now time for a legitimate third party to step forward, and I don't mean the "we don't believe in anything really" Lib Dems, and I don't mean all the regional nationalist parties.

The UK needs a party to the left of Labour to step forward. What about Greens?

[billyskank]

22. Our electoral system makes that vanishingly unlikely.

The main house, the Commons, is elected in a similar method to your House of Representatives. Unlike your system, we have no separate election for the political head of state* - the leader of the party with the most seats in the Commons becomes Prime Minister. I expect you know all this.

You also see why this system is prejudiced against third (let alone fourth) parties. Just like your Presidential elections, our general elections are first-past-the-post affairs, and the share of power each party gets reflects in no way their share of the vote. In the last election, Labour got less than 50% of the votes, yet they have a majority in the Commons of almost 170. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats got about 17% of the votes and have 56 seats out of almost 700.

Labour should have initiated electoral reform but two landslide victories have made them think the current system is OK as it is. This is foolish, even from a partisan point of view. They should look into a future where the conservatives are back in power, and imagine how they will feel about voting reform then.

*I know, the queen is the "real" head of state, but the PM is the figure most like your President.

[AP]

24. I agree with the analysis, however, I note that the UK actually

does pretty well with third parties -- or at least better than the US.

There are plenty of third parties, but they aren't organized around sensible themes.

For example, devolution of political power is an important liberal concept. However, it's unproductive to have regional nationalist parties carrying that flag in all different directions.

Rather than have an SNP and the Welsh parties, and the NI parties balkanizing those impulses, it would be nice if there were, for example, a single (eg, Green) party which could express all those ideas under a single umbrella party on the left.

Furthermore, it seems like the Lib Dems have channeled a lot of third party sentiment into a relatively unproductive direction too. They just don't seem like they stand for anything. They say they're not about ideology. But you can't avoid having an ideology if you're a political party, and if their ideology is that they're not about ideology, they're going nowhere.

Some party should come along and bring all these third parties together and organize them under a common theme, perhaps about democratization through decentralized power (and not only through devolution of power), since the UK seems to have too much centralized power, and since that seems to have some appeal already. It's also, arguably, what's wrong with Labour too, and what's wrong with government generally in the UK.

[Nihil]

18. Something along the lines of ...

... "Oh shit ... ooooohhhh shit ..."

Whilst I agree with the earlier posters that Blair is not in any danger
from the election (simply through lack of alternatives), he is also not
as stupid as Bush. Blair knows that people can come up with tough questions.

Blair can see that he (and his friends) have got a long, thin tightrope
ahead of them, one that stretches over an unbelievably deep chasm.
He knows that it might only take one unexpected gust to knock him off
balance and it is a very windy place.

Whilst Bush might well have been told this by various advisers, Bush is
too dense to grasp the danger, too stupid to recognise the oncoming
headlights as anything except a mild curiosity in the middle of his
stroll along the highway. Blair not only sees all of the lights heading
his way, he knows what will happen if too many sets approach at the same
time and also what will be left after any of them make contact.

I think he is remembering his first hangover: waking up after a really
heavy binge when everything was wonderful fun and now realising (with
a dull, aching head) that he's got a lot of cleaning up to do.

Nihil