They Blog For You

Tony Blair has never had a secure grip on reality. While he was swanning around the world in the General Election 2010 I was on the doorstep for five weeks talking to voters.

They raised many issues, immigration, NHS, ‘scroungers’, global warming, jobs, and the credit crunch. No one mentioned ‘New Labour’. Plenty did not like Brown but not because he had shifted 100 millimeters from the New Labour nostrums-whatever they were. Nor did they claim that they were worried about the party straying from the path of the third way. Another mystical concept that was never defined. Both ‘New Labour’ and the ‘The Third Way’ were marketing tools to sell the party. Those words never crossed my lips or appeared in any of my election literature in the last or any other election.

In the fantasy world of ‘Walter Mitty’ New Labour was his creation, which won three elections. It’s absence lsot the fourth election. That fiction suits his self-image as the Redeemer of the nation. My views are a little more realistic. ‘New’ Labour disappeared in 2010 becaues the branded is discredited. The victories of Labour in Newport in the past four elections were thanks mainly to revulsion from Old Tories. Actor, salesman Blair was a persuasive acceptable front man that the nation liked. That helped to cut the public’s fear of the party.

Nothing can stay ‘New’ for 15 years and the concept has faded and died. Blair has convinced himself that it’s ‘Apres moi, le deluge’.  He is man without political convictions. He is offering himself for hire. Can he now be cosying up to Cameron?

The contempt that his party has for him had hit rock bottom. If he takes a job with Cameron it will become subterranean.

 Vaccines not WMD

It’s not all bad new from Obama

Pentagon shifts $1 billion from WMD-defense efforts to vaccine development

The Obama administration has shifted more than $1 billion out of its nuclear, biological, and chemical defense programs to underwrite a new White House priority on vaccine development and production to combat disease pandemics; Defense Department projects under the budget-cutting ax include the development and acquisition of biological and chemical detection systems; gear to decontaminate skin and equipment after exposure; systems to coordinate military operations in a chem-bio environment; and protective clothing for military personnel entering toxic areas, the document indicates