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| August | 15 |
| 2004 |
Truly, we have a shameful Prime Minister. And as for his wife: the woman does not know the meaning of the word shocking. They have besmirched the very honour of the nation.
As we learned last week, Mrs Blair is now available for hire through an American speakers' agency. In October, when she had already planned to be in the US, she will consider speaking engagements designed to publicise her forthcoming book, The Goldfish Bowl, about previous prime ministers' spouses.
This is shocking news. The Daily Mail has fulminated over it. Radio phone-in callers have been outraged. The Prime Minister's wife works for a living. And she does so in return for money. Heavens above! She has written a book. Blimey. And - how could she even think of such a thing? - she wants to publicise it. Clearly the woman is venal to the core.
Just as venal, in fact, as her predecessor, Norma Major. Mrs Major wrote and promoted two books while her husband was prime minister, one a biography of Dame Joan Sutherland and the other a history of Chequers.
But the anger directed at Cherie Blair is not about the specifics of her behaviour. It is, rather, political. Attacking Mrs Blair for her entirely proper behaviour - she is doing nothing which is not above board - is simply another means by which her husband can be assailed.
Take the now annual ritual of the Blair holiday attack. I can barely bring myself to write this without turning puce with embarrassment for my country, but Mr and Mrs Blair have gone on holiday. Avert your eyes if you are of a delicate disposition: as if that were not bad enough, they are staying in other people's homes. There is an unfolding disaster in Sudan, Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb, and a European superstate is on the drawing board - but to hell with all that. There is only one story which really gets some commentators' wickers up and that is that the Blairs have chosen to holiday in homes belonging to Sir Cliff Richard, Prince Girolamo Strozzi and Silvio Berlusconi.
Lordy. The Blairs' crimes are even worse than we first thought. Not only does the Prime Minister borrow friends' houses, they are rich friends with lavish houses. The cheek of it! Indeed, the Blairs' holiday arrangements are so grotesque as to unite the Daily Mail and The Guardian in their contempt. As Hywel Williams put it in the latter newspaper: "The emperor Tiberius lounging in his villa at Capri could have taken lessons from these two when it comes to quality time. Time and again Mr and Mrs Blair show a startling disregard for propriety and, sometimes, decency."
Eh? I am clearly missing something here, as I cannot begin to understand what the fuss is all about. I returned earlier this week from a wonderful break in Aspen. I am lucky enough to have well-off friends who live in a town which is close to paradise. Every year, they invite me to stay. And so I pack my bags, buy my flight and disappear for a few days in the Colorado mountains. Maybe I am transgressing some fundamental rule of decency. In which case, I must blame my parents for bringing me up so badly as to not have a clue what is wrong with such behaviour.
I buy my hosts gifts in return for their hospitality. I imagine that the Blairs do the same for theirs. Just as I imagine did Baroness Thatcher for hers when, as prime minister, she regularly holidayed in a wealthy friend's house in Switzerland. So what? The Blairs have done nothing wrong, either legally or morally. But the innuendo, without the slightest moral substance, screams from the page. They're corrupt. They're on the take. They're deceitful. That's the (ill-concealed) allegation.
The Blairs' holiday arrangements are, we are told, part of a pattern of abuse by the Prime Minister and his wife - a "hat-trick of freebie holidays" in the Mail's words. Mrs Blair is, it seems, "notorious at party conferences for touring the exhibition stands and helping herself to soft toys and other freebies". As anyone who has to attend the party conference circuit will attest, it is almost impossible not to come away with a pile of dross, as the exhibitors desperately thrust their wares into your hands. Most of us can make a swift exit through the hall. Poor Mrs Blair has to be led to every stand to have her picture taken with the salesman who has paid thousands of pounds to the party for the privilege and to smile politely as she is handed yet another packet of mints with British Nuclear Fuels or Royal Mail branded across the wrapping.
The idea that one of the country's leading QCs is so desperate as to use the Labour Party conference for an annual grab at soft toys would be hilarious were it not simply risible. None of this, of course, has anything to do with the behaviour of the Blairs. The attacks reveal far more about their authors and their frustrations, than those they seek to condemn. The Blairs should rest happily in the knowledge that even their holiday arrangements serve to demonstrate the ineptness of the opposition.
MessageSpace
I'd wipe your nose, Stephen, it looks unbecoming.
And that is exactly what the Blairs are doing; brown-nosing. These are not 'friends' they sponge their summer vacations from but the loosely connected super-wealthy, celebrity, Euro-trash, political class that does each other favours on the principle of 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'.
Where's the real friendship between the Blairs and any of this lot that predates the accession to power and wealth of any of them? Nowhere.
What's more their antics betray an appalling lack of taste and imagination that bespeaks the culturally shallow. Who but the mindless Briton goes to the Caribbean in August?
Only in the political aftermath of the Foot & Mouth disaster that he and his colleagues made 10 times worse than it need have been by their inpetitude were the Blairs prevailed upon to 'choose' somewhere other than their normal predictable choices. And then they fled to the insulated world of the freebie just as soon as they could.
As for the book, your attempt to draw a parallel between Norma Major's two works, which diplayed true scholarship on subjects far removed from her life at No 10, and Mrs Blair's (note how she's happy to be called Mrs Blair and not Cherie Booth QC, when it suits her) no doubt vapid 'My Life in No 10' gossip column ramblings is pathetic.
I know this was just a quick cash job with the reliable and incisive Kevin Myers away from his normal Sunday Telegraph berth but you can do better than this.
GH,
So, the Daily Mail - with no political agenda whatsoever - is seeking to expose and humiliate the 'culturally shallow' and the 'mindless'. That would certainly be a first.
Meanwhile, Norma Major is capable of works of genuine scholarship whereas a distinguished QC writes 'gossip column ramblings'. Can we take it that you have 'no doubt' of this because you've actually read the book?
I think you've underscored Stephen's point about the ineptness of the opposition rather well.
I don't know why S Berlusconi needs six swimming pools. I've always found five to be perfectly sufficient. The man is a show-off. And if he were my friend I wouldn't want anyone to know.
It's nice that Stephen has rich friends in CO who invite him to come over and relax. He has probably known them and been friends with them, for years. Toneboy and Cherie didn't have any rich friends until they got into No 10. There are no rich or famous friends in their history. They get into rich people's homes now because Tone is in a position to do favours. They didn't even know Cliff Richard before they got into a position of power! Do you really think anyone invites them for their wit?
And anyone who reads the papers knows that Cherie Blair is one greedy individual. Not just the alliance with the Ozzie conman convicted of fraud on three continents to use her position to buy property at a knockdown price, but she shops on the internet. She bought that kid a used teddy bear alarm clock for a pound. Something he can always treasure, wondering who had it first.
Cherie Blair is one of the country's top QCs? Wha'? Hotshot QCs do not specialise in 'human rights'. This is for bottom feeders. Successful QCs make two, three, four million pounds a year. Cherie has a secure income, from government funded cases, of around
250,000 pounds. Not to be sneezed at for run of the mill lawyers, but a long, long way away from the company of Britain's top QCs.
CM,
Ah, the classic defence. It was in the Daily Mail, it must be wrong!
I don't know why S Berlusconi needs six swimming pools.
One for Tony, one for Cherie, one for Euan, one for Nicky, one for Kathryn and a shallow one for Leo?
Come, come Stephen. Of course the Blairs should have a holiday. In fact, as a general principle, if Prime Ministers went on holiday all the time the country would be a better place. But the point is that there is all the difference in the world between a couple staying with friends for a week or two and an extended family (which I understand in the Blairs case has about ten members, maybe more) staying free of charge in a villa belonging to someone they either do not know, barely know or might need to negotiate with at some time in the future.
"Whiter than white" anyone? The whole point is that this is a PM who promised he would be above even the merest allegation of anything approaching 'sleaze' or 'favours'. Taking perks like this is not, I'm afraid, "whiter than white", although, and I reserve judgement on this, it probably is not crooked or dishonest.
Edward, It may indeed not be dishonest. Blair is enough of a self-congratulatory dimwit to sincerely believe he is being invited along for his charm.
I wonder what the market rental value of Berlusconi's pad would be? A few £10K's per week anyway I would imagine.
Can we take it that our Tone will in due course receive an assessment from the revenue for the "benefit in kind" which will accrue to him from the use of it, and on which he will therefore have to pay 40%? No? I thought not.
Says it all really.
"Blair is enough of a self-congratulatory dimwit to sincerely believe he is being invited along for his charm." LOL! Quite.
Kindly remind me why I should be caring about where Tony Blair summers and why this is some sort of vindication of an anti-blair point of view?
What's more, Silvio Berlusconi is so insanely rich that if the Blairs really are 'sponging off him' they'd have to put in a stiring performance to even dent a week's worth of share dividends.
Mr Blair, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. You may as well make the most of it - take everything from the minibar, stuff your suitcase with those embroidered "SB" towling robes and let loose the kids on the long distance phone!
Johnlouis Swaine, No, it's not a "vindication" of the anti-Blair view. We see the evidence of Blair's political failures on a daily basis. We are talking here not of vindications for regarding Blair as an inept and ineffective politician. We've got plenty of evidence of that.
This has to do with the Blairs' determination to grab everything they can get while the getting's good. This leechlike focus on clamping their little suckers into rich people is a character fault and is revealing. What is even more revealing is, they don't understand how repulsive and wrong it is for a head of government to be taking lavish favours from people who aren't even trusted old friends.
I think we can all agree that Berlusconi would not stop his car for Tony Blair crossing the street were Tony Blair not in a position to do him favours. (Wasn't there something about Sky TV about four years ago, and an Italian franchise - or similar? Didn't ol' Toneboy, who is pretty fast with those phone calls - who can forget the favour to rich, non-British Lakshmi Mittal and the Lithuanian PM? - place a call to Berlusconi for Rupert Murdoch? Or did he place a call to Rupert Murdoch on the part of Berlusconi? Who can remember? So many rich people, so many favours, so many phone calls, so much lavish hospitality ...)
As far as friends go, Blair only seems to have one and a half in the world. The disreputable Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown. Cherie doesn't seem to have any, except what she buys in the form of Carol Whatsit and her convicted conman boyfriend.
Blair doesn't even seem to like the members of the cabinet enough to socialise with them. (The one instance he has ever shown good taste.)
Don't you think it's odd that a middle aged couple don't seem to have any lasting friendships to bring into middle age with them? All they have is Peter and semi-Gordon and their new best friends of three years ago, Bill and Hillary. They seem to have left their history behind them.
Doesn't it strike you as strange?
Don't you think it's odd that a middle aged couple don't seem to have any lasting friendships to bring into middle age with them? All they have is Peter and semi-Gordon and their new best friends of three years ago, Bill and Hillary. They seem to have left their history behind them.
Doesn't it strike you as strange?
Is it not plausible that they do in fact have friends who simply aren't thrust into the media spotlight? Perhaps old friends they've met and still keep in touch with over the phone but who they are estopped from visiting regularly by virtue of Blair's position.
Until such time as you can document and catalogue the entirety of the Blairs lives I'd recommend that you don't infer that they're friendless loners or money-grabbing free-loaders or as many have, saintly paragons of human virtue.
I didn't agree with a lot of Blair's 1997-2000 "my life" media blitz, camera teams being allowed into the backyard of Number 10 and all that so I'm not simply angered because 'the tables have turned'. The private lives of the executives of government should not be so analysed as unlike policy, these are matters which inhibit candour and the necessary proliferation of information on which to base measured opinions. Blair was stupid to garner such a culture although overseas Clinton did much of the same, however that doesn't mean that opposition to his policies should insinuate themselves into a voyeuristic critique of his social life. It's bollocks and there are a billion better things to talk about.
I can't say I expected much from the column inches of the Guardian, but at least the Times hasn't fallen foul of this idiocy.
Jeanlouis Swaine - "It's bollocks and there are a billion better things to talk about." Name one.
Toneboy and his lovely wife Elena - oops! Cherie - do not have some lovely longterm, loyal friends with whom they shared their youth tucked away for cosy telephone chats. We know more that we want to about the Blairs. Their private life has been spreadeagled all over the British media for 10 nauseating years. We know that Carole Caplan puts on Cherie's lipstick for her. That's close! And picks out her clothes for her, and pries massive discounts off designers for the pleasure of having a middle aged fat woman wearing their clothes. We know that one designer has banned Carole Caplan from her showroom.
We know that Tony Blair calls Carole Caplan every other day. That's close! We know that Carole Caplan picks out Toneboy's underwear. That's close! We know that Cheriee has Carole Caplan's New Age mother read the runes for her and recommend the latest in crystal power. We know that Cherieee has two half-sisters, one of whom is a failure in Hollywood and the other of whom had a botched - it was either abortion or birth, who reads beyond the first paragraph? - on the National Health. We know Cherie bought that kid a teddy bear alarm clock second hand off eBay. We know Blair's father was adopted.
We know that they freeload off the taxpayers of other countries for their vacations. Or mega rich new best friends.
I doubt that they have any long term middle aged friends secreted away. Discretion is not their middle name.
war, famine, olympic games, to the Daily Mail its all yucky foreign stuff, better to have "news" telling us what colour underpants the Blairs are wearing and how this is responsible for the breakdown of civil society, and harassing Maxine Carr, forcing the Government to pay millions to protect her because the Mail keeps on stalking her, then the Mail complains that its costing money to protect her, a perfect cycle for this wretched little rag.
Incidentally the Mail has been telling us for decades that Britain is on the brink of societal collapse, and that anarchy is just around the corner, by the looks of some of the posts here I imagine many of you stock up on water and tinned food every time you see a young person with a body piercing.
The Olympic Games! What a hoot! You mean some people not only watch it, but talk about it later? And when your friends aren't talking eagerly about the Olympic Games, they sit around discussing famine? Not "global warming"?
I don't read The Mail or have access to it, but surely it can't be that bad?
I find your choice of topics rather flat and feel that the Downing St Hillbillies contribute far more to the merriment of the nation.
Talking of brown-nosing and the Labour Party Conference, there's plenty of info in Disinfopedia about the wholly inevitable convergence of the two at this year's bash:
Disinfopedia on the Labour Party Conference 2004 in Brighton
Including info about the creepy Social Market Foundation and its programme of disingenously titled, corporate-sponsored neo-liberal fringe talks.
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