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TB Or Not TB

by | 28th, September 2005

‘TONY Blair is going nowhere. Well, it makes a nice change from Barbados.

‘They’re all jumping up and gobbing at us, Tony. They really like us’

And he’s going nowhere for four years. As the Times leads: “Four more bold years, vows Blair.” In yesterday’s speech to the Labour faithful, heralded by a burst of punk band Sham 69’s If The Kids Are United (“If the kids are united, then we’ll never be divided”) Blair outlined his plans for his future and ours.

He said that Labour must deconstruct the “old monolith” of the NHS and bring in new providers, presumably private ones.

He will continue to batter the criminal justice system to get it to change. And he will be a force for change. “Every time I’ve introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I’d gone further,” said he.

Which all sounds just brilliant – just as it has done for each of the past eight years. Looking at the bits we’ve pulled out from the speech, and reading between the on-message lines, Blair seems to say: “I still haven’t worked out what to with the NHS”; “I haven’t got anywhere on tackling crime”; “I didn’t plan all that well.”

“Securing Britain’s future,” boasts the legend on Blair’s lectern, as seen in the Telegraph. Tony throws his hands out wide to his sides, his palms point upwards – he looks to all the world like an evangelical preacher.

“Surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety,” says he. Too right, Tony. Nice worlds – even if they do come from the Stating The Bleeding Obvious school of politics.

But while Tony enthuses about this and that, and this and that again, and the Times keeps track of his “buzzwords”, counting 23 mentions of “change” or “changes” in his speech, 9 mentions of “progressive” and a mere 4 mentions of “education”, we hear what his fragrant wife has to say.

Cherie, complete with elongated rictus grin and “I Love TB” badge, is making her grand tour of the conference hall in Brighton.

Posing for shots of her looking happy and accomplished, but no superwoman, Cherie fields a question fielded by a chancing photographer.

“Will you miss the life of the First Lady?” asked he. “Darling,” replied Cherie with a breezy air, “that is a long way in the future. It is too far ahead for me to even think about.”

So much for loving TB – it’s the fear of catching a dose of Cherie that should really worry us…’



Posted: 28th, September 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink