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...a blog by Richard Flowers

Friday, September 08, 2006

Day 2074: If this is Success I should hate to see Failure

Thursday


As if Lord Blairimort wasn't BORING enough already, his acolytes are clearly attempting some sort of WORLD TEDIUM RECORD by their constant repetition of the phrase:

"the most successful Labour Prime Minister in history".

Even that baldy mate of Mr Balloon, Nick Robinson is doing it now! (It must be on a press release!)

This is such a TOTALLY subjective and self-serving definition of "SUCCESS" that I am going to have to protest!


Lord Blairimort has certainly been in power the LONGEST (20% longer than even wily Mr Wilson who dominated the 1960's and 1970's) and he has won larger majorities for the Labour. But this defines SUCCESS only if it is good news for Lord Blairimort's chums, the Labour MPs – a "bums-on-seats" measure of success, if you like.

But doesn't SUCCESS really mean "achieving your goals and principles"?

What has Lord Blairimort actually ACHIEVED over the last nearly-but-he's-not-quite-going-to-make-it decade?

He could have been the Prime Minister who reformed the House of Lords – only he gave up and left that only half started.

He could have been the Prime Minister who took Britain into the Euro – but he backed off from being at the heart of Europe.

He could have been the Prime Minister who closed the gap between the richest and poorest, between those with all the opportunities and those with none – but instead he's widened it with more class division and more barriers to bettering yourself.


The real record of Lord Blairimort's "SUCCESSES" runs a little sour. The wasted years of "successfully" keeping to Conservatory spending plans that even the CONSERVATORIES thought were impossible; the litter of "successfully" broken promises, from the universities to the United Nations; the "successful" legacy of a public sector top heavy with management consultants, and grandiose schemes paid for by Enron-accounting on the PFI never-never.

Lord Blairimort's greatest SUCCESS will probably be recorded as a BETRAYAL – the moment when he snatched the Labour leadership. That moment has defined him and Mr Frown ever since: the former as the one with the killer instinct and boggle-eye on the main chance; the latter as the one who wobbled and let it slip though his fingers.

People are saying that the TRAGEDY of Lord Blairimort and Mr Frown is that they have no IDEOLOGICAL differences. WRONG! The tragedy is that they have no ideological differences because they have NO IDEOLOGY at all!

The "new" Labour that they invented is an empty electioneering machine, designed to do NOTHING except look shiny and not frighten the horses. The "old" Labour recognised that from the start, but they thought that it was a FRONT to get them into power – they didn't realise that Lord Blairimort and Mr Frown were going to try and RUN THE COUNTRY on the same basis.


Success should NOT be measured in terms of how many MP's Lord Blairimort has kept in pocket but in terms of how he leaves the state of the Nation. Ask not what he has done for the Labour, but what the Labour has done for your country, you might say.

There have only been FIVE Prime Ministers from the Labour (or FOUR if you count Lord Blairimort as a Conservatory!) and the best remembered is probably Mr CLEMENT ATLEE who invented the National Health Service. Mr Clement remains admired by politicians of all parties – including even Lady Thatcher – for the way he brought the armies home after the war and shifted the economy back from a war footing to peacetime. The consensus that Mr Clement established lasted for a good thirty years, in fact until Lady Thatcher.

But Mr Clement is also one of the shortest serving Prime Ministers, with only one term in Number Ten. (Only poor old Mr Jim Callorgas lasted less long as Labour leader.)

Perhaps it would be better if the Labour's spinners and storytellers remembered this MODEST hero and gave some consideration to how hollow their Lord Blairimort looks in comparison to a man of REAL ACHIEVEMENT.

When history comes to JUDGE Lord Blairimort – as he often calls upon it to do – "SUCCESS" is not the word that will be under his picture.

That will be "IRAQ".



PS

Those IN FULLS in full:

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