Zimbabwe and Britain : Parallels (I)

A co-conspirator draws an interesting parallel.

From The History of Zimbabwe based on Nyerere's recollections:

During tension between the two political leaders Julius Nyerere summoned Nkomo then Mugabe to talks to try and reconcile them. When Mugabe went in and was offered a seat, Mugabe refused and went up to Nyerere's face and told him "If you think I'm going to sit right where that fat bastard just sat, you'll have to think again". As a result of this strained relationship with the two, fighting between ZANLA and ZIPRA soldiers only increased and widened the gap between the two men.

From The Mail On Sunday based on Prescott's memoirs:

Mr Prescott, who will stand down as an MP at the next election, also tells of more comical encounters, including the time the then Chancellor insisted on having a larger chair at a peace-making dinner. Mr Blair reportedly said: "I'm used to Gordon looking down on me."

Short : "Arrest Blair for War Crimes"

It has just come to Guido's attention that Claire Short was on Al Jazeera earlier this month calling for Tony Blair to be arrested for War Crimes. That is her off the Christmas Card list...

click to see video

Hat-tip : Charles Crawford.

Blair's Final Bit of Advice to Gordon

With Labour now 18% behind in the polls on levels last seen at the height of Thatcherism, it is perhaps worth taking a moment to reflect. In his valedictory speech to the Labour Party's 2006 conference, Tony told Gordon what to do if he was having trouble defeating Dave's Tories. Gordon should heed the advice...

Polls Tell Labour Blair Was Better

It must be a bit galling for the Brownies to discover that Cameron not only as expected wins over "toffs" (in the vernacular of Kevin Maguire's fantasy Beano world) - the breakdown is now showing Cameron ahead in the lower D & E income groups in England. Even in Maguire's North East home region (not in his adopted millionaire's colony of Richmond) the Tories are more popular than Brown. That is Labour's heartland, if they can't win there, they can't win anywhere.

The SNP are hammering the corrupt Scottish Labour Party, now if only the LibDems could pull some more votes from Labour, the anti-Brown vote will reach 2 to1 in England. Guido always said the Labour Party would come to miss Blair, watching Portillo last night on Thatcher it was interesting how even the dripping wet Chris Patten regretted the manner of getting rid of her - in hindsight it would have been better to let the voters decide rather than disaffected MPs.

Similarly many Labour MPs in marginals will, come the general election, rue the day they swapped a proven three times winner for a dithering, cowardly, psychologically flawed weirdo.

Not content with bringing peace to the Middle East Tony is advising the President of Rwanda on "institutional capacity building". Liz Lloyd, who was deputy chief of staff under Jonathan Powell in Blair's Downing Street, his former private secretary Kate Gross and David Easton, (ex McKinsey) are holed up in the Aga Khan's Hotel Serena where the presidential suite goes for $2,000 a night.

Guido is worried that Blair is succumbing to the Jimmy Carter delusion, that he can solve the worlds ills. To be fair Jimmy Carter has in fact done a lot of good and it hasn't cost the taxpayers a penny. Blair on the other hand has his office subsidised by the taxpayers through the FCO.

That the PM who sold more peerages than any other in history is advising President Kagame on anti-corruption issues, does have some ironies. Admittedly he is doing it for free. On balance Guido commends Blair for this, well us Catholics do have to do more than just Hail Mary's for penance...

Incidentally the Blair Foundation at first denied this story for some reason. They claimed that Liz Lloyd did not work for the Blair Foundation, which is technically correct. Old habits die hard, eh?

St Tony Comes into the Light

Guido is trying to take a break from blogging and ignore the newsflow. Hard when the two main news items in Ireland today are Taoiseach Bertie Ahern being cross examined over corruption allegations and Tony formally converting to Catholicism. Blair always was upwardly mobile.

UPDATE : Fraser Nelson had a good piece anticipating Blair's formal conversion last month. Guido's struggle for the re-Catholicisation of England seems to be progressing well with the news that Catholic church-goers out number C of E church-goers.

LibDems Ask "Did Abrahams Illegally Finance Sedgefield By-Election?"

Defeated Sedgefield LibDem candidate Greg Stone has written to Phil Wilson MP, the Labour victor in Blair's old constituency, demanding an explanation for his campaign's funding.

As you will be aware, there has been considerable recent media coverage of illegitimate donations made to the Labour Party by Mr David Abrahams. Both the local press and the national press are reporting that donations totalling £62,000 were made by Mr Abrahams via his associates Mr Ruddick and Mrs Kidd to the Labour Party on the day the Sedgefield by-election was declared.

The LibDems have also made an official complaint to the Electoral Commission. It is noticeable that Abrahams was given a front-row seat at Sedgefield when Blair retired. Front row seats don't come cheap...

Blair is Getting £400,000 a Year in Expenses

Just a teensy bit of help with office costs at the expense of the British taxpayer. Well he has two offices, one in Jerusalem and another in Mayfair. Handy for arranging those $500,000 speaking engagements in, errm, China.

Blair : Peace in the Middle East?More Like a Piece of the Far East!

Guido's Hong Kong co-conspirator, David Chappell, tells him that Blair's visit to talk to the the HK General Chamber of Commerce yesterday was not the only event from which he was banking an honarium. The topic of his keynote address being "global sustainable development and regional co-operation between business and government" or "how to pay the mortgage".

According to the Chinese website soufun.com, the powerful China Everbright Group also paid Tony $500,000 to take a VIP tour of its property site at Songshanhu. Tony, ever able to charm, thrilled his hosts by boasting that his sister-in-law is Chinese and his seven-year Leo is learning Putonghua. No doubt he tells them in Jerusalem the boy is learning Hebrew...

A China Everbright staffer was reported as saying that Mr Blair will be given a Dongguan villa worth as much as 38 million yuan. Local financial gossip Lai See wonders what this might augur for the red-hot real estate market, "given Mr Blair's notorious track record of buying at the peak and just before the fall." How very dare they say that of our illustrious ex-PM...

Bang Goes the Neighbourhood

Hardly a day passes without further rumours about the Blair's house-hunting. But where is his office to be? A co-conspirator has directed Guido towards 33 St James's Square, the Robert Adam designed grand eighteenth century Grade II listed former London home of the Earls of Buckinghamshire.

Guido's revelation - despite what Blair's people claim - won't really add to his security risk.

Iranian MOIS intelligence agents will practically have to drive past the front door on the way to their Embassy, so they will probably notice him.

Guido suspects that the added security risk the neo-peacemaker brings to the area is going to irritate the hedge fund managers and corporate titans whose natural domain he is entering. Never mind what the denizens of the local gentleman's clubs will make of his wife...

Cherie Does a Hilary

Cherie's husband is out of office, so she has decided to cash-in and write her autobiography. Obviously the quicker she does it the more she'll make, so no surprise there. It is apparently going to be "warm, intimate and often funny". Must be fiction.

Look at the cover picture, does the whole black roll-neck thing remind you of another political wife's post-husband -leaving-office autobiography?

You don't think Cherie is going to copy Hilary and try running for office as well? She really does hate Gordon*...

*You can see what she thinks of Gordon on GuyNews.TV.

Benji Blog - the View from the Bunker

Benji Wegg Prosser, has started a blog. Well he started it last month and he seems to have managed to make one post per month. It does have one revelation, the "Blue Peter" memo about Blair "leaving with the crowds wanting more" was not as Guido speculated. The product of Philip Gould, it was all BWP's own work. Benji says it all came to pass as he predicted in the bunker...

Labour Sources : Blair to Quit Sedgefield Seat++ Getting Ready for a By-Election ++

Yesterday evening rumours reached Guido that Tony Blair will step down from parliament as a constitutency MP by applying for the Chiltern Hundreds this week. Cherie has in any case reportedly started moving furniture out of their constituency house. Labour staffers have been primed for a second campaign (besides Ealing Southall). The party machine is moving in for the by-election. Staff have been ordered to pack their bags and head for Sedgefield on Thursday.

With his new role as Middle East facilitator it is hard to see how Blair would commute between Jerusalem and Durham, one minute sorting out lost welfare benefit claims and the next minute pacifying the Palestinians.

Sedgefield is a safe seat, and dual by-elections will stretch the LibDem machine into two operations.

Many Labour left-wingers might think that the result of a Sedgefield by-election would count as a "Labour Gain".

Will Tony Be the First Catholic PM?

It would cause this Catholic freedom fighter immense amusement if today Tony became Britain's first Roman Catholic Prime Minister. Knowing the vanity of Blair it is not impossible that he would choose to join the Catholic communion by the hand of His Holiness.

At this stage he will have no further hand in Anglican Bishopric appointments and any possible unease caused in Orange circles in Northern Ireland now irrelevant, it would be a good time to formalise his position.

An added bonus being he could ask the Pope there and then for absolution for his sins...

UPDATE : The Observer's John Hooper in Vatican City reports a Vatican source saying Blair used his last official foreign engagement before leaving office to tell the Pope he wanted to become a Roman Catholic.

"But, in talks lasting more than half an hour, the outgoing Prime Minister was left in no doubt that the Pope took a dim view of his record in office. A statement issued afterwards by the Vatican said there had been a 'frank exchange of views'. Vatican sources said the Pope remained unmoved in his view that Blair had been wrong over Iraq. To an even greater extent than his predecessor, Benedict feels that Catholic politicians cannot separate their public lives from their private."

Politicians are Feral Spinners

Blair must reap what he sowed. The culture of New Labour is a culture of rapid rebuttal, the set "line", the vicious rubbishing of enemies, the off-the-record briefing all backed up by armies of government media handlers and Special Advisers. 24/7 rolling spin...

Remember, for example, what they told us about the Women's Institute member who led the slow-hand-clapping of Blair - that she had a National Front past. That was feral spin, vicious and untrue. Do you remember Alastair Campbell's plan to "fuck" David Kelly? That was feral. Do you remember Alastair Campbell's foul mouthed tirades? They were feral. The old woman mistreated at an NHS hospital during an election campaign? "Racist" they smeared, without any evidence. The Brownite pack's undermining of Blairite colleagues like Ruth Kelly and John Reid? Wasn't that feral?

Blair's treatment by the media got rough only after he was completely found out. It was the dodgy dossier, and the false prospectus for war that did for him, his spin was until then more than a match for the media pack.

UPDATE : The IPPR has just emailed out a piece (on the back of the Blair speech) by Sir Michael White where he blames everyone else for the "gross tabloidisation of national journalism" including of course the "unmediated internet". He repeats his claim that the Loans for Lordships investigation is just political opportunism by the SNP and Blair's political enemies. Michael White has spent 30 years covering politics close-up, he is no longer able to see that selling seats in the legislature is just plain wrong. He basically says "everybody did it", why the fuss now?

The better question is, why only now has there been a fuss? Well if a young new MP had not stumbled upon the corruption legislation, if a less determined detective had not been given the case and the story wasn't pushed relentlessly by "unmediated" voices, there would have been no fuss.

Just as well the likes of Sir Michael White and Nick Robinson were ignored and some kept on at the story in an unmediated and grossly tabloid way, eh?

BBC 5 Live : Removals Van Spotted Outside No. 10

UPDATE : Real picture here.

GuyNews : Blair's Speech

After his barnstorming party conference speech maybe Guido's expectations were too high. A whimper rather than a bang?

The speech he should have given is on GuyNews.TV.

Blair Will Still Be PM Next Week, He Won't Resign

This morning there is some confusion about the Lobby, the PMOS told the Lobby this morning that

"the Prime Minister was not announcing his resignation as Prime Minister next week. That is not what he would be doing. What the Prime Minister would be doing would be setting out his intentions but he would not be resigning as Prime Minister next week. Asked if he was resigning as leader of the Labour Party, the PMOS said it was a Party, not Government matter and the question the PMOS had been asked was about the Prime Minister's role as Head of Government. After the Prime Minister has announced his intention he will remain Prime Minister. Asked if the Prime Minister would not go and see the HM the Queen next week but after the leadership contest has been concluded, the PMOS said at last the penny had dropped."

Last week Blair himself said he would be making a party related announcement. Before the 2005 general election Guido suggested that Blair might opt for the Aznar option to square his promise to serve a full term. Look closely at the form of words Blair used prior to Labour's party conference:

"I think what is important now is that we understand that it's the interests of the country that come first and we move on. I would have preferred to do this in my own way... The next party conference in a couple of weeks will be my last party conference as party leader, the next TUC conference next week will be my last TUC - probably to the relief of both of us."

That word formula commits him only to standing down as leader of the party. Nothing about standing down as PM.

Blair can argue that he gave a commitment to the people at the general election to serve a "full term" and the voters gave him that mandate. He can also argue that he gave a promise to give the next leader of the Labour party "time to bed in". If he stood down as Labour leader but not as PM he could keep both promises. It would also let him keep his grip on power as he tries deserately to get radical Blairite policies and reforms implemented.

José María Aznar lost the support of the people who had voted for the Partido Popular in 2000 and had to pledge not to run again. In January 2004 Aznar called new elections and designated his candidate, Mariano Rajoy, sticking to his pledge of not seeking office for a third term.

Is the Aznar option in Britain so outrageous? Has Blair given up the fight for Blairite policies and accepted his legacy will be Iraq and criminal corruption charges against his aides?

Guido is certain that Blair will still be PM next week, he will be resigning only as party leader. Could he shaft Brown one last time? Would the Labour party support him as PM until the next general election? Outrageous? At his last conference as leader he told us "there are no rules in politics"...

Punters Spooked by Mole

The First Post's "The Mole" has tipped Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting.com that he is about to break a story. The Mole is firmly in the Brown camp. Punters have shifted money onto an early bath for Blair with speculation of a date being leaked. We have had this before with The Sun even announcing a date on the front page.

Nick Robinson has been weighing up Blair's semantic choices. His PMQs answer to Cameron this week implied that he had not made up his mind when to go. Did he just say that to wind up the Brownites?

Most think he'll make an announcement after May 3. Presumably he'll wait until after returning from Stormont on May 8 to bask in the afterglow of perhaps achieving peace in the six counties. (We should not quibble that it is a strange peace that sees the two most extreme parties in power.) So it is possible that he could go see the Queen and tell her of his intentions sometime in early May.

For political punters whether or not it is before or after May 13 is crucial. The leadership process takes 7 weeks. Bets on the timing of his leaving hinge on the date he is no longer leader of the Labour party. If the process starts on May 12 bets will be settled for June, if May 13 bets will be settled for July. Knife edge...

UPDATE : The Mole's big "exclusive" this morning is the claim that Blair will say he is going on May 9. Could be... but never say never with Blair and our Brownite Mole might be indulging in wishful thinking.

Liar, Liar

Tony Blair is holding talks with the Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.

To help them get along better Guido has compiled some handy Hungarian political phrases for Tony to use:

"No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have. Obviously, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years."	"Európában ilyen böszmeséget még ország nem csinált, mint amit mi csináltunk. Nyilvánvalóan végig hazudtuk az utolsó másfél, két évet."
"I almost perished because I had to pretend for 18 months that we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, night and evening."	"Majdnem beledöglöttem, hogy másfél évig úgy kellett tenni, mintha kormányoztunk volna. Ehelyett hazudtunk reggel, éjjel meg este."

The Hungarian PM was caught on tape last May uttering the above and plenty more, resulting in rioting in Budapest. Tony Blair's lies resulted in Iraq...