letter sent to but not published by the independent

" There is a vindictive and unappealing current running through the british liberal presses response to their arch-nemesis Tony Blair’s announcement that he will donate the proceeds raised from his, no doubt rather censored, forthcoming account of his political career to the British legion. Now I am not issuing a defence of his actions and reserve a particular breed of loathing for someone who led Britain into what was probably the most destructive and fruitless exercise in US jingoism since Vietnam, however I don’t think this should cloud my judgement on what is a commendable action. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s column in the independent was so drenched in vilification and bile that it could not give an impartial statement regarding Blair’s actions without tacking on a sentence clause further reinforcing that he is actually ‘as ever, phlegmatic and a trickster, flaunting his iron will and unassailable arrogance, and intimidating’ in case we’d forgotten. Or she is assuring us that whilst he might have seemed an enticing prospect in 1994 as Education Secretary “we know now that those eyes blaze with vanity and egotism, greed, ceaseless validation and money”

This is not confined to her particular column but permeates most political commentary, where journalists seem to salivate at the prospect even a slightest allusion to Blair’s name allows for unleashing a character assassination. Is this the way the free press in Britain conducts itself; to subject the news of a charitable donation (presumably of a sizable sum, given the books current sales) to an unrelenting torrent of bile, of which even right wing US hate-fanning pundits such as Glenn Beck and Bill’ O Reily would be proud? It has seemed since the Iraq war that to allow in a liberal paper that Blair had any redeeming features whatsoever is to condone the warmongering, kleptomania of his foreign policy. Meanwhile whilst this is going on, Cameron and Osborne are surreptitiously introducing the most deadly package of spending cuts to the Welfare State since its inception and the coverage they are granted is handled strictly with kids gloves. It has long been that serious leftist political commentary would rather laboriously tread over the same route of continual speculation about ‘were Labour went wrong’ instead of turn around to confront the current truth that we have a government out-Thatchering Thatcher to minimal opposition. So whilst she might reprimand herself for being duped by the charisma of the Blair spin machine during its formative years, it has been overlooked that the same is happening with Cameron and Clegg, particularly the latter whom most liberals believe will somehow forego his first cabinet position to ‘see the error of his ways’.

Instead of fixating on the litany of problems that admittedly lay within New Labour (the neglect of labour members opinions in favour of the vested interests of those in the deregulated city, the flattery of Washington’s Neo-cons and most catastrophically the oligarchic way that Blair sidestepped the cabinet) and to avoid sounding like a senile geriatric berating an old foe at a louder volume because he thinks hasn’t been heard,surely it is more profitable to focus on the reincarnation of the centre-left in the current leadership campaign. Acting as though what is evidently a stab at atonement (however awkwardly undertaken) from Blair is a ‘move both cynical and provocative’ is quiet frankly churlish. The action can be applauded without surrendering ones admonishment of his past conduct."

some kind of extract

His weeks drew on, months drew on, his life drew on, but not in any profound sketches or rococo splendour, no, they instead were the strokes accumulated on the pavement of the chalk artist. Playing with perspective, sure, eliciting a giggle or smile of recognition from a passer-by and habitually magnetizing a 50p piece to a hat, but never did these carefully weighed chunks of time halt someone in their tracks or tempt them to revaluate their own life. Well, he’d think, ‘tolerance of drudgery is simply further evidence of my increasing maturity. Look at how the prospect of a phone rant with the electricity provider constitutes an event in my parent’s weekly calendar!’ He’d watch the thinly veiled elation that the news of this approaching chance to bellow, condescend to and correct a faceless drone in a call-centre in Bengal provided for his mother with bemusement; but also with a wistful understanding that further growing-up would one day instil the same sensation in him. After all, the wisdom of the eleven year-old proudly cowering behind a barricade against the fairer sex, passing the time in the company of the Beano, now seemed just as mystifying. Indeed as he snoozed past 9 o clock on the 25^th of December that year, happily rolling his back to face away from the intrusive dawn rays, he could feel his younger self standing aghast at the door, foot tapping in impatient disapproval.

The grand life-plan was failing to materialize from amongst the routines, with every fresh pay packet enshrining what his parents had repeatedly assured him. That platitude, ‘lifes not all fun, you know’ so ubiquitous during childhood that he had become averse to its implications, now hung heavy over every day. It mocked him in his yawning reflection as he rode the bus to work and emanated from the white spaces of the note that the senior safety advisor had fastened next to the rota, which read:

“NOT SHUTTING FIRE DOORS MAY SEEM TRIVIAL TO YOU, BUT IN AN EMERGENCY IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. REMAIN VIGILENT AT ALL TIMES THANKS, SIMON”

Then as he tried to exploit one of the few privileges he felt he was owed, of finding shapes amongst the clouds on the bus home, that same message smirked at his inability to determine the whale that the couple in front of him laughingly identified from a white blob.

Nonetheless he maintained an understanding that he had been given a weekly allowance of ‘moments’, which would enter his account conveniently at its point of exasperation, the zenith of tedium, and then just as quickly evaporate. This week it involved drowsily walking out into the garden behind his house, which oversaw the town built up in the valley, in the early hours of the morning for a smoke. From this point he felt consumed by the vapour in the air, and beneath his feet sensed the ground becoming dewy in preparation of the mornings activity. As the ash eat the length of the cigarette and the smoke spiralled around him, he came to think of it as a fuse that would detonate the day’s regularity. So he looked down across the valleys suburban streets, arranged in orderly formation like a rather harmless militaries parade, with cars in garages awaiting ignition and leaves creeping across immaculate lawns in the breeze. Watching, he then began to distinguish the steady advance of one vehicle along the lifeless avenue. With the ash nearing the butt he realised it was a milkman on his rounds, placing a bottle upon each doorstep with a nocturnal solemnity. The man didn’t take another puff on his cigarette, he wanted the moment to remain so, and with the cigarette symbolising what it did he could feel the heat of the impending discharge of boredom. So he watched and waited. Observing this spectre haunt the empty streets, glazed in artificial light, he was in rapture that he’d never consciously connected this poltergeists movement to the rows of glistening fresh bottles aligned each morning on the doorsteps he passed. Then with a tangible lurch, as though winded, he lost that feeling of elevation and, beginning to shudder, stubbed the cinders out beneath his heel and walked back shivering into the house.