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Linda Smith on Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction
I sort of sympathise with them a bit, looking for the weapons of mass destruction because I'm a bit like that with scissors. I just turn the house upside down, looking for them
Of course the difference is I know I have *got* some scissors.

It's been a lovely day in politics for those of us who give a damn about such things.

The Labour party is trying to force Tony Blair into declaring when he will leave office so that his successor has time to bed in before the next election, which is due about 2010/11. This turns out to be rather like getting a skittish but alpha cat into a carrier to take him to the vet for euthanising. So far one junior defence minister and eight PPSes (the lowest rung of government) had resigned to call on Tony Blair to give a timetable for them to be able to boot his arse out of the door.

This has led to claim and counter-claim of treachery, briefing and counter-briefing and lots of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, while the fourth estate goes bananas.

In accepting Tony Blair and his coterie of privileged lawyer/media types as leaders in order to be elected, the Labour party took the thorn in its side and smiled. The trade-off for booting the leftwingers was that they got power. However, the wound has festered the more the party's big hitters were either corrupted, discovered to be ineffectual or picked off because they weren't shutting up when Tony said shut up. Now that boil has burst open and everyone can see the pus.

It started yesterday when someone leaked to the Mirror Blair's exit strategy, which basically consisted of a Royal tour around the UK, an appearance on Songs of Praise and Blue Peter and a load of glad-handing and zooming around in wankmobiles to be feted.

It referred to the UK's foreign policy as "the elephant in the room". No fucking kidding.

If Tony Blair had not publically inserted himself up George Bush's rectum like an unfortunate gerbil, lending Bush a measure of credibility where he deserved none, Blair would probably still be disliked but not anywhere near this much.

If he had not sacked the foreign secretary for making sceptical noises about the PHENOMENALLY STUPID idea of attacking Iran -- on the say-so of the White House, and I boil with fury every time I think of that -- then the idea of a farewell tour might not be so ridiculous.

If politics were media fandom it would be like this:

Two BNFs wish to come into possession of the biggest archive in their fandom, but only one person can be the domain owner. So BNF Gordy agrees, grumpily, to step down for the first couple of years, then take over later on.

Time passes and BNF Tony is very successful and everyone loves him and takes his pronouncements on keywords and warnings very seriously indeed. (Though they don't much like his new BFF, Georgie, who they see as a puritanical killjoy with an overkeenness to get into flamewars and slapfights with the crazy people. )

Alas, Tony does not consult the majority of fans on his changes to the archive, choosing instead to confide in a supar-sekrit cabal OMG, completely bypassing the checks and balances of parliamentary democracy. Oops.

Meanwhile the minions of BNF Gordy -- who is throwing the longest strop in living memory because he is not No 1 fan in fandom -- go about whispering that BNF Tony is not all that and a bag of chips and sockpuppet about on message boards saying that BNF Gordy would be way better so it's a good job that BNF Tone is stepping down. And OMG the lurkers support him in email!!!111eleventy!

BNF Tone -- who is setting fandom standards and modding his lists to remove those guilty of dissent because they're "just spoiling it for the rest of us" and similar jewels of unthink -- grows angry with this.

He sets his minions a-sockpuppeting in journals across the land about how BNF Gordy is an ungrateful, ungracious lumpen sod who couldn't get elected if his chief opponents were a conker, a three-week-old dog turd and a small vole called Nigel.

The minions decide that when Tony goes, they will find their own person to run the archive and bollocks to Gordon. Meanwhile BNF Tone gets more and more autocratic and unpopular, until his very verbal tics start to make previously supportive people wish to drown him in a vat of donkey piss.

And so on, for a long, long time.

It's hard to say whether this is going to lead to a Thatcher-like defenestration for Mister Tony -- but two cheers for that from this part of East London if they do manage to boot him out -- but it's certainly not great for the country for the party of government to be distracted by this kind of childish bollocks for the next year. Tony doesn't want to go until 2007 but that means that the 2007 local elections are likely to be a disaster for Labour. It won't give the successor much of a chance to put his house in order before facing the Tories and David Cameron -- who is basically a clone of Tony Blair anyway.

Allow me to express my opinion of the whole situation through the medium of song:
Running the world by Jarvis Cocker.
Possibly the least worksafe piece of music I have ever posted, but the lyrics are bitter and just a little too dark to be funny and there's a word in there that some people feel is very not-nice. So to bring your fluffy back, the new single by the Scissor Sisters: I Don't Feel Like Dancing

Meanwhile, the country at large, sighs, eats its baked beans on toast, squeezes its zits, drinks its tea and starts thinking about more important things such as the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

Speaking of which: Holy shit -- *Go Northern Ireland!*


Sep. 7th, 2006 02:02 am (UTC)
... and a small vole called Nigel.

Oh, your brain, it is the very very best.

Pity the poor BNFs. Heh.