So Blair has returned to UK politics.
If your heart tells you to vote left, get a heart transplant. Thanks Tony!
When he invited me to join him for breakfast at No 10 he failed to appear and sent a video instead.
A Hologram of his Right Horrible Cheesiness greeted us as we entered the breakfast room to feast on fruit kebabs.
The first thing I did after the police escorted me from the premises was to stop and buy a bacon sandwich, which I ate more decorously than Red Ed I might say and without getting brown sauce on my tie.
Tie? You ask, who wears a tie nowadays?
Blair didn't wear one on TV last night and neither does JC, well all I can say is we did in those days.
So talking of JC (Jeremy Corbyn) the politician not the prophet, Mr Blair wants us not to vote for Jeremy.
The existential question facing Labour is does it want power or does it want principles.
It held power for thirteen years but the price of power was the loss of principle, tough on the causes of crime? Yes! ending Child Poverty? Yes! introducing Tax Credits? Yes!
But at ease with the filthy rich? Yes! introducing PFI? Yes! extending the reach of external consultants, Serco, G4S? Yes! joining forces with Bush to wage war on Iraq? Oh Yes! Yes!
Now we are offered the choice to vote for principles over power.
I have never been very clubbable.
I was briefly in the Scouts, I audited the local youth club.
But I have never really been a joiner of clubs, groups, meetings, or political parties.
I am a member of the Co-op Party but I haven't attended many meetings and even though the indoor critic is member of the MS Society we don't attend local meetings.
But last week I joined the Labour Party, and it didn't even cost me £3 because I took advantage of the pensioners special deal.
Why did I join? Obviously in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn!
So if I vote with my existing heart and don't follow TB's advice and swap it for a heart of stone does it mean that I will have played my part in ensuring that the Labour Party spends long years in the wilderness?
Honestly I don't believe that will be the inevitable consequence of electing a leader from the left of the Party.
I watched the politics show on TV, admittedly with one eye closed because I have a detached retina, but it seemed to me that the only candidate who came across as possessing gravitas, who debated with courtesy, whose contributions were principled was Jeremy Corbyn.
My mind ran forward to the image of his appearing on PM's Question Time debating with David Cameron and I had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn, in that context, would have the effect of Barium Meal in the body politic exposing the Tories sense of entitlement as falsely based.
Sadly the outcome of the last election was not the fiasco of Ed eating a bacon sandwich or the politics of envy or indeed the Ed Stone.
It was I believe a lack of gravitas, a failure to debate principles and some sense that the electorate believed Cameron and Osborne rather than Milliband and Balls.
The four candidates for the Labour leadership are all good people, I have no doubt about that, but in politics simply winning is not enough it is essential that the principles of the Labour Movement are seen to differentiate it from the Tories, otherwise the electorate will inevitably choose the devil they know.
The political programme for the next five years will constantly seek to expose the Labour Party and its response must be to challenge again and again the transparently threadbare rhetoric employed by Osborne and Cameron.
If the country wants to see a genuine Living Wage rather than a falsely described minimum wage it will not get it from Osborne, if the country wants a low tax economy then it will not get it from a policy of raising tax thresholds which always benefit higher tax payers rather than those who are not paying tax now, and if the country wants a low welfare economy then it will ultimately only come at the cost of education, health and support in old age, which are the essential pillars of the welfare economy as part of the post war settlement under the 1945 Labour Government.
So yes, I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will defer the heart transplant for another day!
If your heart tells you to vote left, get a heart transplant. Thanks Tony!
When he invited me to join him for breakfast at No 10 he failed to appear and sent a video instead.
A Hologram of his Right Horrible Cheesiness greeted us as we entered the breakfast room to feast on fruit kebabs.
The first thing I did after the police escorted me from the premises was to stop and buy a bacon sandwich, which I ate more decorously than Red Ed I might say and without getting brown sauce on my tie.
Tie? You ask, who wears a tie nowadays?
Blair didn't wear one on TV last night and neither does JC, well all I can say is we did in those days.
So talking of JC (Jeremy Corbyn) the politician not the prophet, Mr Blair wants us not to vote for Jeremy.
The existential question facing Labour is does it want power or does it want principles.
It held power for thirteen years but the price of power was the loss of principle, tough on the causes of crime? Yes! ending Child Poverty? Yes! introducing Tax Credits? Yes!
But at ease with the filthy rich? Yes! introducing PFI? Yes! extending the reach of external consultants, Serco, G4S? Yes! joining forces with Bush to wage war on Iraq? Oh Yes! Yes!
Now we are offered the choice to vote for principles over power.
I have never been very clubbable.
I was briefly in the Scouts, I audited the local youth club.
But I have never really been a joiner of clubs, groups, meetings, or political parties.
I am a member of the Co-op Party but I haven't attended many meetings and even though the indoor critic is member of the MS Society we don't attend local meetings.
But last week I joined the Labour Party, and it didn't even cost me £3 because I took advantage of the pensioners special deal.
Why did I join? Obviously in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn!
So if I vote with my existing heart and don't follow TB's advice and swap it for a heart of stone does it mean that I will have played my part in ensuring that the Labour Party spends long years in the wilderness?
Honestly I don't believe that will be the inevitable consequence of electing a leader from the left of the Party.
I watched the politics show on TV, admittedly with one eye closed because I have a detached retina, but it seemed to me that the only candidate who came across as possessing gravitas, who debated with courtesy, whose contributions were principled was Jeremy Corbyn.
My mind ran forward to the image of his appearing on PM's Question Time debating with David Cameron and I had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn, in that context, would have the effect of Barium Meal in the body politic exposing the Tories sense of entitlement as falsely based.
Sadly the outcome of the last election was not the fiasco of Ed eating a bacon sandwich or the politics of envy or indeed the Ed Stone.
It was I believe a lack of gravitas, a failure to debate principles and some sense that the electorate believed Cameron and Osborne rather than Milliband and Balls.
The four candidates for the Labour leadership are all good people, I have no doubt about that, but in politics simply winning is not enough it is essential that the principles of the Labour Movement are seen to differentiate it from the Tories, otherwise the electorate will inevitably choose the devil they know.
The political programme for the next five years will constantly seek to expose the Labour Party and its response must be to challenge again and again the transparently threadbare rhetoric employed by Osborne and Cameron.
If the country wants to see a genuine Living Wage rather than a falsely described minimum wage it will not get it from Osborne, if the country wants a low tax economy then it will not get it from a policy of raising tax thresholds which always benefit higher tax payers rather than those who are not paying tax now, and if the country wants a low welfare economy then it will ultimately only come at the cost of education, health and support in old age, which are the essential pillars of the welfare economy as part of the post war settlement under the 1945 Labour Government.
So yes, I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will defer the heart transplant for another day!
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