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Watching Blair Sink Survey the newsstands here each morning, absorb hours of television and radio news, solicit the opinions of those fine "passers-by", and one can easily be transported to the conclusion that there is no joy to be derived under the shadow of Tony Blair. His critics, a vast multitude , are not entirely wrong about the prime minister. After all, it's plain from just glancing at the guy that he now embodies the ruin that he has supervised. Cracks have formed on his skin. That seraphic smile no longer cleaves his face. His hair has diminished in direct proportion to his popularity; what remains has grizzled. But there is much to be appreciated, too. Consider the alternative. Under chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown -- the patient successor to be -- it is unlikely that policies will alter course. Brown, we are assured, "will be absolutely New Labour to his fingertips and also, incidentally, a very strong supporter of the transatlantic relationship." As one MP has described the syzygy, "Blair and Brown are two cheeks of the same arse." There is, however, one principal difference: Brown has all the passion and affect of an ashtray. With Blair, you are at least guaranteed the odd moment of mirth. Seldom does a month slip by without Mr. Blair being responsible for some bizarre personal revelation ---- certain to excite hoots of derision. In February 2003, Blair appeared before a BBC Newsnight audience for what was touted as a dressing down ahead of the impending war. After abiding some truth-starved answers on sanctions, weapons inspectors, and American intelligence, Jeremy Paxman, the BBC's truculent inquisitor-in-chief, turned to the question of TB's muscular faith. Did his and George Bush's Christianity help the pair discern "good" and "evil"? Blair denied that it did, readily enough. He was less comfortable with the next question. "You don't," Paxman pressed, "pray together for example?" A moment of silence ensued; Blair blushed. "No we don't pray together Jeremy, no,"
the pious premier insisted in reply, wearing his embarrassment with
a smirk. Tony Blair: Because - why do you ask me the question? Jeremy Paxman: Because I'm trying to find out how you feel about it. Tony Blair: Possibly. Religion menaced Blair on subsequent occasions. Vanity Fair's David Margolick popped the question to him aboard the plane that, in tribute to Blair's strident Atlanticism, has come to be known as Blair Force One. Alistair Campbell ---- Blair's thuggish press supremo, and once right hand man for the thieving press baron, Robert Maxwell ---- leapt to intervene. "Is he on God?" Campbell demanded. "We don't do God. I'm sorry, we don't do God." Press aides also effaced the words "God bless you" from the final line of a scripted address to the country on the eve of war. Alistair Campbell resigned in late 2003. With the restraints off, Blair resumed his public effusions of the topic of the Almighty. Recently, in March 2006, he told Michael Parkinson that he had prayed to God while girding for war on Iraq. And then, echoing Tupac Shakur, he declared that judgment on his person had been assigned to God. In the course of the same Parkinson interview, Blair was asked to submit his most embarrassing moment. This could have proven a struggle. Politicians like him rarely ever summon the humility to register embarrassment. But, in the event, he did manage to reach for something. Once at a press conference in Paris, a journalist asked if there were any French policies he would like to pursue. Ever the charmer, Blair rendered his response in French ---- or tried to. What he ended up saying was: "I desire your prime minister in many different positions." On the occasion of World Book Day, Blair was invited to a launch where he expatiated on the pleasures of reading. "I might as well make a confession now," said Blair. "There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher which made a very deep impression on me …" A very deep impression, was it? Given that Blair devoted more of his time at university to failing as a rock star than expressing anything that may be likened to political conviction, the claim seems dubious. But if it is true that TB -- like many of his fellow champions of the Iraq war -- admired the resolve of the Petrograd Soviet in his formative youth, it marks an interesting point of embarkation for his political trajectory. For last week we were delivered fresh reports of Blair's radical socialist past. Writing in the New Statesman, political historian Robert Taylor detailed the contents of a remarkable 22-page hand-written letter that Blair dispatched in 1982. It was a difficult time for Blair. He had just been defeated in his first attempt at the polls, coming third in the Beaconsfield by-election. Prompted by this humiliation, the young barrister set down several thousand words of ingratiating prose to Michael Foot, the then left-wing leader of the Labour Party. According to the letter, Blair had just finished turning the pages of Michael Foot's collection of biographical essays, Debts of Honour. The letter heaps praise on Hazlitt, Paine, Brailsford, Swift -- and even Marx. According to the letter, Blair "came to Socialism through Marxism". Having taken the trouble to read "Marx first hand," he found it "illuminating in so many ways; in particular, my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered." But in the end, Blair ruefully concedes, Marxism was "stifling" because "it sought to embrace in its philosophy every facet of existence." The best bit, however, came later: "The job of reconstruction, particularly against a background that includes new technology and a USA in the grip of the same economic madness Mrs Thatcher visits upon us, is mammoth. Profound problems require profound remedies." This is strong stuff coming from the man who can only bring himself now to speak of Thatcher and the most right-wing American government in recent times with barely restrained warmth. According to the Guardian, New Labor now trails the Conservatives by a clean margin of five points. It is beyond doubt that Blair's days have neared their terminus. Never one to unclench, whatever the circumstances, he'll paddle ferociously for his political life. He'll strain every sinew in a vain effort to burnish his legacy, and continue issuing those bizarre outbursts as he drowns. But, despite his best efforts, when his political obituary comes to be written, this tragicomic figure will largely be remembered for one thing: Iraq. And the obit writers could cull the words straight from Kipling: " And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased / And the epitaph drear: 'A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.'" ---------------------------------------------------
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