Intrepid whistle-blower and the UK's ex-Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, today makes a searing indictment of Tony Blair's arrogance, ill manners and anti-democratic nature.
In 'Blair is no Democrat', Craig Murray illustrates how Blair's contemptuous refusal to congratulate Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party (SNP) on its historic victory in becoming the (albeit minority) government of Scotland hides more than a tyrant.
Many, including myself, believe the SNP victory would have been much greater if Blair and his cronies in the Scottish Office hadn't sabotaged the recent election by ignoring the several warnings they were given by producing a complicated ballot paper. As a result of this (very likely deliberate) de facto rigging of the election as well as several other electoral improprieties, including missing postal votes, well over 142,000 of the electorate in a small country of under 5 million were effectively disenfranchised.
Having first tried to frighten the Scottish electorate into not supporting the SNP, Blair's reaction since has been to maintain not only a cold silence but to avoid his own duties of governance by not inviting Scotland's new First Minister, Salmond, for a meeting.
"This," writes Craig Murray, "shows a profound contempt, not just for the SNP, but for Scotland and the Scottish Parliament. More than this, it shows a profound contempt for democracy. Blair is only in favour of it when it gives the "right" result - ie the one he wants. That has been evident in Iran and Palestine. It is now evident in Scotland."
"Blair and Brown are also showing just how unpleasant New Labour in Scotland have become. They still refuse to acknowledge that they lost Scotland after fifty years of dominance. Blair and Brown's failure to congratulate Alex Salmond on his victory is a denial of all the politenesses and decencies that are necessary to the smooth running of a democracy, and which are understood by democratic politicians everywhere. They are showing both their nastiness and their pettiness."
Nasty and petty they certainly are. Corrupt, venal and, we may add, a party responsible for a collective war crime for which their leader stubbornly refuses to accept responsibility.
And if the bad-tempered defensiveness of their media spokespeople is anything to go by, Blair's Nu Labor is a party desperately frightened that the hard lesson in Scotland may well augur something far worse for them in the future.
And if the bad-tempered defensiveness of their media spokespeople is anything to go by, Blair's Nu Labor is a party desperately frightened that the hard lesson in Scotland may well augur something far worse for them in the future.
It may well do. And if it does they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Far from being socialists, the Labour Party was built upon the foundations of reformism, ie. a hopelessly optimistic belief that it was possible to reform capitalism into a more benevolent creature. From the time of Roosevelt's New Deal through to Keynes and the concept of Welfare State capitalism it looked like the reformists could be right.
But all that was brutally ended with the Friedmanites and the monetarists who, under Thatcher and Reagan, began the wholesale dismantling of public ownership, the systematic destruction of public services and the handing-over of national assets at knock-down prices to private market forces.
The ruthless, cold war mentality of the Reagan-Thatcher Axis and the huge surge of military spending it hid became not only an essential part of the ideology of the Atlanticists in all Britain's political parties but embedded itself in the very culture of Anglo-American societies.
Naturally, this process was all along promoted enthusiastically by capital's media whores who themselves have become increasingly embedded as the propagandists for the USUK's new imperialism. Using euphemisms like 'neo-liberalism' the media has and will continue to play an active part in promoting the ruthless economics of the much harsher, totalitarian version of corporate capitalism we face today.
The more Blair and his abortion of a Nu Labor promote this ugly dystopia the more out-of-step they become with their people. In spurning them, Scotland rejected an entire agenda of betrayal and warmongering.
"It should not be forgotten that key to the SNP's victory was their profound opposition to the War in Iraq and to Trident nuclear missiles, and their replacement. The SNP showed what happens when a genuine choice on these issues is given to voters. That is a huge threat to the conservative establishment in the UK, and explains Blair's arrogant hostility."
The hostility towards the SNP's victory from both Labour and the so-called Liberal Democrats underscores the deep commitment of the leaders of these two Atlanticist parties, as well as the Tories, to not only obediently toe Washington's line but to actively promote its belligerent, unipolar imperialism.
In treating Scotland so contemptuously they are exposed as the cold, hard-line establishment, enemies of democracy they really are.
In treating Scotland so contemptuously they are exposed as the cold, hard-line establishment, enemies of democracy they really are.
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