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Yo Blair

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In this brief and brilliant essay, journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft tells the story of Blair's premiership, focusing on his disastrous alliance with George W. Bush.

Wheatcroft shows how Blair pursued this alliance against Britain's interests and against the views of the British people. Blair lied to us that Saddam Hussein was a `serious and current threat' to Britain. Blair lied to us that he was pursuing diplomacy, but as early as July 2002 a Downing Street memorandum decreed, "We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."

Even Thatcher had warned that we should only "use our force to preserve our way of life. We do not use it to walk into other people's countries, independent sovereign territories." If wherever there is an evil regime, "there the United States shall enter, then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world."

Wheatcroft rightly argues that Bush and Blair should have focused on destroying Al Qa'ida. Instead they attacked the Afghan people and their government, maximising the number of enemies.

On the EU Constitution, Blair said in May 2005, "Even if the French voted no, we would have a referendum. That is a government promise." Just three weeks later, the French voted no and he broke that promise: "there is no point in having a referendum, because of the uncertainty it would produce."

Blair pledged that the EU's scheme for devolution would strengthen the Union between England and Scotland. Secessionists saw that it would help them to break up Britain.

All these facts raise the question, why has this government (like all other previous governments) consistently, systematically, produced results that are the opposite of what they proclaim to be their intentions? Is it just because they are pathological liars? No, it's because they represent only a minority ruling class that is consistently, systematically, opposed to the interests of the majority of Britain's people, and this class could not safely maintain its rule if it proclaimed that its interests were opposed to the majority's interests.

In September 2006 Blair promised the Labour faithful - all too apt a phrase - that he would dedicate his last months in office to peace between Israel and Palestine. Blair says, "I only know what I believe." Think about it - it's the wrong way round! But neither God nor history is his judge; in a democracy, we would be.

Grovel to Bush, grovel to the EU, grovel to the über-rich. Is this how we want an independent sovereign country to behave? Wheatcroft sums up Blair's rule, `the most dishonest and disastrous prime ministership of modern times'.