Bliar – The Movie: Part 2, The Downing Street Years

And so it became that on the 2^nd May, 1997, our hero, Toby Bliar became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at 43 the youngest person to become Prime Minister since 1812. Toby and his followers partied hard that night, the following morning his first wife Cherry, who looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards brought the milk in, in doing so proving beyond doubt to the press that you can take the girl out of Liverpool but you can’t take Liverpool out the girl.

With subsequent victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Bliar was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories. His quest for world domination also took us into five wars, more of which later.

Rather than going through a chronological view of what our Toby did when in office let’s have a look at the highlights, the low lights, the criminal acts and the sleaze encountered along the way.

The Highlights

Toby set out to be a man of the people, the countries favourite Prime Minister, on getting elected he immediately jumped on the ‘Cool Britannia’ bandwagon sweeping the nation, hosting parties in Downing Street for the ‘cool’ people of the time - like him. 

Toby undeniably lead the UK into a decade of sustained prosperity and economic stability unparalleled in recent times, it was a remarkable achievement, even if his side kick Gordy Broon was the main architect of the economic success and the fact the recovery was actually started by the previous Conservative government, but hey, let’s not stop Toby taking credit for it.

On constitutional matters, devolution in Scotland and Wales was successful, at least in the short term, though probably it has only fended off rather than excluded a more damaging nationalist challenge by Scotland to the UK's integrity.

And in Northern Ireland, though again he did not begin the process, Bliar's negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement was the real start of major change for the better. Something he never hesitated in taking credit for.

The introduction of a minimum wage, set at a modest level, was admittedly a step in the right direction. Though introducing the 10% tax band was another item that ensured he took away what he gave to the poor.

Toby’s government used statistics ad nauseam to demonstrate major improvements in health, education, crime reduction, and so on. But few people were persuaded. In schools and hospitals marginal improvements at best could be seen, and many professionals complained that things were even worse than before Labour took power.

Despite the money they poured in, the health service was still in poor shape. In schools, new buildings provided better conditions. But with results driven league tables, the stress levels for teachers were enormous. Students now faced high fees and indebtedness, though few of their lecturers would acknowledge a significant positive transformation in universities.

Doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen and others suffered, too, more than ever from the oppressive bureaucracy of an unconstrained control culture. Aligned with this was the unstinting use of PFI to fund all this expenditure in effect, mortgaging the country to the hilt for 25 years – but it did make Toby look good.

Most of this was achieved during his second and third terms as PM. His first term was all about Toby, and spin and people liking him without him actually doing anything of note. All that was to change when the murderous gremlins started to infest Toby’s brain.   

9/11

Despite his best efforts, before 11 September 2001, Toby Bliar was set to go down in history as a second-division prime minister, one of those who stayed in power for a long time but without having any appreciable effect on the story of his times. This wasn’t good, he’d played it too clinically.

He’d followed the opinions of focus groups and opinion polls, carefully judging every option with the sole criterion of getting New Labour re-elected, a bit like Cameron’s trying to do now. This made him look like a conviction-less prime minister, he needed something to re-invent him.

Then came 9/11 and overnight everything changed.

Weapons of Mass Destraction

In a similar way that the Falklands lifted Toby’s hero Mrs Thatcher onto another level, Toby saw his moment, he knew that fighting and winning wars put you in another realm from other Prime Ministers, it gave you the world stage he craved. His moment was now. He announced that Britain would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States in defeating terrorism backed it up by sending large numbers of British troops to war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly, remembering his Tory beliefs he became best mate of Dubya Bush the American Republican President, like Batman and Robin, together they would fight the terrorist world. 

Only problem was, the British people and parliament likes to have a bit of evidence of illegal wrong doing before it backs putting our own brave soldiers’ lives on the line. No problem for Toby he knew how to easily come up with that to justify him leading us into war. The internet is a wonderful place, some college stufent had more than likely already wrote something he could download and modify.  So he and his spin doctoring henchman set to work to create a series of lies, deceit, and misinformation, in order to hype the supposed threat from Iraq, and thereby justify the war he so needed.

In April 2002 he claimed that Saddam Hussein had major stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – even though the Joint Intelligence Committee had described the intelligence as “sporadic and patchy” just the previous month. They also said that Saddam only had “some production equipment, and some small stocks of CW agent precursors”.

Bliar claimed that Iraq posed a regional threat, when the previous month a secret Cabinet Office paper noted that “Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbours.”

During a press conference Bliar and his new best buddy, Dubya jointly referred to a purported IAEA report, apparently confirming that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky later denied that the agency had issued any such report, said that there was no substantiated evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and that anyone who claimed to know the nuclear situation in Iraq was “misleading you”.

In late September 2002, the legendary British government ‘wmd’ dossier was published with Bliar claiming in the introduction that Iraq had “existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes”. When this was later revealed to be untrue, Toby claiming that he had never understood that intelligence agencies did not believe Saddam had long-range weapons of mass destruction. It was later proved that the Dossier had been "sexed up", and that our own intelligence agencies were concerned about some "dubious" information contained within it. But still, for Toby, why let the truth get in the way of his destiny.

Then there was the strange case of the apparent ‘suicide’ of Dr David Kelly, who worked for the MoD and who had publically cast doubt over the dossier. There were many irregularities to the story imply that maybe he hadn’t taken his own life but someone else took it from him. The fact that in the subsequent enquiry Lord Hutton ordered the post-mortem documents to be kept secret for 70 years implies all was not right and created distrust for those with access to the evidence.

A few months later, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook confirmed that on March 5th 2003 – two weeks before the attack on Iraq that Toby told him that Saddam’s “battlefield weapons had actually been disassembled and stored separately”. Conveniently, Bliar later claimed that he did not recall Cook telling him that Saddam had no long-range weapons.

An Illegal War

Eight months before Toby’s invasion of Iraq, the British government’s most senior legal adviser wrote to Bliar and advised him that an attack on Iraq would be a serious breach of international law, and the UN charter. Lord Goldsmith’s July 2002 letter stated that an invasion launched on the premise of self defence would be illegal because Britain was not under threat by Iraq, and that whilst in certain circumstances the UN allowed ‘humanitarian intervention’, it was not relevant in the case of Iraq.

Bliar wasn’t having any legal technicalities getting in the way so he not only ignored Goldsmith’s letter, but banned him from attending cabinet meetings and gagged him so that he could not speak out publicly.

Bliar was then explicitly warned by his Cabinet Office that a “legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers’ advice, none currently exists.” Then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw similarly advised Bliar that none of the legal conditions for war had been met.

So Toby deceived parliament and went to war.

War! What Is It Good For? – ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

About half a million people died in Iraq as a result of war-related causes between the invasion in 2003 and mid-2011. 179 British military personnel lost their lives fighting Toby’s Iraq war.

Yes it got rid of Saddam Hussein but the internal fighting didn’t stop. Sectarian violence in Iraq in 2013, saw over 5,000 civilians killed in attacks according the UN. It says more than 3,000 people died in 2012.

Add to this the Afghan war which Toby also lead us into against the same Taliban enemy, again nothing appears to have changed in Afghanistan since the loss of nearly 450 British service personnel.

So what was the point of it all really, apart from giving Toby Bliar a dominant position on the international stage? It appears – none!!

Labour ‘Sleaze’

The previous Conservative government were embroiled in various ‘sleaze’ scandals such as cash for questions. In 1997, Toby declared "My government will be whiter than white". If only that turned out to be true. Ultimately there were many examples of sleaze during his period in government, but amazingly he rode them all. A selection of just a few includes:

• John Prescott's Affair(s)
• Tessa Jowell and her husband
• The ‘Peerages for Cash’ and ‘Cash for Honours’ scandal
• Revelation that John Prescott pays no Council tax
• David Blunkett resigning over links to DNA firm then staying on in his grace and favour apartment long after resigning and not paying tax as benefit in kind
• David Blunkett's visas for nannies and the associated affair
• Cherry Bliar gets £100,000 for “charity” speaking tour
• Stephen Byers apologies for lying over Railtrack and ultimately resigns from government after various scandals
• Brian Wilson MP's final section on Register of Members' Interests shows directorships and advisory roles to renewable energy firms. As Energy Minister he promoted renewable energy
• Lord Drayson’s company wins non-competitive tender contract after £50,000 donation to Labour
• Beverley Hughes resigns over Immigration scandal
• Chris Bryant pictured in undies on Gaydar website
• Cherry Blair apologises over links to conman Peter Foster
• Black Rod accuses Downing Street of trying to muscle in on Queen Mother's funeral
• Jo Moore resigns over ‘burying bad news’ email after 9/11
• David Blunkett fails to declare income from rent on his Wimbledon home
• John Prescott fails to disclose benefit of his Union owned flat
• Geoffrey Robinson resigns over loaning money to Peter Mandelson
• Peter Mandelson resigns over Geoffrey Robinson loan
• Ron Davies’s moment of madness, badger watching on Clapham Common
• Lord Irvine’s £650,000 of wallpaper
• Robin Cook’s affair with Gaynor Regan
• Peter Mandelson's Brazilian ‘friend’s’ dubious immigration status
• Cherry Bliar involved in dodgy mortgage activity in Bristol
• The Bliar ‘Nannygate’ scandal
• John Prescott punching a voter in the face
• The Bliar family holidays paid for by various dubious people
• Labour's attempt to dig up some dirt on Paddington train crash victims who had criticised the government’s response
• Peter Mandelson and the Hinduja brothers

So it turned out Labour were far more sleazy than their Tory predecessors, however, this was water off a duck’s back for Toby, despite the self-centred wrong doing by his guys he continually let them off and brought them back into the fold after they’d resigned. It was an era of ‘Do as we say, not as we do’ from his government, this included his ministers like Harriet Harperson sending their children to private school whilst hypocritically telling everyone else they should go to state schools.

An Exit Strategy

By 2006, our hero was ready to move on to bigger and better things on his route to global domination. If you remember in Part 1 of the trilogy, the deal had already been done with Gordy Broon way back in the 90’s to pass on the leadership to him. Now all that mattered was the timing. Toby needed to go out at the top, at his pinnacle, so Gordy was seen to take over a gold plated (albeit without any gold as he’d sold it) country and the height of its prosperity, allowing Toby to say “I can’t do anymore”.

Toby was sensing increasing pressure within the Labour party for him to resign, due in part to the Labour party's reduced majority after the 2005 general election as well as increasing opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, various scandals within the party, and low approval ratings in general. His plan to flood the country with low paid immigrants who being so grateful would automatically vote Labour was also starting to backfire, Toby had seriously underestimated how many would come and now they wouldn't stop coming! This wasn't good anymore.

Toby was intelligent, he saw the economic cycle was turning, he knew from his banking friends that a problem was coming; he’d noticed the majorities were falling, and he saw that the public was beginning to see through New Labour. So instead of clinging with the tips of his nails to power, he decided to get out before he could get all the flak for everything that was about to go wrong. Gordy could have all that.

At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, he formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party and the country to Gordon Brown. When it comes to sinking ships, rats always know when it's time to get out; Toby Bliar was a very intelligent rat is all I can say.

A Good PM? – Nah!!

He was a class 'A' speaker, good debater and a quick witted defender of his government. He could lie almost flawlessly. He pioneered spin, and still gives Cameron lessons in it today.

He spent loads of money, when our economy was growing, and even spent it faster than our economy was growing throughout all his years in office. That basically sums up what he did economically, nothing spectacular, brave or ingenious, just flashed lots of cash when it was around.

However, he opened the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans anybody questioning this policy being branded a “racist”; he protected the perpetrators of crime criminalising their victims instead; he sold off our assets cheaply (Gold); he overused, and then decimated the armed forces; he eroded our sovereignty by giving more and more powers to Europe; he attacked civil liberties (eg ID cards, cameras etc); he promoted a culture of welfare dependency as a life choice. He was a habitual liar who managed to steer all these things through parliament with the help of a bit of spin.

His term in office will be defined by the fact that he took us into an illegal war and tried to justify it using false / faked evidence silencing those who questioned it too loudly.

Toby Bliar got out while the going was good, knowing full well things were going sour. He handed over to his henchman for him to enjoy his moment of glory, plus a pension (100% of final earnings), security and an armoured car for life. Toby looked after those in his inner circle and we are paying for it. He knew full well that the shit was about to hit the fan and wanted to wash his hands and pay off his comrades while slipping away tax free to stash his millions.

COMING NEXT. Bliar – The Movie: Part 3, Bliar’s Toxic Legacy

Coming up next week will be the final part of the trilogy featuring Toby, his unerring ambition for world domination and what he left us with.