Blair and Beckham

Mick Hall writes:

The arrogance and conceit of some of our leading politicians almost takes my breath away and I might add it is not only politicians. The manner in which Tony Blair is being touted around the EU Chancellories as a contender to become the President of Europe, which is a new position created under the Lisbon Treaty defies reality. It is as if Mr Blair and his supporters are oblivious to, or are contemptuous of public opinion, let alone the man’s short comings as a democratic politician. The fact that the position of President of Europe is an unelected post is bad enough, but it is just not on to even consider placing into this position a man who not only ignored the will of the British people when he took the UK to war against Iraq, but that he did so by using slight of hand methodology which most legal experts regard as being illegal; and to this day he refuses to admit he made any major mistakes when it comes to Iraq.

The right-wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy is at the forefront of the campaign to have Mr Blair anointed to this new post. Europe's Bankers and the CEOs of multi national corporations are also apparently lobbying the various EU’s constituent States to appoint Blair as Europe’s first President. Which in itself should disqualify him from consideration, not least because in the last year Blair has signed some extremely lucrative contracts to work for a number of multi national Corporations such as Bertelsmann AG, Zurich Insurance and the major US Bank, J.P. Morgan.

One can only hope the EU’s leaders will show some backbone and reject any back door attempt to slot Blair into this position, a job I might add that he is totally unsuited for as who ever holds this position represents the people of Europe; and there is no leading EU politician who is more despised and hated in the wider world than Tony Blair and understandably so.

It is simply impossible to deny the fact that when it came to the USA’s War on Terror and its invasion and occupation of Iraq, Blair set the benchmark for his Premiership when he totally ignored the advice of his EU allies and threw in his and the UK’s lot with a reactionary US President, whose only interest was to do the bidding of the US neoconservatives and their corporate backers. The outcome of this was an illegal war which was not only disastrous for the Iraqi people and the Middle East as a whole, but also for the people of the EU. It should also not be overlooked that by vigorously supporting President Bush’s ‘war on terror', Blair shares a great deal of the responsibility for having given a new lease of life to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

At the top of this piece I mentioned that it is not only our politicians who suffer from arrogance and conceit, as I noticed the similarities between Blair’s bid for the President of Europe post and the way David Beckham attempted to gain a recall to the English football team so that he could accumulate his one hundredth England cap. Beckham emulated Blair’s behaviour over the EU post, when he lobbied the new England manager Fabio Capello through powerful 'friends' within the world of politics, business and the media. It is to Capello’s credit that he rejected these attempts to have members of his England squad picked by outsiders, especially as Beckham like Blair has been out of the saddle for some time, the last time Beckham played in a competitive soccer game was last November. One can only hope Europe’s leading politicians do likewise and remember they are there to represent the people of Europe, not the representatives of big businesses, the media and the US government.