For A Moment

Peter Hitchens writes:

Britain’s massed divisions of political journalists have fallen like starving men on Lord Mandelson’s tedious memoirs. They allow them to return to the only thing they are interested in, the meaningless quarrel between the louse Blair and the flea Brown. Almost none of these people ever knew what New Labour was really doing, or why it mattered.

For the same reason they cannot grasp the enormous significance of an entirely smooth and harmonious coalition between a supposedly Left-wing party and a supposedly Right-wing one.

The only interesting thing in the entire book is the account of Mr Blair’s meeting with ‘Sir’ Michael Jagger: ‘Tony summoned up his courage and went up to Mick. Looking him straight in the eye, he said, “I just want to say how much you’ve always meant to me.” He looked wistful, perhaps remembering his frustrated rock-star ambitions from his student days. For a moment, I thought he might ask for an autograph.’

And for a moment, the awful truth – that for ten years we had this Olympically ignorant, tickle-minded, empty vessel pretending to be Prime Minister while others pursued a great constitutional and cultural upheaval – is revealed.

See also the piece immediately below on Peter's blog, about schools in London.