That 'Twat' Blair For EU President

Beaming Blair's bid to land the plumb job of powerful EU president has been forced out into the open with his Euro pal, greedy Glenys Kinnock, letting the cat out of the bag, confirming government backing for his cunning plan. But should the EU pick a "grinning, money-hungry, beaming, Cliff Richard-loving, Berlusconi-adoring, guitar-playing twat" for president?

In the squalid world of power politics, all roads lead back to Blair who continues to cast a long disreputable shadow despite pretending to take a back seat while popping up all over the place to massage his ego and bank balance.

Now after months of speculation and denials it's out in the open. Blair has been named for the first time as the government's candidate for EU president, despite a small problem that officially there's no job going begging.

At a Strasbourg briefing, Brown's junketeering Euro minister Kinnock who's done her best to milk the EU gravy train dry, surprised many by publicly stating what everyone knew in private, that the Brown government was supporting Blair for what would be one of the most powerful posts on the planet.

The confirmation comes as sprightly 75 year-old playwright and broadcaster, Jonathan Miller, looks back in anger in an interview in The Times, having a go at Tony and Cherie:

"I have a deep disdain for them. I couldn't bear that grinning, money-hungry, beaming, Cliff Richard-loving, Berlusconi-adoring, guitar-playing twat ... it's that beaming Christianity and that frightful wife with a mouth on a zip-fastener right round to the back of her head. And both of them obsessed with being wealthy."

Blair's ambition to be top EU dog has been no secret. The Orange Party has long tracked the progress of the man who wants to be king. But always Mr Cool, Blair refused to come out in the open and have the guts to declare for himself, leaving it to one of his lackeys.

Everything hangs on the Irish who've been forced to hold yet another referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in October after it became clear the EU doesn't do 'No'. If Irish voters say 'yes', then Blair could be set to head an all-powerful expanded EU.

At home some believe with Blair's backing, beleaguered Brown's flagged leadership could recover. A double-edged sword but one which explains why Cameron has been so silent on the Blair candidacy.

Oborne writing in the Mail recently blew the gaff, suggesting a cynical deal has been struck: Cameron would do nothing that would damage Blair's EU chances, while Blair agreed not to speak out against Mr Ambition's plan to get into No 10.

But that puts Cameron at loggerheads with side-kick Hague who's made it quite clear Blair should be "let nowhere near the job".

Meanwhile the shabby deal between Brown and Mandelson to protect his boss Blair was exposed by John Kampfner, in the Spectator, blowing the gaffe on the Prince of Darkness who promised to prop up Brown in the fag-end days of his premiership.

Forced to support his arch-rival, a squalid deal was hatched to protect Blair and his bid for the EU presidency in return for a secret stitched up Iraq War inquiry, with a whitewash outcome well after president Blair had his feet under the EU table.

The founder of the discredited New Labour project could yet run into stiff opposition in Europe. Sarkozy and Merkel are blowing cold on the idea and many see Blair as a chancer just in it for himself. Inquiry revelations could still damage war-mongering Blair's plan.

But if the Irish succumb to threats and bribes and vote yes, Mandy would to be off like a shot to join his boss in Brussels while arranging for the ex-Supreme Leader to be out on his ears.

The shameful legacy of events leading to war has left many with blood on their hands, not least a disgraced two-faced ex-prime minister Blair and his "taste for war".

Many voters here and many in Europe look back in anger and disgust and regard Blair with profound contempt. As Miller puts it:

"And he got us into this disastrous war with Iraq because he had consulted with God. Like Bush. Well, anyone who claims to do something on the basis of a personal relationship to a non-existent deity..."

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Stop It Children You're Scaring The Voters

You turn your back for one minute and the naughty children suddenly start their favourite Sunday sport of tearing into each other and tearing the Labour Party apart with another day of bitter in-fighting. While the cat's away the mice will play. Anyone would think they had a general election to lose. 

Why Mandy would want to pick a fight with the Labour Party beggars belief. But there he is, Thatcher in drag, causing a right Royal row, bashing the unions over his hated Royal Mail sell-off in the New Labour-loving Observer. Only it's not just the unions he's bashing or the Labour Party, it's the voters. 

The most despised man in politics just doesn't get it. Voters probably would be quite keen on some kind of Royal Mail restructuring and reinvestment, if it wasn't all Mandy's big idea. 

And all that comes as Harriet 'I'm not after Brown's job' Hardman flogs a dead horse on the BBC, where else, wringing every last ounce out of Fred the Shred's pension pot noodle, thinking she's on to a vote winner. That was so last week. 

With every twist and turn it was clear government ministers had their grubby little paws in the rancid pension pot deal and could have blocked it along with all the other squalid pension deals for their pals in the City. Just put a couple of ferrets down Sir Fred's trousers and leave the poor man alone. 

Bossy boots Harman, it seems, is getting right up Brown's nose and he wants rid.

Meanwhile a rearguard action is being fought over at the Mail with some rat spilling the beans on Brown's favourite trade union lackey, Derek Simpson of Unite (sic), and his lavish lifestyle. 

There's nothing like a fat cat trade union boss scandal to get the blood boiling among the Mail on Sunday readers. And this was nothing like a trade union boss fat cat story. It could have been written anytime about any one of New Labour's cronies. And it probably was. Anyone would think he's got a vote-splitting union election coming up. 

And where's the Supreme Leader while his Party crumbles around his ears? Telling his EU chums "Bold global action, a global grand bargain, is not now just necessary but it is vitally urgent". 

Yup, saving the world from global warming - again. The EU leaders like that sort of thing though. That nasty debt bubble just waiting to burst happened on their watch and Brownspeak gets them off the hook. 

The global leader is pinning his hopes on the last throw of the election dice to woo voters  as he sets out his global credentials to save the world, this time with a new global New Deal for the global recession when he meets the other global leader in Washington this week.  

But Brown is a dead man sleepwalking into Capitol Hill, busy working on his one hundredth draft of that speech to Congress. He doesn't need to bother. Just swing over to Fraser Nelson in the News of the Screws, who's already written the speech for him starting: "Mr President - I screwed up."

And that just about sums up Brown and his fag-end of a government.

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Mandy And Brown Stoke Fires Of Anger

Unelected ex-EU fat cat Mandelson, who wormed his way into the heart of government, has the gall to 'speak for the country' with an attack on hard working souls scared stiff about jobs and how to make ends meet. 

The workers revolt is nothing compared to the revolting spectacle of Brown's high and mighty deputy, fanning the flames of angry protest, with Brown behind him. 

As wildcat strikes spread across the country for the second week, Brown has condemned the unofficial action and little else. But he would have say that wouldn't he - he's the prime minister. His weak and limp dronings are part of his natural defence to bury his head in the sand, to 'do his best for jobs' as his misguided "British jobs for British worker's" is thrown back in his face. 

It is his privileged and powerful deputy Mandelson, accusing the strikers of 'protectionism' against EU neighbours which sticks in the throat. Having the downright cheek to suggest workers here should try to get jobs abroad, no doubt forced to wrench themselves away from families and live in squalor, to support Mandy's self-serving EU interests. 

Tell that to the lads on the picket lines who saw their jobs thrown away by a foreign company who used every trick in the EU rule book to bring in cheap labour and then tore the rule book up in their face. 

The Orange Party has warned this is the winter of our discontent as first it was clear the government can't help protect and create jobs and now it seems it won't. 

The government has been spinning around duping the public, refusing to even admit the looming recession. Now, as the chickens come home to roost, it is stuck in the past, trying to cling on to failed 'boom years' policies while the country falls apart round its ears. 

Mandelson is protecting his idea of 'protectionism' and spinning it around to jobs but protectionism has nothing to do with jobs. Its about free trade and most would agree that free trade within the EU is essential, especially in times of deep recession. But that should not mean a jobs free-for-all. The only people who suffer are the working backbone of this country.

Telling workers if they don't like it they can lump it and go and get jobs elsewhere in the EU, cuts no ice with workers with families and commitments here - and nor should it. What next for the unelected peer who has no voter  to fear? Tell them all to 'get on their bikes'?

Even the neo-liberal trade agreements so beloved of this former EU top dog, allows in cheap imported goods, while UK manufacturing is destroyed. Cheap imported goods is one thing - cheap imported slave labour quite another. 

The strikes are not politically motivated or whipped up by agitators, as a quick glance at the messages on the coordinating website BearFacts show. It is a bitter cry for help by solid workers who feel abandoned by the government in a bitter recession. 

What started as an industrial dispute over illegal jobs contracts at the Lincolnshire Lindsey Oil Refinery has now erupted into full-blown anger at the way this so-called 'Labour' government treats its own workforce with utter contempt. 

Mandelson may genuinely believe in free markets across Europe and bully for him but joining the EU never meant screwing the country's workers, nor an ever-expanding, heavily beaurocratic EU, whose leaders are bent on creating a military and financial super-state for their own power and glory. 

How can two grown men be so politically naive? Local and EU elections are round the corner, so too a general election. Their arrogant actions merely boost the BNP which is already using the dispute to whip up support. 

Backbench Labour rebel MPs led by the likes of Jon Cruddas and Frank Field are speaking out and speaking sense: “Stakes could not be higher,” warns Field. “The men and women on these picket lines are not just fighting for their jobs, they are asserting their national identity. Anger should be directed at this Government.”

Cruddas is shouting from the rooftops with warnings about the dangerous rise of the BNP. 

The Orange Party has stated time and again that none of this mattered during the false boom years with easy credit and easier jobs. Now with a deep Depression hanging over the country, it exposes a government floundering around in disarray, hopelessly out of touch and clinging onto the past. 

Picture: Workers brave blizzards at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (BBC). 

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Blinkered Brown Is Stuck In The Past

The striking picture of refinery workers has become so iconic, posters should be made, rolled up and slapped around Brown's chops. Will that man ever wake up to reality?

Today last Davos Man had the gall to admit he hasn't a clue how to fix the economy. History, Brown said, offered "no clear map" of how to deal with it. Rubbish. If he hasn't a clue he could try reading JK Galbraith, or move over and let someone else have a go. 

Talk about living in the past! The government is clinging onto false boom years policies, while the economy crumbles around its ears, bringing thousands of jobs down with it.  

Start by supporting workers in times of deep recession and override neo-liberal EU trade and employment agreements. Warning about the perils of protectionism was fine for the 'boom' years but fall on deaf ears during times of bust and mass unemployment.

The wave of strikes across the country came as Brown struts around the World Economic stage, repeating his hollow promise to do his best for jobs while his ill-advised "British jobs for British workers" is thrown back in his face.  

Look at the lessons of history. Anxiety over jobs has turned to anger and spilled over in mass protests, expressing the fears of working people, as the recession exposes the truth about the state of the bankrupt economy. 

Rhetoric and angry polemics mask a deep and disturbing underbelly of uneasy unrest which is beginning to surface. 

Refinery protests are showing a nasty side with mounted police, dogs and riot squads standing by and nationalist movements milking the unrest to whip up support. Industrial unrest can so easily turn to civil disorder and a stand-off with political police. 

For years the government has encouraged crucial and strategic industries to sail off into foreign hands, allowing the wealth created to go with it. Banks have been allowed to sail into Galbraith's "wild blue yonder" with taxpayers cash. 

A free market has been allowed to get out of control, leaving the country plundered by big foreign firms and on its knees, while the government turned a blind eye to cheap, exploited foreign labour. 

Now the country has lost control of all its key industries, they are ripe for exploitation and the chickens are coming home to roost. 

Just exactly what is 'Labour' about a New Labour Party, which has abandoned its workers and left them to rot, more bothered about forcing them to fit into its global market ideas, rather than protecting their interests. All with the tacit support of a new breed of trade union officials who'd rather cosy up to their pals in government.

Over the 'boom' years, growth in employment has been deliberately concentrated in the City financial market, emerging 'new' industries and a pool of low skilled, low paid workers to do the dirty work in poor conditions, while the manufacturing base was left in ruins. 

Cheap credit and a debt-ridden culture bred a false consumer which mirrored the 'boom' before the US Great Depression. Here it allowed the government to recklessly pursue its neo-liberal trade and employment policies, driven by an obsession with an ever expanding and controlling EU. 

Short-term contracts, agency work, subcontracting and fewer workers rights are all part of the downside of that good times policy. 

Those times are over. The false security of mortgaged homes and easy, cheap credit to plug the income gap has evaporated. 

A government stuck in the past cannot offer real alternatives. The recession should be an opportunity for a great leveller. The obscene gap between rich and poor must be halted. Tougher regulation is needed to end the ruthless exploitation of low paid casual slave labour. 

Jobs should be protected and created in strategic and vital industries and manufacturing by bringing them back into full short-term public ownership until the recession eases. And stop borrowing billions.

Both the Tory right and Labour left are calling for a radical rethink over the economy and the working backbone of the country, albeit from different political perspectives. Neither want a return to the bad old 'boom' days and in that respect they are singing from the same hymn sheet. 

Stuck in the middle and stuck in the past is the sad, tired spectacle of Brown and the New Labour Project, floundering around, clinging on to power with failed, out-dated policies and ignoring lessons of history, until a very bitter end. 

Picture: The Bearfacts, engineering construction workers website

UPDATE: William Hill has Brown now 5/2 to jump or get the push in 2009. Green shoots of an early election?

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Why Mandy Quit EU To Move In With Brown

Mandelson just quitting his cushy job with the EU to cosy up to his new best friend Brown didn't make sense. Now the reason is becoming clear. The net was closing in on Lordy Mandy and Brown couldn't afford such a dangerous loose cannon on the loose. 

Just two weeks ago, when Brown surprised everyone by putting out the welcome mat for his arch-enemy, the Orange Party reckoned Brown did it to keep his friend close but his old enemy even closer. 

But even that told only half the story. Brown had tried to prise Mandy out of Brussels when he first took over as PM, only to be told he didn't have the authority. 

Journalists placed bets on who would be first to bring down the master of spin. They didn't need to. Old habits die hard. He was doing it all by himself. Where Mandy goes sleaze is not far behind and often it's the other way around. 

Mandy had been in their sights for months, with his links to a dodgy billionaire Russian mafia character, Oleg Deripaska.

Deripaska is banned from the US, sued in London by a fellow Russian and pursued around the globe by investors.

Getting close to the fabulously rich and enjoying all the fun of the £80m yacht off Corfu is all part of the Brussels way of life. 

But while, with one hand being asked to investigate this Russian guy and with the other, smoothing the way, as EU trade commissioner, to cut aluminium import duties to secure huge aluminium contracts for his pal, that was too much even for Brussels to stomach. 

The Mail reports: "Deripaska benefited to the tune of up to £50m a year from decisions to cut European import duties on aluminium, taken in 2007, also while Mr Mandelson was at the helm in Brussels." 

Just booting out Mandy would result in one almighty sleaze row and Brussels likes to keep that sort of thing under the carpet. And he would have lost all the pensions, perks and pay-offs. With a leadership challenge from the Blairites just on hold, Brown couldn't risk this bitter Blair buddy trying to stab him in the back. 

So strike the deal. Mandy leaves with his head up, sort of, and keeps the fat pension and pay-offs. Brown takes in public enemy No 1, on a promise he'll keep his head down and not cause trouble. 

One of the first things Brown did when Peter took the peerage was to strip him of the anti-corruption portfolio that went with the business secretary cabinet job. If he trusted him so much and there was no whiff of sleaze following him from Brussels, why this odd move?

Mandelson and Brown may think their new love-in will have a happy ending. It well prove to have a happy ending for Brown. Without the safety net of Brussels, he can now just boot him out. That would mean third time unlucky, total disgrace and total political oblivion and no longer a threat.  

No one - not the Mail, Telegraph or Times is finished with Mandy yet and no amount of spinning will get him off the hook. 

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Brown And Foreign Policy AWOL In Georgia

Ask Brown and the government about the Georgian conflict, UK foreign policy, a new all-powerful EU and the answers may come back, eventually. But only after they've checked with Bush, run it past Blair policy and got the OK from Brussels.

The Sun and Daily Telegraph make uneasy bedfellows, but today they are speaking with one voice on a central issue. 

The Telegraph points out - "Britain has been strangely absent from the Russo-Georgian conflict". The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh is a tad more blunt - "Hello Gordon - we still can't hear you."

However, taking sides and raising the spectre of the Cold War, does not help. Former chief of general staff, Mike Field's clear plea "Let's not start World War III", is ample warning on that.

Brown isn't the only thing that's gone missing. What's also gone AWOL is any glimpse of a UK foreign policy and the public's voice over the role of an ever expanding EU and its new constitution/treaty currently being pushed through member states. 

And, at times of international tension, can we rely on Brown and his Blairite side-kick Miliband? 

Brown and Mliband's strange absence can be partly explained. They've dusted down Blair's position at his meeting with the Georgian president, disclosed here. That sets out the Blair vision for a super NATO, all-powerful EU and how Georgian troops can be used to prop up the war in Iraq. 

They've taken a look and thought - we'd better keep our heads down. Neither want to be seen as getting too close to all that.

Instead, it was left to the confusion of France's Nicolas Sarkozy to broker a peace. Acting as the EU rotating president, sure - but at all times very clearly speaking as the French President. And as the voice of newly emerging EU foreign and military muscle which played a part in the conflict.

An expansionist EU, with Brussels now firmly in control of foreign policy and military matters, has been allowed to slip in under the radar of the voters and public. The current row over the new  EU constitution/treaty is ample proof of that. 

The true scale of a powerful, unaccountable and expansionist EU, embedded in the new EU constitution/ treaty, lies at the heart of the matter, eluded to in the Telegraph Leader: 

"But before being able to implement such a policy, we must first recover control, in practice as well as in theory. Britain is the world's fifth-largest economy and fourth military power. If we cannot act independently on the world stage, it is hard to see who can."

Over at the Sun, the ever politically astute Kavanagh, pulls no punches:

"We are led by a man who issues press releases about his phone calls to Tbilisi from holiday in Scotland. As David Cameron flies to Georgia with warnings about Russia’s threat to world peace, Gordon seems more preoccupied with the date of the Fife by-election."

After the Georgian conflict, these are the issues which require some very serious, clear and rational public debate.

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Meddling EU Must End Georgia Madness

EU diplomats are desperately trying to broker a peace as its political leaders are forced to face up to the disaster they have helped to create in Georgia. As Charles King, writing in the US CSMonitor, argues, the 'Russo-Georgian conflict is not all Russia's fault'.

There seems to be no end to the fighting, despite reports that Georgia has ordered its forces to end hostilities in South Ossetia. 

As noted by the Orange Party  here, the Russian Bear sleeps with one eye open. Politicians in the UK and EU leaders should have realised that, instead of interfering in the tinderbox of the Caucasus.

Any pretence that the EU is just an economic organisation and doesn't dabble in foreign and military matters were exposed, when Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, appeared on TV in front of an EU flag. Thinking he could hide behind an EU and indeed US shield was a seriously misjudgement. 

The UK may be forced to live with Blair's legacy but most EU nations have no taste for war. But the rapid, unchecked expansion of EU power, has allowed it to develop foreign and military policies, now being played out in the Caucasus.

It was Bush and the EU who gave military and political support to Georgia through the Train and Equip military assistance programme, to encourage them to come under the NATO umbrella. That was a red rag to the Russians. 

It was Bush and the EU who helped build the gas and oil pipelines that gave the Georgian president the confidence and cash to flex his muscles in South Ossetia. 

The US has its own agenda in Europe, but the last thing Bush wants is another war in the last few months of his watch. And the diplomatic activity behind the scenes with Russia will be intense.

When the EU gets involved in a such a potentially volatile area, without a true understanding of the consequences, it's the people who suffer.

This comment posted on the BBC website still echoes the feelings of many young Russians:

"It's really upsetting that people are dying. It's difficult to say who is right or wrong. The people are suffering from the bad manners of the politicians. The Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has no common sense. It is beyond comprehension that he wants to resolve things this way."

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EU Meddling Sparked Georgia Tinderbox

The Russian Bear sleeps with one eye open. Politicians in the UK and EU leaders would do well to remember that, instead of interfering in the tinderbox of the Caucasus.

There seems to be no end to the fighting, despite reports that Georgia has ordered its forces to cease fire and offered to start talks with Russia over an end to hostilities in South Ossetia. 

Any pretence that the EU is just an economic organisation and doesn't dabble in foreign and military matters were scotched, when Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili was given the oxygen of publicity, appearing on TV in front of an EU flag. Thinking he could hide behind an EU and indeed US shield was a seriously misjudgement. 

It was Bush and the EU who gave military and political support to Georgia through the Train and Equip military assistance programme, to encourage them to come under the NATO umbrella. That was a red rag to the Russians. Historically they're a nation paranoid about threats of invasion.

It was Bush and the EU who helped build the gas and oil pipelines that gave the Georgian president the confidence and cash to flex his muscles in South Ossetia. 

The US has its own agenda, but since when did the EU have a foreign and military policy?

EU diplomats are now trying to broker a peace - its political leaders only now waking up to the disaster they have helped to create.

When the EU gets involved in a such a potentially volatile area, without a true understanding of the consequences, it's the people who suffer.

This comment posted on the BBC website echoes the feelings of many young Russians:

"It's really upsetting that people are dying. It's difficult to say who is right or wrong. Russia is defending its own citizens and it did try to persuade Georgia to stop. Russia was forced to start military action. The people are suffering from the bad manners of the politicians. The Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has no common sense. It is beyond comprehension that he wants to resolve things this way."

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New Carriers Are An Expensive Folly

Going ahead with the building of two new aircraft carriers costing more than £3 billion keeps people in work and tries to keep voters in the shipbuilding constituencies happy but it's a hugely expensive folly. 

The true cost will be much higher and comes at a time when the Army is over-stretched and under-resourced.

Even in peacetime, aircraft carriers cannot set to sea without a flotilla of ships for protection and supply. At times of war and in hostile waters, they are sitting ducks without the frigates, destroyers and submarines to protect the vulnerable mother ship. 

Contracts were finally signed today by the MoD for The Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. But they're not due to come into service for 10 years. 

Aircraft carriers were fine when we went sailing around the word as a maritime superpower, protecting the Empire. But the war we're fighting now is in Afghanistan. Maybe the MoD hasn't looked at a map recently. That country is landlocked. There's no ocean for thousands of miles. Proper equipment for the Army yes, but aircraft carriers are the last thing you need. 

And aircraft carriers need, well aircraft, otherwise even the name sounds silly. And not just any old aircraft - but very costly aircraft with short take off and landing (TOL). And what have we got ? Well at the moment any old aircraft. The ageing Harrier jump jets were fantastic in their day but are now getting a bit long in the tooth. 

So we'll have to wait for the new pan-US/European Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, which won't be ready in time for the carriers.

That £3-4 billion was just for building the carriers. Who knows what the true cost would be to get them to sea with protection and support vessels and the new aircraft to go on them. 

In ten years time we'll have two new aircraft carriers to fly the flag. But will we? 

By then, they'll be at the beck and call of the president of the new EU, as part of the new EU defence force. So which flag will they fly?

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Benn Delivers A Masterclass in Politics

Tony Benn's article in today's Daily Telegraph, supporting David Davis's stand on civil liberties, is a masterclass in political thought. In one fell swoop, this senior Labour parliamentarian manages to show how you can transcend social class and party politics for the rights of the individual in an oppressive state. 

Benn's views, on the erosion of civil liberties and the undemocratic EU Treaty/Constitution, will strike a chord with many on the left and right of politics. 

Benn concludes: "I believe that Mr Davis's stand may do something to restore public confidence in politics and politicians."

You may not agree with all his views, but this is the refreshing voice of a highly regarded and respected real politician, not the empty shallow NewLabourSpeak we have had to put up with for the last ten years.

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