No Direction Home

Maybe this will be perceived as a bleak post, but I watched Tony Blair's speech on Britain's defence policy today and, maybe it was the frame of mind I was in, but I have rarely felt closer to tears. Not at the speech itself so much, for that was what is now recognised as typical Blair, but for thr fact that it hammered home to me how much of a political island I seem to be stranded on and how many of the hopes and aspirations I had through eighteen years of Tory government have simply turned to ashes. Eighteen years of waiting and hoping and all Britain ends up with is another petty Tory - a tinkerer rather than a radical - when I had hoped for a Labour government which would kick over the traces of past thinking and embrace a new realism.

On almost very front, across almost every issue, Blair has failed this country big time. He draws conclusions which might be logical except that he starts from the wrong place. I remember the thrill of electing a Labour government back in 1997 and the delight of knowing that we had, under Robin Cook, an 'ethical foreign policy'. I was convinced that we would take massive strides in Europe under a new young forward thinking British government, not saddled with the memories of Empire. I was sure that Britain would become a place where people of all cultures and faiths would pull together because we had a leadership which would inspire the nation.

What happened to all that? Well 911 happened of course and sadly resulted in a greater victory for the Islamists than they could possibly have imagined. It led to a right wing American administration finding a perfect opportunity to exercise a new thinking on proactive US involvement in the middle east, a course of action which has proved to be disastrously flawed, giving the fundamentalists propaganda victories by the score.

Worse, our Prime Minister, the 'JFK' heir apparent of a new British frontier, proved to be unequal to the task of showing true strength, and decided that his role was to support the US administration regardless of what they did.

At that point the Blair image began to unravel. The ethical foreign policy proved to be a pipe dream. British troops have been committed to a war we should never have become involved in. The ripple effect of the commitment to the disastrous and immoral war in Iraq spread to our own shores. Our fragile and stuttering multi culturalism, so prized by Labour idealists but which never had any nucleus of Britishness to cement it, exploded into angry distrust, a Britain darkly and silently divided, until the bombs made by British citizens blew up and killed 55 people on the London tube.

I look around me at Blair's Britain and I don't see a political home. I was sure that our forward thinking young leader, back in 1997, would see the benefit of being the King fish in a relatively small pool, driving the European dream towards social and economic harmony, committing us to being a key player in a European defence force where we took on responsibilities commensurate with our limited power. Sadly no. It seemed that 911 produced mental paralysis in our Prime Minister and thenceforth he was always content to be the British tail of the American dog and all that such short sightedness has led to.

When Blair goes we have Brown to look forward to - more of the same I suspect. Bullshit and sound bites. Even if I were to consider the Conservative Party (an absolute impossibility) that too is run by a cosmetic headline freak with no depth.

Nothing works. There is no belief any more, no sincere commitment to change. The entire problem with why Britain is stuck in a half way house of mediocrity in everything can be summed up in Blair's speech today where he is still trying to delude us, as he appears to have long deluded himself, that Britain is a world power - that in order to keep Blair smiling and smirking at the top table of world politics it is necessary to spend billions on a Trident replacement, it necessary to keep licking the American arse for as long as its government needs us - and we will be thrown away just as soon as it doesn't, it is vital that we spend billions that could be invested in making Britain's social fabric the envy of Europe on more and more military expenditure. It is sad, pathetic, fucking rubbish!

I see a Britain so unhappy, more so than I have ever known it. Our troops are angry and resentful that they are fighting in wars they don't really understand and are underequipped and underfunded to do so. Our police are angry because they are finding themselves more and more in the front line of cultural and social division. There seems to be no clear direction for our education services, for our health system. Our people are angry and divided over Iraq. Everything seems to be the result of some instant brain dump and a decision to throw money at a problem without thinking it through. No one trusts Blair any more - and worse, there is precious little faith in his successor, tarred with all the brushes with which Blair has sullied himself.

It is quite possible that, in a years time, the first steps will be taken to break up the United Kingdom if the Scottish Nationalists win, as seems likely, the local elections in May. Another destructive step in Britain's decline.

I sat in the pub thinking what a desolate political future lay ahead. I simply don't believe in anything or anybody any more. At one time the English could turn to sport when things were going badly on the political front but even that is now denied us. After the pathetic showing by our football team in the World Cup, the proverbial sour icing was finally laid on our cake by the performance of our cricketers in Australia.

One crack on a blog yesterday said it all for me. 'The remainder of the England cricket tour is under the sponsorship of WGAS - 'Who gives a shit?'