John Pilger, New Statesman, September 24:
Britain’s political conference season of 2008 will be remembered as The Great Silence. Politicians have come and gone and their mouths have moved in front of large images of themselves, and they often wave at someone. There has been lots of news about each other. Adam Boulton, the political editor of Sky News, and billed as “the husband of Blair aide Anji Hunter”, has published a book of gossip derived from his “unrivalled access to No 10”. His revelation is that Tony Blair’s mouthpiece told lies. The war criminal himself has been absent, but the former mouthpiece has been signing his own book of gossip, and waving.
The club is celebrating itself, including all those, Labour and Tory, who gave the war criminal a standing ovation on his last day in parliament and who have yet to vote on, let alone condemn, Britain’s part in the wanton human, social and physical destruction of an entire nation. Instead, there are happy debates such as, “Can hope win?” and, my favourite, “Can foreign policy be a Labour strength?” As Harold Pinter said of unmentionable crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”
The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, has written that the Prime Minister “resembles a tragic hero in a Hardy novel: an essentially good man brought down by one error of judgement”. What is this one error of judgement? The bank- rolling of two murderous colonial adventures? No. The unprecedented growth of the British arms industry and the sale of weapons to the poorest countries? No. The replacement of manufacturing and public service by an arcane cult serving the ultra-rich? No. The Prime Minister’s “folly” is “postponing the election last year”. This is the March Hare Factor.