Blair babble

Confirmation that Tony Blair has decided to run Europe while waiting for Eggs Benedict to meet his maker (and I’d love to be there when that happens, assuming it ever does) and free up the Vatican CEO slot came yesterday, with a typically vacuous speech made in Paris to Sarkozy’s UMP party. Its primary aim may have been to arselick, and upstage, Sarkozy (and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bob or two didn’t change hands either – Tony doesn’t come cheap, even to friends), but it also indicated just how wide his political stance is. Basically he’s prepared to boldly go pretty much anywhere that isn’t tainted with socialism, as befits his new part-time job as £500,000-a-year adviser to JP Morgan. Not that Tony likes the words left and right; they’re old hat, uncool, pas chic, or whatever term he now prefers. What Tony likes are words that don’t mean very much at all – touchie-feelie words, buzz words. Words like future and past, as in: “‘Europe is not a question of left or right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness,” or today and yesterday, as in: “‘It’s about today versus yesterday. Less about politics and more about a state of mind; open as opposed to closed.” I’m not sure to whom this kind of fatuous waffle is supposed to appeal, but it’s a frightening thought that a meretricious warmonger like Blair might actually be allowed to govern the European Union, particularly now that he’s sworn allegiance to a small but irritating non-member state that contributes nothing to the continent but seems to feel it has a right to dictate EU policy.