RE: [A-List] UK state: Michael Portillo

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Mark asks:

What has Hain done wrong? Contine my education please.

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It's very hard to pin down Hain on specifics (most importantly, what
exactly does he stand for), which is what makes him a prize asset to
whoever may wish to use him in the future. He has the leftish
credentials to appeal to a wider swathe of the Labour Party than Blair
ever could, yet he has been the most loyal, and competent, of all
ministers, often putting his head above the parapet to take the flak for
unpopular stuff to do with Europe, Gibraltar, and immigration -- talks
left, walks right, with less emphasis on the former, if you get my
drift. His main claim to fame is his role as a leading anti-apartheid
campaigner during the 1970s and 80s, and thereby becoming a target for
harassment by the McWhirters and BOSS. Recently he's joined the
perceptible leftward drift by casting himself as a rank-and-file trade
unionist, which is usually a necessary step when courting party
membership favours in the process of planning further ascent. Or, as is
more likely in this case, ensuring he has the legitimacy of a support
base which he would need in order to succeed Blair. If you do an archive
search on Hain you should find my musings about our "Prime
Minister-in-waiting", including this most recent one...

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w37/msg00052.htm


You continue:

I suppose if this sort of thing is possible in pomo,
exhibitionist, Swinging UK, than anything else is, including the
vampire-like resurrection of that walking-undead mortician's trade
sample of
1970's Brit politics, David Own: but national saviour? With this
thoughgt I
have an incredulity problem. Speaking of which, I just got thru watching
Dubya lecturing the UN about Nations that Go it Alone, defy the law, act
unilaterally and need Regime Change therapy...

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If the phrase "national saviour" occurs in the same sentence as David
Owned (sic), it's either because we're eavesdropping on his own
fantasies or because I have had a terrible nightmare of a conceivable
scenario in this rather uncertain time. Dr Death is certainly well past
his sell by date, but he still lurks in the shadows pulling some strings
and has heavyweight financial backing -- from whom? I surmise, from a
glance at his woeful career, that certain friends stateside (e.g.
Trilateral Commission) and their allies within the UK (members of the
Sainsbury family, who kindly endowed Jonathan Michie's professorial
chair) are responsible.

Michael