Blair in Trouble

["Paul Flewers" <trusscott.foundation@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, it looks like Tony Blair is in trouble with the British ruling class.
After giving him a tentative welcome six years back, his total subservience
to the neo-con clique in Washington has led considerable sections of the
ruling class to question his judgement. Now even pro-war Murdoch papers like
The Times and other pro-war Tory ones like the Daily Telegraph, and even the
Tory leader himself, are asking whether 'the nation' was being hoodwinked
over Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction'. There was a lot of disquiet over
the war in bourgeois circles, including the military and top state
officials. At the college where I work, leading academics with close links
with the military and top state officials were openly concerned about the
war and its consequences. Now, the intelligence services seem to be gearing
up to stab Blair in the back, accusing him of using them for his narrow
political purposes.

With Iraq in a state of chaos, with Britain now tied in with Bush's
adventures in the eyes of the world, and with a growing US/Europe split
(despite the smiles at the G8), the British ruling class must be asking
itself: 'What have we got from this war?'

I think we'll hear more of Blair and his team and their shenanigans. If
Blair thinks that he can bad-mouth the spooks and get away with it, he'll
have a rude shock, as they can make life very difficult for him. They will
have the dirt on him, and not merely on Iraq. Blair is being seen as a
liability by the ruling class, and they are turning on him. If he looks
rattled now -- and he gets ratty very easily when asked about Iraq's
weapons, a true sign of weakness -- he's going to be finished in a few
months.

Eventually, Blair will have to move to the 'change of regime' argument,
saying: 'Yes, we didn't find any banned weapons, but we got rid of a vicious
dictator.' The problem with this is that with Iraq unravelling each day,
with resistance to the occupation growing, growing chaos, and with the
mullahs insinuating themselves into positions of power, this argument will
lose any credibility, and 'regime change' will increasingly seem like a bad
idea in retrospect.

Paul F