Brown vs Cameron: The Contrast

There's Dave...

Sky News' Jon Craig has posted an interesting piece on the latest Brown-sighting this evening. After Cameron's highly adroit - even deft - performance in the US, it's becoming pretty clear that, in absolute fact, Britain is far better off, both at home and abroad, now that she is finally being represented by a prime minister that isn't either a) a hopeless attention-seeker obsessed with his own image rather than concerned with the needs of a country he laughably purported to lead or the world that he generally preferred to start wars in, or b) a socially inept weirdo with terrifying delusions of grandeur and a pathological inability to recognise, much less tell, the truth.

Jon Craig writes of the latter's latest noises well-off performance:

So what did Gordon Brown do after his brief appearance in the House of Lords?
(See previous blog.)
Speak in the Commons during the third reading debate on the Finance Bill?
Er, no.
Pop down to Strangers' Bar or the terrace for a few beers with old comrades?
Er, no.
The former Prime Minister, I can reveal, had already invited new Labour MPs elected for the first time on May 6 - about 70 in all - for a chat at 4pm in his grand and spacious new office on the top floor of Portcullis House.
An audience with Gordon.
Aah. So the room was packed, then?
Er, no.
Apparently, so my informant tells me, only about 10 turned up to listen to the former PM.
I'm also told that some of the bright young things turned up hoping to ask him worthy questions about the Alternative Vote referendum and other current topics.
But they were disapppointed to hear him talk at some length - no change there, then - about how the Tories kept trashing his record in power.
Oh dear.
In denial?
That's what some Labour MPs are claiming.

Where's Wally Gordon?

I'm quite surprised to be writing this, but Cameron is actually beginning to look great. Now that could just be because he's normal compared to the two contemptible Labour has-beens this country and the world have been forced to tolerate for over a decade in unequal shares until very recently.

But he did look and sound great today - a real independent force. Having seen some of the clips of his performance with the latest incarnation of the US president, compared to the rather brittle-looking, slightly spiteful-sounding Barack Hussein Obama, he was, well, just great.

Hang-on, I know it's early days, but it is possible Cameron is great - as in an unusually gifted statesman and leader (at least in the making).

One day maybe it'll even become a famous quotation: "Andy Burnham [or whoever], you are no David Cameron! (You're actually a bit like Tony Blair - but not quite as bad as Gordon Thingumyjig)," says someone or other who's fairly famous in politics .

Hmm. Maybe not (yet). But he's clearly better than Blair. And way, way, way better than the unspeakable (and nearly vanished forever anyway) Brown. We might still be in the 'thank God for small mercies' stage of Cameron's premiership, but there can be no denying it: there were one or two glimpses of greatness there today.

What a contrast!

Blair To Blame For Brown

Quite aside from all his other disastrous decisions, mainly on foreign policy, it seems perfectly fair to me that Blair be blamed for not seeing while he was Prime Minister that Britain wasn't saddled with a successor he himself thought was unfit to govern. This is, according to Andrew Rawnsley in his extraordinarily excoriating assault on virtually the entire Labour administration, the thing for which Blair, ultimately, is most guilty. It's a heck of a read and should be disastrous for all Labour's leadership candidates, tainted as they are with the charge of cowardice, arch and chronic dishonesty and, simply put, self-interested misgovernance. Anyway, here's a taste of something which, if you haven't already read it, is well worth a look:

If Blair thought that Brown was unfit to be prime minister – and there's now lots of evidence that this is precisely what Blair thought – he had an obligation to his party and his country to do something about it. At the very least, he should have, as he could have, ensured that there was a contest for the succession in 2007 rather than allow Brown to be crowned without proper scrutiny. It was one of Blair's most selfish acts and a gross dereliction of duty to swan off to make his millions while leaving his party and country to cope with the consequences of a Brown premiership.

The implication from this is that by the time he had finally given in to the forces of hell unleashed by Brown in the form of Balls, Wheelan et al in 2006, Blair simply didn't give a toss about what happened next. A more damning indictment of the man as Prime Minister is simply inconceivable, even one involving his misleading the House of Commons, the country and the world over WMDs in Iraq. It's actually quite difficult accurately to describe a person like that, whose self-interest and vanity is only trumped by his greed and dishonesty. In some ways if one views it in the light of this unforgivable dereliction of duty, as Rawnsley rightly calls it, Blair ends up as an even worse national leader than Brown, difficult though that might be for some (like me) to swallow.

If you do accept Rawnsley's characterisation of Blair, it is, however, perfectly possible to argue that he was worse than Brown as a man and as a leader. The only difference between the two frauds being, therefore, that Blair was a far better con man than Brown ever could be, which meant that Blair was able to trick the country into believing him and then voting for him. By contrast, Brown was just Brown: paranoid, delusional, vicious, incompetent even in disguising his many falsehoods and, ultimately, a total electoral liability and a catastrophe for the nation.

The impact of these realisations on the Labour leadership campaign as I said should be massive. All the candidates are as discredited as each other for failing to make the decision Blair couldn't be ar*ed to make and stopping Brown once it was crystal clear he was utterly hopeless. As Rawnsley says, quite fairly and quite mildly in truth:

Andy Burnham was one of the nodding dogs who would declare to TV cameras that the cabinet had every confidence in Gordon Brown when the reverse was the case. Ed Balls ran the thuggish Brownite machine and the decade-long insurgency against Tony Blair to put his master in Number 10. Ed Miliband makes pious noises denouncing "factionalism" as if he is a saintly figure who never had anything to do with it. "The emissary from Planet Fuck" – as he was known among Blair's aides during the civil war – was at the heart of the Brown faction.It is a bit tricky for David Miliband. He was one of the senior members of the cabinet who knew Brown was taking them to defeat and failed to act before it was too late.

So they all should be screwed - and rightly so. For all his hypocrisy, Mandelson doesn't really matter because he's not a leadership candidate. So, assuming (and this is a big assumption) the MSM ends its own version of Labourist dishonesty and begins to treat the rest with the contempt they should have coming to them for their pathetic behaviour in propping up Brown, the only untainted candidate in the Labour leadership race is, hilariously, Diane Abbott!

Either way, and this is essentially Rawnsley's conclusion, Labour is truly, deservedly and royally buggered. And in the end, of course, they themselves are the ones who are to blame for it. After all, Blair only gave us Brown because he'd given up, and that's how history will judge him. But the Milibands, Burnham and Balls (and Mandelson) are the ones who propped the disastrous loser up. That was unforgivable - and the country isn't going to forgive them, ever.

Now, thankfully, their past seems finally to be catching up with them. Soon there'll be nowhere left for them to hide any more and no amount of continued lying will save their collective political bacon. If the PLP is stupid enough to elect one of them, (and it's almost certain that it is that stupid) then they should prepare to be out of power for decades, if not forever. Mind you, exactly the same thing will happen if they choose bonkers Abbott.

Catch 22 for the Labourist wreckers - and music to my ears!

Inside the Bunker

Iain Martin has provided, presumably from his sources inside the civil service, a fascinating and chilling insight into Brown's autocratic, paranoid and hopeless (mis)management of day-to-day Prime Ministerial business. If you haven't already read it, click through here.

It will take a lot of effort to work out just how much damage three years (or 13 years if you include his time as a diabolical, serially disloyal Chancellor) of Brown's weirdness and chaos in Downing Street has done to this nation. The litany of disasters that can be traced directly back to Brown's bunker door are emerging daily, of course, so the process could take less time than we think.

Quite frankly, I think how such a man was elevated to the level of the highest office in the land in the first place, without even the pretence of any form of democratic election, should also be a source of deep and urgent study. Why? Because it must never, ever be permitted to happen again and if that means radical alterations to the rules governing the way Prime Ministers are chosen, then so be it.

In the meantime we can be happy about a couple of things, and Martin alludes to these in his excellent piece: stable, reasonable, elected people are back in charge, cabinet government appears to have returned and the principles of ministerial and collective responsibility look like being rigorously reinstated.

We shall see, but after the cocksure, cowboy, sofa government years of Blair and the mentally disturbed, incoherent, mafiosi years of Brown, it certainly feels like accountability, professionalism and, crucially, normality have returned to Downing Street, Whitehall and, perhaps (just perhaps), even Westminster.

Well, you might disagree. But God help us all if I'm wrong!

Just remember, Brown's chief hit man, Balls, is still around, waiting in the wings, shamelessly spewing his poisonous politics of propaganda, division, dishonesty and fear. He's on This Week right now lying through his teeth about, in this case, his many crimes against Tony Blair on behalf of his boss, Brown, to whom he remains fanatically loyal. The chances of the evil Balls becoming leader even of his own party are pretty slim, I admit, (oh I do hope he wins!) but there's still that chance, however slight, and the frailties of our system, exposed by the Brown 2007 coup d'état, mean that at that point, he would be a hell of a lot closer to Number 10 than is sanely conceivable.

If Iain Martin's revelations reveal just how very, very, incredibly bad Brown was, just imagine what life would be like under Prime Minister Balls.

That would be a nightmare from which we might never wake up.

Blair Knew

I nearly missed this extraordinary piece buried in the business pages of yesterday's Telegraph by half-decent economics commentator (and there aren't many of those) Edmund Conway. The thrust of the piece, supported by an interesting flashback to the days when Blair was, apparently, Labour's City spokesman, just when the '87 bubble burst, is that a series of FoI requests have revealed that Blair knew about Brown's mega housing bust as early as 2004, possibly before. Said Conway:

So concerned was the PM back in 2004 that the housing market was turning into a bubble that he asked the Treasury for a full briefing note (in fact he was prompted by an FT column by Martin Wolf, warning: “Nobody knows when the bust will come. But come, I believe, it will”.)

Fine, but nothing, as everyone no doubt recalls, happened. Why? I think we can guess. Conway continues:

Now, it probably isn’t a surprise to hear that the Treasury dismissed this view in its document, which PricedOut has attained under a Freedom of Information request. But I was surprised by the length of the document (eight chunky pages) and throughout its length a sheer unwillingness to countenance the possibility that the housing market would crash. It underlines the simple fact that the Treasury under Gordon Brown was blind to the possibility that things could go horribly wrong – even within the confines of Downing Street. It turns out no-one was allowed to challenge the “end to boom and bust” trope – even Tony Blair himself.

Blair's role in this debacle simply demonstrates how weak a prime minister, and person, he actually was. And, of course, it shows how far he would go to keep the title. He knew and yet he did nothing. If he'd had a spine, he would have fired Brown when he had the chance. But he didn't, and should be judged accordingly.

As for Brown. My God! Is it any wonder that I hate him (and I mean hate) and all he stands for? Is it really that surprising that I, and millions of others, believe he is the worst man ever to have held high office in this country? Should it really be that much of a shock that I am 100% sure that if this unelected, incompetent, vainglorious oddball is somehow given a mandate this year, the damage he will do to this country afterwards would make terrible harm he's caused so far look like the good old days?

At least the politics are therefore very straightforward: you vote Labour in your constituency and you will get five more years of the lying economic wrecker. Vote Tory, you don't.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a moral duty to vote Conservative this time around, and all that that implies if you don't. That what's at stake here. The documentary proof in Conway's article provides the proof, as if more were needed.

And now, just for a bit of extra entertainment, and in case you can't be bothered to click through to original article, is that video of Blair in '87. Who'd have thought a wet-behind-the-ears political unknown, who'd never had a proper a job in his life, would one day be prime minister.

Well, so much for David Cameron. But it is interesting to see Blair back then...



...about the same as he looks now, only less suntanned and without the Yank accent.

Ghosts

He's come back to haunt support his old cabinet sparring partner, Brown, but Tony Blair can't run away from the by now well-worn ghosts that will follow him to the grave. One such ghost, however, could be a surprisingly fresh one. It's the eponymous novel written by Robert Harris a few years ago - and it's coming out as a movie, just in time for the general election, and Blair's return. What larks!



If you don't know the book, then you should have a little dip in before watching the film, otherwise, it'll be pretty baffling. Suffice it to say, it sails pretty close to the wind most of the time, in terms of its verisimilitude. As the Guardian review of the day said, Harris was out to get Blair, and get him good:

Most such references are almost dangerously obvious; a firm called Hallington, for instance, gets up to tricks just as sinister as those laid at the door of Haliburton. Others are designed to give Harris wriggle-room. Lang is having an affair with his personal assistant, the comely Amelia Bly, who would otherwise be a dead ringer for Blair's Downing Street aide Anji Hunter. The long-suffering ghostwriter even gets to bed the ex-PM's wife.

These few fantasies are all that save Harris from the charge that he is out for revenge on Blair, if not for the second sacking of his closer friend Peter Mandelson, then for Bush-dictated foreign policy that saw the author 'give up on' a government whose election he initially welcomed. Last year's Middle East debacle was apparently 'the last straw' for the already anti-war author; but he resists milking the irony that Blair is now a Middle East envoy, preferring a bleaker end for Lang.

Well, I thought the book was brilliant, fiction or not. And it had that delicious twist that all good thrillers should have at the end. Some aspects of the real Tony Blair's life are, in fact, stranger than the fiction, though. For instance, who would have thought that this former Labour prime minister would be worth £20 million+ after earning about 1/130th of that sum as prime minister? How did he manage that? Speaking tours?? Of course not. His rich friends in America showed him how to exploit business loopholes, while his chancellor here fuelled the property boom for as long as he could get away with it - or as long as it took for half the cabinet to become property multi-millionaires, just like Blair (and Mandelson, of course). Just these facts alone stink more than anything Harris dreamt up in his book about Blair facing charges as a war criminal.

But great book it is, and certainly worth the read. You really won't be able to put it down. As for the film, well, judging by the trailer, it's very faithful to the text - and Pierce Brosnan, judging by the glimpses we get, has judged the character of Tony Blair Adam Lang to perfection. Add to that the fact that it's a Polanski flick, and you would be forgiven for thinking that it's unmissable.

I wonder if Blair will be going to see it. I'm damn sure Brown will be - on the sly, naturally.

Named In Dispatches

Courtesy: Department of International Development (the irony)

I can't say much about this hideous thing because I'm sort of still trying to process what I've just seen. But I will say this.

I find it utterly soul-destroying that these people, all of them Labour ministers either interviewed in the sting or fingering ministers still in power in one position or another (including that sickening, unblinking crook Mandelson yet again), are so much worse as people than so many people I've met in my lifetime and career so far. I simply cannot imagine what my father thinks of it all.

The point is that these people are so corrupt, they would sooner burn this country to the ground than be forced into a position where they must confront the twin characteristics that define them all, to a man and to a woman: vanity and greed. Vanity and greed is what defines this entire government, and this government's vanity and greed is what has brought this country to the brink of ruin. We were safer in the Cold War than we are with these.

Just remember, prior to this devastating Blair/Brown era, governments were brought down for far, far less than this, and rightly so.

I can't think of anything else to say just now. I'm just too depressed by the level of venality and decay this country has been brought to thanks to a desperately serious, though perhaps innocent in the case of a fair few million voters, false step that we took in 1997.

A lot of people were conned by Labour, but all are punished.

To me, though, there is some kind of hope. The Conservative Party, under Cameron, I believe has genuinely sensed the mood of the people (the people that count, that is - the vast majority of people - and not that small minority of dumb, insolent, loudmouth Labour activists who just don't care because their obsessive political prejudices always take precedence over truth, justice and common decency).

The Conservative Party, under Cameron, really will mend our broken politics, mainly because they had bloody well better! So thank God for that, because, as this terrifying Dispatches programme shows, our politics is just about as broken as it could possibly be.

And Labour broke it.

Blix On Blair

Hans Blix, the weapons inspector chief humiliated by Blair and Bush in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, gives his view (largely implicitly) on Blair's pretty chilling Chilcot grilling, during which he heavily hinted that not-only would he do it again in Iraq, with or without the WMD lies, but that he would have followed it up with an attack on Iran. While I don't agree with some of Blix's views, particularly on what I regard as Israel's entirely understandable - and genuine - security fears, he talks a heck of a lot of sense about the folly of taking on Iran without international agreement and a bloody good reason (an example of which certainly does not exist, at least yet). He also gives the lie to Blair's 2010 counterfactual pseudo-justification for the Iraq war, namely, that had there been no war then Saddam would now be locked in an arms race with Iran and Israel. Iraq would be as crippled now under Saddam as it was in 2003, Blix suggests. In other words, Blair was talking through an alternative orifice to his cakehole.

As for his point about a nuclear-armed Iran. Tell you what, I think he's right. Iran with nukes would certainly be extremely uncomfortable, but the fact remains that with the responsibility that comes with possession of the Bomb comes a sea-change in national outlook and identity. Using it as an aggressive weapon is literally suicide, given the guaranteed swiftness and totally devastating response to such a crime. Blix implies that not even the current regime in Iran is that crazy, for all its wild words and posturing. And I agree, mainly because he's probably right, but partly because just hearing a mollifying voice of reason after the endless propaganda and ignorant, one-eyed, 'blood price,' warmongering lunacy of liars like Blair is a hell of a relief.



You may disagree.

Yeah, Right

History's Most Honest Leaders

" I will fight corruption..."

"I will tell the truth at the Chilcot inquiry."

"I vill honour ze Munich Agreement with ze Pritishers"

Oh, and we mustn't forget the most compulsively honest man in the world, of course:

"It started in America..."

"We saved the world..."

"[fill in the blank - there's hundreds more to choose from]"

With men as honest as these, folks, you just know we're in safe hands.

Yeah. Right.

To Blair: How Much Money Have You Made Since You Were PM?

Kelvin Mackenzie was just asked on the Sky News paper review what question he wants to be put to Blair when he faces Chilcot. He was absolutely fuming - as I seem permanently to be these days when it comes to Liebour generally - and came up with a real doozy. He said he wanted to cut through all the non-oath, lawyerless BS and get to heart of things. The question, he said, should be: "How much money have you [Blair] made since you were Prime Minister?"

Last thing I read about this, it was something like £15 million - and still rapidly rising (and it's a figure that doesn't take into account his various nefarious business arrangements or his truly massive international property portfolio). He's the wealthiest ex-PM in modern history and he made that money simply because he fooled enough people into voting for him - three times. Exploitation of office? Personal agendas? Utter corruption? You get it all with Tony Blair - and all who supported (and still support) him. Alastair "David Kelly" Campbell, for one.

But Blair's clearly been well-rewarded for being Bush's Wormtongue. Lying to the British people and to parliament about some mythical need for "regime change" in Iraq was all he had to do. And he went about the task with truly nauseating alacrity.

Whatever millions Blair, in his insatiable greed, has scammed since being pushed out by his even-worse, long-term rival, Brown, every single penny of it is blood money. And the blood is the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of brave British soldiers. All sacrificed on the altar of an evil Labour leader's vanity, greed and megalomania. (With Brown, of course, I suppose you can omit the greed, but not the vanity and megalomania.) But, as a Conservative-voting relative of mine said to me just the other day, "It's really very simple...Blair is a war criminal."

The other upshot is that not-only Blair, but the entire rotten edifice that is the Labour party must never, ever be let off the hook for this terrible evil that their leader(s) perpetrated, and virtually all of them went along with. All the way to the first bombing raid and beyond.

It won't be forgotten or forgiven by an abused, humiliated and exploited British people for decades to come, that's for certain. And rightly so.

Blair's Millions

Excellent piece from the Renegade Economist today which traces some of Tony Blair's labyrinthine collection of funds, holding companies and legal entities that he's started since handing over his mandate to Gordon Brown. According to the Renegade, he's created a "complex web of structures involving 12 different legal entities handling the unprecedented millions he is receiving since he stepped down from office in 2007."

The article goes on:

So mystifying are the former prime minister’s financial structures – which involve highly specialised limited partnerships and parallel companies – that the Guardian today launches an open invitation to tax specialists and accountants to attempt to explain the motivation behind such structures. We have published the Companies House documents and other legal papers regarding the structure of the partnerships at guardian.co.uk and invite expert comment via our site at guardian.co.uk/politics/series/blair-mystery.

Thereis no suggestion Blair is doing anything illegal. But he refuses to explain the
purpose of the secretive partnerships.

Tax specialists say Blair could use these unusual arrangements at some point in the future to seek to transfer millions tax-free to his four children.
Blair denies, however, that the structures are such an inheritance tax avoidance scheme, known as a “family limited partnership”.

“Family limited partnerships” were being publicized to lawyers and accountants in November 2007 at the time Blair’s lawyers started to set up his structures.

Known in the trade as “Flips”, family limited partnerships are a way of getting round stricter inheritance tax rules in the 2006 budget, imposed by Gordon Brown while Blair was still prime minister.

'Flips', eh? Oh, the irony. Now, as yesterday evening's post on this blog shows, I'm not a little nervous about the Grauniad's journalistic standards, so I'm very pleased that an independent economics journal and blog has taken up the story. Indeed, the article then goes into far more detail than the Graun would ever dare about Blair's on-the-face-of-it legal but pretty irregular financial affairs, all designed (so the theory goes) to dodge inheritence tax, so little Leo will inherit all daddy's estimated, post-PM fortune of 14 million quid (and rising). "There, there. We won't let the beastly tax man have any of it." Perhaps Blair will be voting Tory in the next election (if he's actually registered to vote in the UK, that is).

Whichever way you choose to look at this, and the financial arrangements alone certainly seem worthy of the taxman's attention, it is worth remembering that Blair's pocket-lining at the expense of the British taxpayer, his early retirement (a breach of both a manifesto promise and of trust with 'the nation' - or 9 million suckers, rather- that gave New Labour under Blair, not Old Labour under Brown, a mandate to govern) and his subsequent ruthless exploitation of his ongoing popularity in the United States (if only they knew him as we do) are just the tip of the iceberg. They were (are?) all at it!

There can be no forgiveness for Blair for so many reasons, and he should be investigated for his dodgy businesses and questionable tax arrangements - just after he's been arrested over Iraq - but we must never forget that an awful lot more parliamentarians have been doing this under this Labour government for more than a decade and the worst, criminal offenders have been of the Labourist stripe. Now we know why. A management culture begins at the top. If the person at the top is a money-grubbing, ruthless exploiter of tax and expenses loopholes, the entire organisation's likely to follow suit. They're just copying the boss. Indeed, for the boss to feel OK about being so venal, he will positively (though quietly) encourage it. And that, folks, is called corruption.

And we've had 13 years of it. No wonder we're bankrupt: the country financially and parliament morally. Thank Brown for the former; Blair for the latter.

Arrest Blair

His many crimes, committed while he held office, are finally beginning to emerge. And they are most definitely crimes (in the sense that, you know, he broke the law, right - so, hey, he's not actually a pretty straight kind of guy after all. Right). But hang on, if they are crimes, and crimes they are, then arrest the shit, right?

Anyway, this dynamite litany of Blairite deceit will be revealed in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph so people can then make their own minds up about whether we've been led by crooks, incompetents and liars for the past 13 years (or not).

On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.

They include full transcripts of extraordinarily frank classified interviews in which British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with ministers and Whitehall officials.

The reports disclose that:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process. The result was a “rushed”operation “lacking in coherence and resources” which caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the post-war period.

Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

The Foreign Office unit to plan for postwar Iraq was set up only in late February, 2003, three weeks before the war started.

The plans “contained no detail once Baghdad had fallen”, causing a “notable loss of momentum” which was exploited by insurgents. Field commanders raged at Whitehall’s “appalling” and “horrifying” lack of support for reconstruction, with one top officer saying that the Government “missed a golden opportunity” to win Iraqi support. Another commander said: “It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves.”

The documents emerge two days before public hearings begin in the Iraq Inquiry, the tribunal appointed under Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall civil servant, to “identify lessons that can be learnt from the Iraq conflict”.

Senior military officers and relatives of the dead have warned Sir John against a “whitewash”.

The documents consist of dozens of “post-operational reports” written by commanders at all levels, plus two sharply-worded “overall lessons learnt” papers – on the war phase and on the occupation – compiled by the Army centrally.

The analysis of the war phase describes it as a “significant military success” but one achieved against a “third-rate army”. It identifies a long list of “significant” weaknesses and notes: “A more capable enemy would probably have punished these shortcomings severely.”

The analysis of the occupation describes British reconstruction plans as “nugatory” and “hopelessly optimistic”.

It says that coalition forces were “ill-prepared and equipped to deal with the problems in the first 100 days” of the occupation, which turned out to be “the defining stage of the campaign”. It condemns the almost complete absence of contingency planning as a potential breach of Geneva Convention obligations to safeguard civilians.

The leaked documents bring into question statements that Mr Blair made to Parliament in the build up to the invasion. On July 16 2002, amid growing media speculation about Britain’s future role in Iraq, Mr Blair was asked: “Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq?” He replied: “No.”

Introducing the now notorious dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, on Sept 24, 2002, Mr Blair told MPs: “In respect of any military options, we are not at the stage of deciding those options but, of course, it is important — should we get to that point — that we have the fullest possible discussion of those options.”

In fact, according to the documents, “formation-level planning for a [British] deployment [to Iraq] took place from February 2002”.

The documents also quote Maj Gen Graeme Lamb, the director of special forces during the Iraq war, as saying: “I had been working the war up since early 2002.”

The leaked material also includes sheaves of classified verbatim transcripts of one-to-one interviews with commanders recently returned from Iraq – many critical of the Whitehall failings that were becoming clear. At least four commanders use the same word – “appalling” – to describe the performance of the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.

Documents describe the “inability to restore security early during the occupation” as the “critical failure” of the deployment and attack the “absence of UK political direction” after the war ended.

One quotes a senior British officer as saying: “The UK Government, which spent millions of pounds on resourcing the security line of operations, spent virtually none on the economic one, on which security depended.”

Many of the documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph deal with key questions for Sir John Chilcot and his committee, such as whether planning was adequate, troops properly equipped and the occupation mishandled, and will almost certainly be seen by the inquiry.

However, it is not clear whether they will be published by it.

It's the worst, most profligate, incompetent, deadly, destructive, arrogant and shameless government we've ever had inflicted upon us - and still the polls remain slightly volatile, nonetheless.

But not after this Iraq stuff fully comes out, though, so there's really no need to worry. Brown and Labour are still dead in the water. And Blair really should be arrested.

Millipede or Anvil Shooting? No Contest

It's got to be anvil shooting every time. Yes, it's the wonderful new sport from the good ol' US of A. Life doesn't get much funner than this.



Well, it was either that or blog about Millipede's breathtakingly hypocritical, opportunistic and massively nauseating endorsement of "President Blair" on this morning's Marr show - and I just couldn't bring myself to do that. I hope you understand.

Back to the anvil shooting...

Big Day Tomorrow?

Could be. The expenses scandal, after yesterday's revelations, is about to rear its ugly head again. This report from Peter Spencer of Sky News earlier seems to be suggesting so. Creepy Pete does well here, striking the right balance (unlike the biased BBC's reporting), given that evidence so far shows that it's far more likely the government generally and Brown in particular will be blamed for most of the corruption that's been going on - and rightly so since most of the worst abuses have come from Labour MPs and even ministers, including Gordon Brown himself!



Donal Blaney even suggested this morning that it's the expenses issue, not his eyesight, that will provide Brown with the excuse to get out of office with some degree of dignity. I'm not so sure after watching this report, but who knows? My feeling is that the Labourists are so punch drunk now, trotting out the horrible Yvette Cooper-Balls - herself a serial trougher along with her equally horrible husband - to try to limit the damage from the surge in the Conservative Party's popularity, that they might have just given up. It's a chilling thought, but it seems to me that they could be resigned to their fate and so will keep drawing the comfortable salary, treading political water and sinking the country ever deeper into debt right up until the very bitter end. A large proportion of these invertibrates seem to want to leave Brown in place, with Alan "Postie" Johnson well-positioned to take over, simply so that the former carries the can for what now looks like inevitable electoral annihilation. They will squeeze as much time out of their term simply to line their own pockets prior to unemployment. No Labour MP's seat is safe now - and they all know it.

So it is a big day tomorrow, but mainly for Labour, who are stuck firmly between the proverbial rock and hard place, right where they deserve to be. Whatever the outcome of all this, the best they can expect is, as Spencer puts it, "zilch". For them that would be a real result. That's how bad things are for them - and that's how little they care about the needs of the country. They'd sooner go on like this, paralysed and unwanted, than trigger a genuine challenge to their own, bankrupt and moribund leadership.

I still think Brown will be gone by early November (or sooner), mind you, but it will have a lot more to do with the Czech president's actions than expensesgate and his failing eyesight. The plucky little Czechs I reckon are about to cave in and ratify Lisbon, given that the Germans in particular are putting gigantic amounts of pressure on them to do so, including vicious personal attacks on their head of state.

I buy the theory now that once that weasel Mandelson has got what he wants and locked us into Lisbon, with the future President Blair waiting in the wings, Brown will be dropped like a radioactive turd.

If you think not even the New Labour hierarchy could be cynical enough to try to pull this coup d'état off, think again. Mandelson, Campbell, Blair: the most infamous, treacherous and crooked three men ever to wield power in the history of British politics. Even Brown, the awkward, perfidious incompetent, pails before them.

Remember their names!

Curious Casualty

Bare-faced Liar-In-Chief in action

The first casualty of war is the truth, so the saying goes. That may be so, but now it seems the lies themselves, once the truth is KIA, can claim the odd victim, too, or so Sky News reported this morning...

A former spin doctor is to sue the Government, claiming years of being made to tell lies over the war in Iraq made him ill.

The press officer felt torn over the safety of the army's Snatch Land Rovers

John Salisbury-Baker was responsible for supporting dead soldiers' families, attending funerals and dealing with the media.

He claims holding back information about troops' safety led him to develop stress-related illnesses.

The 62-year-old is set to sue the MoD for disability discrimination.

While working at Imphal Barracks in York he told the media army vehicles such as Snatch Land Rovers could withstand roadside bombs.

He then "felt responsible in some way" when soldiers were killed, his partner Christine Brooke said.

She explained: "It goes back to the fact he felt torn because he had a moral dilemma based on the fact he knew a little bit more about the situation than the people he was dealing with whose sons had died."

Ms Brooke added: "We're all aware that some of the personal protection equipment wasn't of as good quality as it might have been and there were things missing, I think that's sort of common knowledge, but perhaps the families weren't as aware.

"John felt that he was holding back, being frugal with the truth.

"I think it's caught up with him really, it pushed him over the edge as far as his levels of stress were concerned."

Mr Salisbury-Baker was diagnosed with stress-related angina in 2007 and PTSD a year later.

But while Salisbury-Baker fights for his compensation for the 'damage' to his mental health being a mouthpiece for Labour's endless lies about our troops' equipment he claims has caused (yes, mate, it's called a guilty conscience), the lies go on and the troops keep dying, as umpteen reports and blog entries have shown just today. Here, for instance.

For myself, I would simply point out that if this bloke knew he was telling lies on behalf of a government hell-bent on keeping the truth about their incompetence from the nation when he was in post, and if he knew our troops were dying as a direct consequence of that government incompetence, then he should have had the courage to speak out about it in public at the time. That he didn't says as much about him as the lies themselves speak volumes about this Labour government (under both lying leaders, Blair and Brown).

He's a coward, isn't he? Yes, more or less. So it's pretty straightforward really: set aside the money he would be awarded if (ridiculously) he won his case for the genuinely wounded and the families of the war dead. After all, his willing dissemination of Labour's lies contributed to their plight, whether he liked it or not.

I wonder if Labour cabinet ministers will be trying-on the same scam once they're out of a job next summer. I wouldn't put it past them.

Blair Running Scared

The Observer's just broken this pretty shocking story. What's the real reason for Brown opting for a secret Iraq whitewash inquiry? Is it that Brown has something to hide himself? Probably, but no, not quite that. Is it because there was pressure brought to bear by a US government keen not to reopen old wounds? Absolutely not.

The real reason for the secret inquiry is that Brown did a deal with - guess who - Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. According to the Observer:

Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a "show trial" if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal.

The revelation that the former prime minister, who led the country to war in March 2003, had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers, military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by Brown's decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors.

Blair, who resisted pressure for a full public inquiry while he was prime minister, appears to have taken a deliberate decision not to express his view in person to Brown because he feared it might leak out.

Instead, messages were relayed through others to Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who conveyed them to the prime minister in the days leading up to last week's inquiry announcement.

The other parties are already up in arms about this, and Nick Clegg's reaction was pretty blunt:

"If this is true about Blair demanding secrecy, it is simply outrageous that an inquiry into the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez is being muzzled to suit the individual needs of the man who took us to war - Tony Blair."

Quite. It's another stitch-up from beginning to end. Just like the referendum on Europe, out-of-control public finances as Brown tries to buy himself a general election, the expenses scandal and a whole clutch of others. I suppose we should not expect anything more from the most corrupt and incompetent government in the history of Britain.

The Tories offer a faint glimmer of hope, though, as they have 'threatened' to widen the scope of the inquiry if Brown doesn't immediately perform an about-face. Good for them.

But Brown. Ah, Brown. Lying once again to House of Commons. Doing shady deals with his nemesis. Spinning his way into another media disaster. What a numpty.

"Security" was his excuse for holding a secret investigation, with no powers of subpoena and no witness oath, with a panel tainted by previous inquiries and a report delayed for a year. Well, people, now we know the real reason: one more small favour for his predecessor; one more giant insult to the people of the United Kingdom. Mind you, I doubt he did it willingly. Brown thought he had finally killed-off Blair once he'd knifed him in the back and stolen his crown. But it's never that easy with regicide. Ask Menzies Campbell.

As the only suitable role model for Brown I can think of would say:

The time has been,
That when the brains were out the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.

Blair's ghost has returned to haunt the usurper, mad McBrown. Seriously, though, just when you think this government cannot get any worse, something like this pops up. Incredible. Surreal.

Sickening.

Boot Filling

It seems there is nothing much to learn directly from the MPs allowances document released today, apart from the fact that MPs all seem to take full advantage of the so-called second home allowance - even the multi millionaires, of whom there are many. Fair play to them I suppose. Just obeying the rules (they make-up).

There was one little tidbit in the rightly underused Column 7, "Staff Cover and Other Costs", which deals with absence and illness.

The highest figure in this column (by miles) ? The entry for one Blair, Rt Hon Tony.

Click on the the naff snapshot to see for yourself:







Very odd, seeing as he'd long left his office and the country by then. Yes, yes - he was still an (awol) MP. But he was also PM - according to the previous General Election.

My theory: since the absent member of staff was Blair himself, he claimed the allowance and gave it to Brown for being his "cover". (A sort of 'supply PM').

Shocking ;)