WILL TONY BLAIR NEVER GO AWAY ?

Will Tony Blair never realise that no one cares what he thinks and bugger off ?

In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, Blair has had nothing helpful or useful to say but, nonetheless, insisted on sharing his egotistical wisdom with the rest of we poor mortals. Today, he's emerged from his political grave to tell us that the UK government must up its game and deliver 5 million vaccinations a week in order to avoid another national lockdown; apparently the current plan for 1 million, rising to 2 million isn't adequate and "if he was Prime Minister" today, he'd be doing things very differently.

How easy it is to sit on the sidelines, criticise and suggest alternative strategies when he has no power and no responsibility, when he has no control over the actual production of the vaccine doses. In like manner, I could no doubt claim that if I was Prime Minister, we'd be vaccinating the whole population of the UK by the end of January, indeed, why stop there ? Let's make it the total population of the world - easy if I was Prime Minister. Not so easy in a real world in which vaccine production is limited, and will remain limited, by factors such as the availability of suitable laboratories, appropriate staff, relevant testing facilities, sterile media and packaging, adequate distribution, appropriate vaccination facilities and staff, to mention but a few. Then, of course, we have to remember that the laboratories currently engaged on vaccine production have orders from much of the world and not just the UK. Blair happily ignores all such matters when he shares his wisdom with us today, as he did in the past.

The fact is that Blair is NOT prime Minister and hasn't been for 12 years. When he was Prime Minister he supported Gordon Brown's creation of a client state, with millions dependant on ever more generous government hand-outs and with banks encouraged to offer loans with little evidence that the security offered was adequate; the result from such a world-wide and utterly misguided approach was the financial crisis of 2008 from which the world had barely recovered before COVID struck. Despite this monumental failure of his own policy, Blair now expects us to believe that he has it right on this occasion.

Well, for this member of the general public, Blair always was a man far stronger in style than substance. He's a man who climbed over all comers in his pursuit of the top job, while actually having none of the necessary attributes other than a winning smile. His behaviour over the Iraq war and his laughable strutting beside then US President George W Bush, showed him up for what he was. His ambition to continue to influence British, European and even World affairs continues unabated - thankfully, no one really seems to be listening to this jumped up little twerp any more.

Let's hope it stays that way.

Postscript :

And now Blair's latest wild eyed successor, SIR Keir Starmer, is demanding that we suffer a National Lockdown, to be imposed within the next 24 hours.

Starmer can't lose on this one. If the government ignores him, as it should, and COVID numbers continue to rise, he can claim that he was right and that victims of the virus have the government to blame, regardless of any carefree and selfish actions of their own. If numbers don't rise any further and even begin to fall, he can claim that he was simply taking the cautious and sensible approach. Given that the chances are that excessive mixing over Christmas and the New Year has yet to be picked up by the latest statistics, Starmer will probably be shown to be on the right side of the numbers in the next 3 or 4 weeks, though for purely political reasons. The latest restrictions will almost certainly mean that numbers are falling rapidly by the beginning of February, National Lockdown or not.

What is needed is consistency, not political point scoring. Where Boris Johnson's government have so far failed is in consistency; their messages have often been less than clear and, while trying to adopt a positive bent, they have often been overly optimistic. Consequently, they have found themselves under pressure to change tack on numerous occasions, pressure to which they have ultimately had no alternative but to yield.

The latest issue, prior to Starmer's demands of today, have involved the opening, or otherwise, of schools after the Christmas break. Gavin Williamson, surely a dead man walking in his role as Secretary of State for Education, has been a disaster in his presentation of government policy on all matters to do with schools and is now under attack from councils and unions. For Johnson to resolve the current crisis and regain some control, he has no choice but to replace Williamson; if he does not, he will find himself under yet more pressure that may prove terminal.

Johnson must regain control and be seen to have done so. Williamson must go and the question of an immediate National Lockdown be dealt with. Otherwise, we are more than likely to have a new Prime Minister by the autumn, and quite possibly not a Conservative one.