I Hate Tony Blair

I've gotten over the nausea I referred to in my previous post. I even ate the Mars Bar eventually, though I did go to a different newsagent this morning because having the kind of revelation that produces a physical reaction is just too inconvenient in everyday life. It would be just my luck to find God while using the toilet in a motorway service station or discover the meaning of life while stuck in a lift in Debenhams.

I was quietly sitting and watching the Superbowl this evening when I decided to reply to the anonymous comment on my previous post. The poster suggested that money growing on trees is a socialist dream (though I could argue it seems more like a capitalist one to me) and it occurred to me that I can do more to show readers that I am not simply another mindless leftie reproducing the kind of rhetoric one reads with rolled eyes in the Socialist Worker.

Regular readers will know that I am openly derisive of Ed Miliband, and I believe that it is symptomatic of how far the Labour Party has fallen that he is leader. However, I realised in the middle of last year that I hate Tony Blair. I penned the subsequent blog entry as he was publishing memoirs written in blood and while it may not carry the weight now that he is not so central in the news, I reproduce it faithfully for anyone who is interested.

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I realised something this week. It struck me suddenly as I watched the Andrew Marr show on Tuesday night with increasing dismay, every overstated, carefully considered, stage-managed gesture gradually increasing my bile until I coughed it up in anger.

I hate Tony Blair.

Note my choice of words. Not, 'I dislike' or even 'I intensely dislike'. No, I hate him.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote a poem called, 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.' I was so incensed by the picture of Blair on the front of the Times, still every inch believing that he is still the UK's premier statesman, that I decided to borrow Browning's idea, and write an ode to Tony.

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways
I hate thee for thy continued pompous sanctimony;
I feel for you the utter contempt that I normally reserve for ITV
Your supposed revelation of your drinking leaves me cold
As your childish spat with Gordon; New Labour just ignored the old
Fight your pointless war with Islam, if indeed you must
But don't sign up as a peacekeeper, or claim you ended boom and bust
Give your book proceeds to charity, see your face in glossy mags
As the victims of your warmongering come home in body bags.
But the thing that frustrates and upsets me most, to see you on the TV
Saying that it was hard but right, that you'd do it all again and that it was for our own good
Go, Tony, to the after-dinner circuit, at the side of your friend Bush
But when you walk across the water,
Beware of drowning in a wave of scorn, like you truly should.