Thread by @DanFinn95

This article is worth reading, not because it has any positive merits, but because it condenses the sheer malevolence of Blair’s role in public life. No constructive ideas, just a remorseless drive to smash and wreck any progressive political force on behalf of his paymasters. 1/

https://twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1392419429322043392

Labour under Corbyn bucked this trend, increasing its vote share by 10% in 2017. Its 2019 performance was still vastly better than recent elections for the SPD, which averaged nearly 41% of the vote from 1994 to 2005, or the PS, which won the presidency as recently as 2012. 2/

Blair can acknowledge the difficulties now Corbyn has been ousted. But he implies the SPD lost support for being too radical after serving in government with the main conservative party for 12 of the last 16 years. He won’t even mention the name “Renzi” when it comes to Italy. 3/

“Centre-ground” voters may have considered Trump “uniquely strange and unacceptable,” but Blair certainly didn’t. He urged US liberals not to offer “flat-out opposition” to Trump: “If something happens that is good, then don’t disagree with it just because of its author.” 4/

Speaking to Alastair Campbell in 2017, Blair spelled out where he thought Trump could do “good”: by forging an alliance between Israel and Blair’s Saudi funders to wage a cold war—and perhaps a hot one—against Iran. His appetite for destruction is insatiable. 5/

Hundreds and hundreds of words, but not a single policy proposal, just pure negativity—opposition to public ownership, regulation of business, or services funded by taxation and allocated on the basis of need, washed down with empty verbiage about technological change. 6/

A lot of words, not a single example of what he’s talking about, but anyone familiar with British public discourse can read between the lines: Blair wants statues of slave profiteers left unmolested and the crimes of the British Empire swept under the carpet. 7/

When Gordon Brown was Blair’s Chancellor, he urged people to celebrate the Empire:

“The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over.”

When did they ever begin? 8/

independent.co.uk/voices/editori…

When Blair says “they” here, he means “I”. He’s laying down a marker: no matter how many scandals and abuses there are, you are not permitted to draw any general conclusions about the British security services. It’s always an unfortunate accident, never a systemic problem. 9/

When Blair talks about “supporting the armed forces,” he means supporting aggressive wars and atrocities against civilians, not helping homeless veterans with PTSD. The people who actually fought Blair's wars are yesterday's news for him. 10/

inews.co.uk/news/uk/armed-…

The “worst defeat since 1935” line is tiresome and disingenuous, focusing on seats without mentioning votes—2019 wasn’t even Labour’s worst (or second-worst) vote share since 2010. But “the worst defeat in the party’s history” is a barefaced lie by a pathological conman. 11/

Labour's worst defeat was in 1931, when it lost 80% of its seats. Blair wouldn’t like to recall that, since he resembles no Labour leader more than Ramsay MacDonald, a man who smashed up his party to impose welfare cuts on the unemployed in the midst of the Great Depression. 12/

Translation: we sold Starmer to the Labour membership with promises of “electability.” Now that he’s signally failed to deliver that, we have to eliminate the party’s democratic structures and the influence of trade unions to ensure there’s no channel for the backlash. 13/

After a decade of punitive austerity that cut Britain’s public services to the bone, Blair scoffs at the very idea that spending on those services might be increased. He used politics to become a fabulously wealthy man and now wants to defend the privileges of his class. 14/

Blair’s choice of names here is no accident: a professional apologist for Tory racism and darling of the right-wing press; a shill for the Prevent programme that targets Muslim communities; and a wealthy crank who shares his hostility to the left. 15/

This is the role that Trevor Phillips plays in British politics—one that he’s fully conscious of. The Murdoch press wheels him out to run interference on behalf of another apologist, spiced up with a preposterous lie about journalists using the phrase “Mandingo fighting.” 16/

Blair will go to the mat in defence of figures like Phillips and Khan because he firmly supports racist policies and needs someone to provide a fig leaf. There's a straight line from his government to the Tory "hostile environment" for immigrants. 17/

theguardian.com/politics/2018/…

The reference to Keynes and Beveridge here is especially shameless, when Blair is staunchly opposed to Keynesian economics and ambitious social programmes. If they were alive today, Blair would casually dismiss their arguments as a call to “spend more.” 18/

We reach the end without a single constructive proposal, just grinding negativity towards the ideas drawn up by better men and women than Blair, and ill-concealed injunctions to soft-soap racism. This isn’t a manifesto—it’s a hand reaching out from the crypt. 19/

This is the essence of “Blairism” in 2021, not 1997: implacable hostility to progressive politicians like Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, an open hand for Trump, Salvini or Mohammed bin Salman, so long as there’s a few quid in it or the chance of another war before he croaks. 20/