logo

Take Cherie Blair's very personal speech delivered last week with a hint of tears and an admission that she wasn't Superwoman

Posted by admin   ·     ·   Jump to comments

Take Cherie Blair's very personal speech, delivered last week with a hint of tears and an admission that she wasn't Superwoman We were told she had written it herself. Yet the kitchen cabinet which met in Downing Street last week – the likes of Mandelson, Campbell, and the other trusted Blair aides, Baroness Morgan, Lord Falconer, and Fiona Millar – was there to craft those words. No lie, it seems, is ever too small to tell.It is this inner circle that has deliberately kept the No 10 official spokesmen away from the truth during the past fortnight. It is an open secret that these highly respected civil servants – Godric Smith and Tom Kelly – are close to resignation. And who can blame them? They have told lies because they were given lies to tell. Their integrity and that of their posts has been compromised by a government that has a promiscuous relationship with the truth.The bond of trust between civil servant and politician has been repeatedly broken.

Does Tony Blair care? After all, there's plenty more where Smith and Kelly came from. But Blair should care because, as a poll published last week shows, only one in three people believes Cherie; two-thirds do not trust the Government and believe it has been damaged. When you lie to the British media, you lie to the British people.That means a second bond of trust, between government and governed, has been damaged. A third damaged bond, even more worrying for the Prime Minister, is that between him and the political journalists They have been made to look fools. The Blairs chose to deal in half-truths, to hide behind misleading technicalities. In the end, it's the weasel words that always get them, and that the journalists will not forgive.For behind closed doors, journalists from pro-Labour newspapers speak angrily of an irrevocable breakdown between them and the Prime Minister.

Even the favoured ones can no longer trust his word, or Alastair Campbell's. But with no sign of a resurgent opposition, the journalists know bridges will have to be rebuilt with the one party capable of being in power.Losing the trust of the media, the public service and the people leads to a siege mentality. The question for the Blairs is: who to take into their bunker? Cherie Blair did what she was told and read what she was given. The speech was a mistake for two reasons: its lack of candour and its mistaken belief that weeping was the way to connect with Britain's millions of hard-working mums. It didn't work and Cherie will be looking for someone to blame. However fine a Christian you are, it is only human to strike out at the person who caused such public humiliation.

Will Peter Mandelson be sent into exile again? Or will Fiona Millar take the blame? The only person Cherie won't be able to blame is her husband, as he's never around when the fibs hit the fan.The deeper you wade into power, the more isolated you become. Maybe Anji Hunter, with her acute understanding of middle England, would have prevented this week's debacle if she had still been working at No 10. The Blairs and those that surround them are now so far removed from normality that it is not surprising they have lost touch with other people's lives.But the key reason the situation deteriorated so badly and so quickly, and that it has dragged on for so long, is that the crisis surrounds not the Prime Minister, nor any elected member of government, but the Prime Minister's wife. Beneath all the Blairs' actions has been a breathtaking arrogance that Cherie was above and beyond the legitimate enquiries of a free press.To cry privacy one day, then hand out official Christmas cards with all the children on the next reaches new heights of hypocrisy. Privacy is not a cloak that can be worn at will, hugged tightly around you one moment, thrown provocatively open the next This has always been one of the problems for the Blairs.

readers comments

Comments are closed.

NBA

NBA

MLB

MLB

NFL

NFL

NHL

NHL

WWE

WWE

Your sideblock text goes here