Another man and his job

When you look back over the last ten years, you realise just how much has happened. Labour came to power, Princess Diana died, there was the Good Friday agreement, devolution, the monumental millenium dome, indeed the slightly less monumental millenium itself, London got a mayor, 9/11, the Iraq War. You certainly couldn’t say the last decade or so hadn’t been busy.

Time itself seems to be marked out in the way Tony Blair has aged, and he’s clearly quite a lot as BBC2 currently seems to be showing his obituary.

Blair:The Inside Story seems to represent everything I see changing in BBC reporting and programming at the moment. Subjective and oppinionated, it analyises the various landmarks of the Blair years to prove His Tonyness was a buffoon of B’stard proportions.

Let’s be honest, the world doesn’t have the greatest track record for inspirational leaders. Sure, the 14 Delai Lamas haven’t done any harm, but then the title was given posthumously to the first two of them. Given the current racial and religious climate of the world, Mahatma Ghandi certainly seemed to lead everyone in the right direction, but what use is pacifism in the face of hired assassins? The problem is that for every inspirational leader trying to move civilisation forwards, there’s always an Adolf H or George W waiting in the wings with tear gas.

When you look at it like that, maybe having a buffoon in office isn’t such a bad thing. It was revealed many of the world’s leaders were prone to afternoon naps. Reagon, Roosevelt, Clinton and Churchill were all prone to scheduling afternoon siestas. There is an argument that it’s difficult to bring about the apocalypse when your taking forty winks in the back room. Churchill even managed to hide the fact he had a heart attack during a particularly prominent period of inactivity.

So His Tonyness made a few mistakes. Backing the Dome, being slow-clapped by the Laura Ashley-clad WI, ignoring fuel protesters, being heckled by patients at hospital visits, backing George Bush in going to war. They’re all pretty harmless mistakes really. Except that last one, obviously. He’s not invaded Poland or anything like that has he? Oh hang on a minute…

Maybe the BBC is actually doing our Tony a favour in painting him in this light. A man frustrated by how slow government works, hoodwinked by departments who didn’t actually do what he asked them to do, wanting to fulfill what he saw as his destiny. The only problem is, I think I’m arguing a case for putting Boris into Downing Street…