Tony Blair's moral decline and fall is now complete

[marmar]

Tony Blair's moral decline and fall is now complete
Tony Blair's willingness to prop up the brutal Kazakhstan regime shames the one-time champion of democracy

Nick Cohen
The Observer, Saturday 26 May 2012


If you wanted to see why Tony Blair is finished as a force for good in politics, you should have been at the discreet, if extortionately expensive, Haymarket hotel, off Trafalgar Square. Portland Communications, publicists for what it calls "the government of Russia" and everyone else calls "that thieving bastard Putin", was holding a dinner for journalists and politicians it hoped to seduce on behalf of one of its many other clients.

Blairites headed the guest list: Lord Adonis, who has re-emerged as Ed Miliband's adviser on industrial policy; and James Purnell, whom the Labour right see as the king over the water who will one day return and restore Blair's heirs to their rightful inheritance.

In showing no disdain for the mouthpieces of a dictatorship, Adonis and Purnell were doing no more than following the example of Blair and his circle. Portland Communications is at its heart. Tim Allan, Blair's former media adviser and Portland's founder, recruited his old friend, Alastair Campbell, last week. A few months before, a Financial Times reporter spotted Campbell at the airport at Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. He wondered what had brought Campbell from his London home to a flyblown central Asian dictatorship. Campbell would not say if his visit had anything to do with Blair's latest business dealings. Few would be surprised if it had because Blair's dealings are extensive.

As one astonished and disgusted former supporter put it: "If you want to know what price a great man will sell his legacy for, it's $13m." According to the Financial Times, that is the sum that President Nursultan Nazarbayev has paid for Blair's services. His old gang is along for the ride and eager to see what an oil-rich dictatorship, which shoots strikers, burns the offices of opposition parties and kills their leaders, can offer. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/nick-cohen-tony-blair-kazakhstan

[LeftishBrit]

1. Well, I never did think Blair was a 'force for good in politics'

except perhaps briefly in 1997 when he defeated the Tories (I was badly disillusioned within 6 months). And I don't generally like Cohen's writings much. But I entirely agree with him about Blair's disgusting and mercenary behaviour with regard to Kazakhstan!

[ladjf]

2. What would you expect from Bush's poodle?