In Your Face

Tony Blair’s Great Political Wheeze

First a little history lesson; back in 2000 London was about to elect its first ever mayor. At that time one of the prominent candidates was Ken Livingstone, who was a member of the Labour party.

However, all was not well between Ken and Labour; after some internal “discussions” Labour decided to expel Ken. Tony Blair then appeared on TV to make a statement robustly extolling the virtues of a “Ken free” Labour party; he noted that it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Undeterred, Ken decided to stand for mayor as an independent candidate; Labour put up the hapless Frank Dobson as their candidate. Needless to say Ken stormed home, and has been in office for the past four years.

Faced with a new election, Labour initially put up a non entity whose name escapes me. However, Tony and his team knew that Ken was most likely to win again as an independent; therefore they had to find a solution.

An idea came to them that was brilliant in both its simplicity, and effectiveness; why not make Ken a member of the Labour party again!

Arms were duly twisted, the non entity Labour candidate gracefully stepped aside (no doubt she will appear as Ken’s running mate); and Ken was readmitted to the Labour party yesterday. However, not all were happy, I understand that at the vote John Prescott (who actually has some principles) was said to resemble a man eating a mouthful of wasps.

Tony and his chums have said that Ken is now back in the fold, and “on message”. Ken, in a rather Delphian manner, said that the mark of loyalty is being able to tell someone when they are wrong. In other words he will, quite rightly in my view, continue to do and say exactly what he wants.

This political wheeze by Tony, may in fact be the straw in the wind of something much larger. If you can make the likely winner of the position of London mayor a member of the Labour party; why not apply this to a larger event, such as a general election?

In other words, why not make every Conservative and Liberal Democrat a member of the Labour party as well?

This will have the effect of nullifying the need for any future elections, and making Britain a one party state; something that Tony has in fact wanted all along.

Nice one Tony!