Blair is living in a state of deluded denial | Michael Meacher M.P.

THERE never was a truer example of “when you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

Tony Blair’s article in the Observer at the weekend was a gift to his opponents, but it did even more damage to himself.

He revealed himself as increasingly deserted by even his previous closest followers — an utterly broken man watching everything he stood for swept away before his eyes.

He has gone from opposition to delusion, from hysteria to denial.

But what is perhaps most disturbing of all is that he can’t, as he himself candidly admits, understand why the Corbyn earthquake is happening.

He just blankly refuses to acknowledge the passionate resentment which he and New Labour created by laying the foundations for the financial crash of 2008-9 and making the squeezed middle and brutally punished poor pay for it, by taking Britain without any constitutional approval into an illegal war with Iraq, by introducing into politics the hated regime of spin and manipulation, by indulging now his squalid lust for money-making and by clearly having no more overriding desire than to strut the world with George W Bush.

Blair describes his opponents as trapped “in their own hermetically sealed bubble,” when that applies exactly to himself.

If what he says were really true, why has the Labour electorate swelled to over 600,000 — 50 per cent larger than he managed even at the height of his pomp when so many were glad to be rid of the Tories on May 1 1997?

Why is he so unfeeling and unapologetic about aligning New Labour alongside the Tories in pursuit of austerity from 2010 onwards, especially since George Osborne’s policy — to shrink the state — has been so dramatically unsuccessful in reducing the deficit?

Why did he urge the Blairites to support the government’s welfare Bill which opposed every tenet of the real Labour Party?

Why did he push for privatisation of the NHS and other public services?

Why did his acolyte Peter Mandelson say: “New Labour is intensely relaxed at people becoming filthy rich,” then prove it by letting inequality balloon to even higher heights than under Thatcher?

So after doing all those things, how does Blair expect Labour members and the country to treat him?

After a 20-year temporary hijacking of the party, taking it down a route utterly alien to its founders in order to ingratiate himself with corporate and financial leaders on their terms, how can he imagine that anyone wants him back? He has a lot to learn. Less egoism, more humility.

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