False preacher?

Eric the Unread has part of Tony Blair's Mansion House speech up.

But I know one thing. If we were under direct threat, America would be our ally. I know that its people enjoy, as we have seen, a vibrant competitive democracy; and that in America, Hispanics, blacks, Asians and former Europeans live together, worship in their different ways and can rise from the bottom to the top in a manner we could do well to emulate. I didn't agree with Michael Moore's film. But in America he was able to make it and be praised for it. This is called freedom. We are in danger of forgetting these simple truths.

It's a good one but, and I write this with some shame, I am beginning to tire of his rhetoric on the big issue of Iraq and the war on terror. I am in the camp that believes that there is a war to fight and that Blair is doing well with his foreign policy.

But, and it is a big but, his continued talk of freedom is beginning to grate on my nerves. Of course the freedom's he refers to are the big ones, the obvious ones, the ones that most unsophisticated schoolchildren can agree on but I am beginning to think that his whole notion of what freedom actually is is fundamentally flawed. Deficient. Built on poor foundations.

Taken as a party Blair's New Labour Levellers are a shambles on the freedom front. They wouldn't know what freedom was if captain freedom himself beat them half to death with his freedom bat.

I think that Blair himself needs to take some responsibility for that. I think he needs to spend a little more time preaching in favour of the smaller freedoms at home.

Posted by John at November 16, 2004 11:35 AM | TrackBack