Blair does not understand history

( it seems likely that Blair, like President George W Bush, has succumbed to the paranoid style in American politics, and with far less partisan benefit.)


Had he paid it more heed, history might have warned Tony Blair what to avoid -- and expect. (Photograph: AP/Russell Boyce, Pool).
The silly season approaches. The United Kingdom government is closing down. And a battered prime minister is about to go on vacation. Once away, we must hope that he will focus on how to redeem his administration’s future.

Certainly, he’s unlikely willingly to dwell on the past. Even at his most buoyant, Tony Blair’s attitude to it tends to be markedly dismissive. His now infamous remark that “History will forgive us” did not stem from any profound interest in the subject. If anything, it only illustrated yet again his lack of understanding of what history is — and this has been part of his problems.

Outside of heaven, there is no disembodied tribunal that, in due course, is going to award Blair — or any of us — a satisfactory, retrospective tick for our actions. There are only miscellaneous historians. And when they come to examine Blair and his current difficulties, they are more likely to pose questions than reach a unanimous verdict.

Why and how, future historians will surely ask, did such a consummate politician, possessed of an impregnable parliamentary majority, as well as intelligence, industry and fundamental decency, get himself into so much controversy and mess? What went wrong?

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=18286

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/

However, I just don't think that Blair takes any notice of anything that does not tell him what he want to hear at the moment, be it the British people or the history book on the shelf. Blair has become totally out of touch, consumed by arrogance and distain for the people he is supposed to serve.