Besides being shouted at by his wife, there are three others. Firstly, there was Mandelsohn, someone who's regarded by most of his fellow Labour Party MPs as being sly and unctuous and has almost no friends except handsome young men, certainly not among his fellow MPs. He almost destroyed Blair's prime ministership twice because of suspected corruption and has had to be sacked twice from ministerial positions. Blair still speaks to Mandelsohn on the phone to receive his advice when in tricky situations.
Secondly, there is Gordon Brown, the Chancellor. He and Blair used to share an office together in the House of Commons. But now they never speak except on those occasions when Blair speaks or proposes to speak publicly on economic matters. When that happens, Brown storms through No 10 (he lives next foor) and bawls Blair out. This has been witnessed many times.
Thirdly, there has been Alastair Campbell, Blair's spinmeister. We now learn that he, too, used to shout at Blair, as the following excerpt from the BBC's political correspondent, Nick Assinder, relates:
<<<<
In the early days after Tony Blair was swept into Downing Street, a Fleet Street photographer was despatched to get a picture of the new prime minister and his wife "at home".
The snapper had just finished lining up the couple for a particularly cheesy, nose-to-nose shot when Alastair Campbell burst through the door and demanded "What the hell do you think you are doing?"
The photographer snapped to attention, expecting a rollicking from Campbell, only to realise the remark was not aimed at him, but at the prime minister.
>>>>
The Chinese politburo (all with IQs above 140 from what we can judge from their previous careers) must be chuckling (do Chinese chuckle?) over what absurd leaders our modern advanced democracies sometime produce. In this televisual age, when a handsome face and a confident mein is all that is required for a leader, it's likely that they'll continue in this way from now onwards -- at least until they totally destroy the credibility of the modern nation-state. One could laugh if it wasn't so tragic.
KSH
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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