Author: R J Adams

If Theresa May wanted to begin her prime ministership by giving the rest of the world a good laugh at the U.K.’s expense then she’s certainly succeeded.

One could have hoped that – following her predecessor’s debacle over Europe, which resulted in the country being jerked back fifty years based mostly on the antics and lies of a couple of buffoons who should never be allowed anywhere near a government bench, least of all a parliamentary position – she would begin with a firm approach and appoint to her cabinet only those of solid and reliable character.

Instead, she’s now appointed one of those previously mentioned buffoons to perhaps the most important position in British politics. The idea of Boris Johnson as British Foreign Secretary makes as much sense as putting Hermann Goering in charge of a Jewish old people’s home – (“Well, you really messed up last time, Hermann, let’s see if you can do better this time around.”).

Only a few days ago, while campaigning for the P.M.’s position, she disparaged Johnson’s negotiating skills, as reported in the The Independent:

Boris Johnson’s appointment to foreign secretary has come as a surprise to many – especially given what his new boss Theresa May thinks of his negotiating skills.

When launching her bid to become leader just two weeks ago, Ms May joked that her then potential rival’s deal making skills left a little to be desired.

She said: “Boris negotiated in Europe. I seem to remember last time he did a deal with the Germans, he came back with three nearly-new water cannon”.

She was referring to Mr Johnson’s controversial decision to buy three used water cannons from the German federal police as London Mayor last year for £218,205.

He claimed the money was well spent because it saved the city the £2.3m cost to order them new – but this did not impress Ms May who blocked their use by any English or Welsh police force as Home Secretary.”^[1]

The world’s press is having a field-day over the appointment, with many pointing out that Johnson will need to apologise to quite a few heads of state if he ever wants to do business with them:

It is just a few months since the blond Brexiteer-in-chief was criticised for describing US president Barack Obama as a “part-Kenyan” who harboured an “ancestral dislike” of Britain..

If Hilary Clinton takes over from Obama that meeting could prove tetchy too after Johnson previously described the democratic candidate as having “a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.

Relations with Turkey are also going to prove difficult after Johnson won £1,000 in a competition run by the Spectator magazine for the ‘most offensive Erdogan poem’.

In his poem Johnson had described Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan having sex with a goat and called him a “w***erer”.

Large parts of the Middle East could be off limits too. Last November local officials called off a visit to Palestine on safety grounds after the then London mayor told an audience in Tel Aviv that a trade boycott of Israeli goods was “completely crazy”.

In 2008 he apologised for a Daily Telegraph column in which he described the Queen being greeted in Commonwealth countries by “flag-waving piccaninnies” – a derogatory term for black children… [and in] the same column mentioned then Prime Minister Tony Blair being greeted by “tribal warriors who will all break out in watermelon smiles” on an upcoming visit to the Congo.”^[2]

Add to this his ‘taking out’ of a 10-year-old Japanese boy while indulging in a game of street rugby in Tokyo, and upsetting the Chinese during the Beijing Olympics by stating table tennis had not been invented by them, but evolved from an English Victorian game called, “whiff-waff.”

If the writer was embarrassed to hold a British passport following the ‘Brexit’ fiasco, he now feels an almost overwhelming urge to rip it into little pieces and flush it down the toilet.

What is happening to British politics? Are the nation’s leaders simply determined to outdo the charade that passes for politics in America? If Trump becomes presibent (that was an unintentional typo, but so apt I think I’ll leave it!) and meets with Johnson, it’ll be the comedy duo of the century.

If there are aliens out in the cosmos somewhere watching our progress as a species they’ll record our 21st century as the moment we totally lost it, and began the inevitable process of a mass bending-over to the point we all disappear up our own backsides.

They’ll likely breathe a sigh of relief when it happens.

^{[1] “This is what Theresa May had to say about Boris Johnson only a few days ago” The Independent, July 14th 2016}

^{[2] “Prepare for war! Bonkers Boris has already peeved off half the world and he’s now our new Foreign Secretary” Daily Record, July 13th 2016.}

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” bemoaned Henry Higgins in the musical, “My Fair Lady.”

It seems he may have got his way, judging by the women we find in politics today. One could, perhaps, wish he hadn’t.

Once again Britain finds itself with a female prime minister. Most Tory supporters will be delighted with Theresa May. On the surface, she’s an admirable choice to take-over from the weak-chinned Cameron, whose antics over the European Union have thrown the world into a turmoil serving only to bring every ‘Armageddon’ freak from out the wilderness.

Further back in time than the writer cares to remember, when a woman entering politics was considered an ‘oddity’, and male-only governments ran high on testosterone, one often heard talk (mainly from women) of how one day the female sex would run the world and we’d all be better off, safer, and more peaceable.

The created image was of a Parliament or Senate festooned with half-knitted sweaters and winter-woollies; the clicketty-clack of myriad knitting needles mingled with the chink of teacups, clearly audible over a gossipy chit-chat interwoven between how to keep the price of wool from fluctuating violently, and what in the world was Mrs Johnson, the Leader of the House, going to give hubby for his dinner that evening.

It was a charming, fairytale, notion of governments too concerned with such minor domestic problems as the price of washing powder to ever wage war or threaten nuclear annihilation.

Sadly, this Disney-esque dream turned to nightmare with the arrival on the scene of Margaret Thatcher. For a few, fleeting moments, as Maggie stood on the threshold of Number 10 and tried to emulate Saint Francis of Assisi…

‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope’.

…we all dared to hope she’d brought her knitting.

Alas, the next time she appeared through the door of 10, Downing Street, the saintliness was gone and horns had sprouted through the blue rinse and permanent wave.

Now, it seems likely the U.S.A. may have its first female president. Given the hawkish history of Hillary Clinton, it’s doubtful she’ll bring her knitting either.

It all begs the question: why do women turn into men when handed the reins of power? No sooner had Argentina planted their flag on the Falklands Islands than Maggie was declaring war.

During Britain’s economic chaos of the 1980s Thatcher, in full male tradition, stood firm against the coal minors and their union leader, Arthur Scargill, refusing any attempt at reconciliation.

Why couldn’t these issues have all been resolved over a nice cup of tea and a cream scone?

Is Theresa May likely to metamorphose into a reincarnation of Maggie Thatcher?

It’s difficult to say, but she’s held the unenviably tough job of Home Secretary for longer than anyone in fifty years, and during that tenure no-one’s heard so much as the clicketty-clack of a knitting needle emanating through her office door.

Whether that would be pleasing to Henry Higgins is open to conjecture.

The Chilcot report ran to two million six hundred thousand words. That’s the equivalent of three and a third Bibles, or nearly four and a half volumes of War and Peace. If we’re brutally honest all 2.6 million words were about Tony Blair.

In practice, that’s probably not quite true, but so far as the British public are concerned, the Chilcot report was all about whether Tony Blair did the right thing, or not; whether he was guilty of taking Britain to war illegally, or not.

The report was fairly damning on both questions. No, he wasn’t right, and probably he went to war illegally. The Chilcot inquiry wasn’t about gathering evidence for prosecution, so that was as far as Sir John Chilcot could go in his condemnation.

On Wednesday, after the report was published, Tony Blair spent two hours defending his position over Iraq. He apologised profusely for what he did wrong, while insisting everything he did was right. You’d have thought that would be sufficient. He’d said his piece, the report was out, now it was time to hide away and keep one’s head down for six months, or so, until the heat’s off.

That’s what any sane person would do. Not so Blair. One day later and he’s back on the radio – BBC, no less – telling everyone the world would be in a much worse position today had he not decided to invade Iraq.

“I can regret the mistakes and I can regret many things about it – but I genuinely believe not just that we acted out of good motives and I did what I did out of good faith, but I sincerely believe that we would be in a worse position if we hadn’t acted that way. I may be completely wrong about that.”

He argued that had Saddam Hussein been left in power, “he would have gone back to his [weapons of mass destruction] programmes again”.
And if he had been in power during the Arab Spring in 2011, “I believe he would have tried to keep power” in the way that Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, had done.”^[1]

It seems that Blair is forgetting that the “Arab Spring” fomented as a direct result of the toppling of Saddam Hussein. There would have been no “Arab Spring” had the invasion of Iraq not taken place.

Neither Blair, nor the U.S. administration, had any idea of the violent Muslim factions that would be unleashed by removing the strong, dictatorial, powerbases of Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad.

America makes much of ‘spreading democracy and freedoms’ throughout the Middle East. Its politicians need to read Middle Eastern history. Then they might just comprehend why these nations were governed dictatorially. Saddam Hussein may not have been a very nice man, but he knew how to control his countrymen and prevent the violent, tribal, warfare that has been tearing Iraq apart since his forced removal.

Similarly with Gaddafi, and now the sickening mess that is Syria. Overlording them all is the devil-child spawn of the British/U.S. occupation of Iraq – ISIS.

There was no al Qaeda in Iraq when Saddam was in control. ISIS didn’t exist. Neither was al Qaeda in Libya when Gaddafi was in control, nor in Syria under Assad. All have been created from the warmongering antics of one superpower and a deluded egocentric British politician who loved to be seen hobnobbing with the president of the United States.

Democracy is not for everyone. Some cultures aren’t ready for it. Iraq, Libya, and Syria are fine examples of what can happen when strong leadership is removed, or rendered powerless.

Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, have the blood of many thousands of innocents on their hands. They were ignorant of those they were dealing with. But ignorance is no excuse in law.

Blair is, of course, horribly wrong to suggest the world is better off today than in 2002. No-one in their right mind could possibly believe that. Perhaps now he’ll go and hide himself away for a while. He needs to. We’re tired of his excuses, bored with his plaintive assertions, but above all we’re heartily sick of the mass murder, torture, rape, starvation, orphaned children, husband-less wives, and the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons resulting from his actions and those of his political ‘buddies’ in the United States.

^{[1] “Tony Blair says world is better as a result of Iraq War” BBC, July 7th 2016}