Two things to say about Tony Blair’s Bruce Willis inspired soundbite-of-the-day about Nuclear power being “back on the agenda – with a vengeance“:
- It is insuffrably ridiculous, the verbal equivalent of a 50-something man driving around in a Lambourghini;
- It is code for “that stuff about being genuinely open minded about nuclear power? Big fat lie. Suckers!”
Neither of which are uncharacteristic of our beloved PM of course. And of course, along with his outburst about the Human Rights Act, it is entirely designed to stop the commentariat from talking about loans-for-peerages and the meltdown that is the Home Office (not to mention the parlous state of DEFRA). But it does make you wonder how sad it must be to realise that your Premiership has sunk to such silly nonsense. Outbursts like this are all we have to look forward to from Blair. Subconsciously he’s almost certainly screaming for someone to end it for him.
Excellent characterisation.
I can’t quite work out if ‘late period Mr Blair’ is more reminiscent of ‘late period Mrs Thatcher’ or the doomed reign of Mr Major… Mr Major had to come up with loony macho policies far further to the right than Mrs Thatcher had implemented because no-one in his party ever believed he was a proper, tough Thatcherite like her; Mrs Thatcher came up with loonier macho hard right policies towards the end because, well, the general view is that she was going slightly mad.
It is allegedly the case that it was Bliar personally who insisted that his last nuclear review described nuclear as an “unattractive option”. Since we are facing blackouts even though 5% of UK electricity come from French reactors I would say that it is his previous opinions not his current ones which were “ridiculous”.