July 13, 2003

DEEP POLITICAL ANALYSIS

According to The Age -- which is now 100% apostrophe free -- Tony Blair has lost his way:

Back in 1997 Tony Blair could do no wrong. Hed just won a landslide victory, Cool Britannia was everywhere and Bill and Hillary Clinton jetted into town just to have dinner with him. Six years later, hes fighting for his political future. What went wrong?

Even Jarvis Cocker, the erudite front man of pop group Pulp who had fawned over Blair six years earlier, recently articulated his sense of disappointment.

There’s an old saying in British politics: “Once you’ve lost Jarvis Cocker, the erudite front man of pop group Pulp, you’ve lost the people.”

Posted by Tim Blair at July 13, 2003 01:26 PM
Comments

Did they crib that excrescence of smarminess from People magazine? And what's with the missing apostrophes?

Posted by: Cracker Barrel Philosopher at July 13, 2003 at 02:49 PM

It's snarky, mean-spirited comments like this that keep me coming back to this place every 30 minutes or so.

Posted by: Bruce at July 13, 2003 at 03:07 PM

it's old news too. blair lost cocker's support sometime before early 1998, when the song "cocaine socialism" was included as a b-side to "a little soul".

Posted by: adam at July 13, 2003 at 04:20 PM

It gets worse. The dust jacket of George Monbiot's 'Captive State' had a quote from the eminent political commentator Thom Yorke of Radiohead, who declared he would 'never trust Blair again' after reading it. But let's face it, both Yorke and Cocker are lightweights: I won't really know what to think about Tony Blair until Liam Gallagher offers his opinion.

Posted by: dave at July 13, 2003 at 04:32 PM

It doesn't matter what even Liam Gallagher thinks of TB. TB is only in trouble when he loses Jello Biafra. But more to the point - who is this mysterious "Hed" who won a landlside victory?

Posted by: Clem Snide at July 13, 2003 at 08:09 PM

I think "hed" is fighting with "hes" for his political future. They're both hoping for a "landlside victory", whatever that is.

Posted by: Jimmy Doyle at July 13, 2003 at 09:21 PM

Interestingly enough Liam Gallagher was quite hard on the anti war stance taken by Chris Martin from Coldplay http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/01/1048962754146.html

"When Coldplay did this gig, they banged on about the war - that's wrong. Chris Martin shouldn't be using this cause to bang on about his own views on the war.

"If him and his gawky bird want to go banging on about the war they can do it at their own gigs.


"That lot are just a bunch of knobhead students - Chris Martin looks like a geography teacher. What's all that with writing messages about free trade on his hand when he's playing?

"These gigs are about kids who have got cancer - they've got to fight a war every day of their lives. That's what we're all here doing this for."


Posted by: Ross at July 13, 2003 at 09:54 PM

I think Jarvis Cocker would make a cool name for a band by itself.

Posted by: Brian J. at July 13, 2003 at 11:39 PM

Thom Yorke is a liar - he never trusted Tony Blair before. I came across this quote of his in August 1999:

"If the West, at the end of the Cold War, was supposed to have won the battle between ideologies, if this is the result, then it would have been better to have been Communist, really"

Which brings two questions to mind. Why is it so hard to see that the West is not, has not, an ideology? How does our communist rock star explain the fact that his latest CD has anti-copying technology?

Posted by: Werner at July 14, 2003 at 02:50 AM

Tony Blair lost his Cocker.

Posted by: Jonny at July 14, 2003 at 03:19 AM

Tony Blair never had a way to lose. His "way" was always just opportunism presented using vacuous, lying drivel, and he only got into power at all because of the unpopularity of the incumbent government.

Who in Britain remembers the "stakeholder society", the "Third Way", "Britain at the heart of Europe" or "things can only get better" (tell THAT to people using the railways!)?

But the British people have finally worked out that they can't trust an opportunist, and his ratings have slumped. His government can do nothing but raise taxes, fees and charges to prop up crumbling public services. He'll probably cling on to power until the next election (that's his only real skill after all), but something has changed over the last few months. People aren't fooled any more.

Posted by: PJ at July 14, 2003 at 05:04 AM

I don't know about Tony Blair and British rock stars, but I can tell you that George W. Bush is in danger of losing the all-important support of Hollywood if he keeps up all this war mongering. It may already be too late for him to win back Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo.

Posted by: Randy R. at July 14, 2003 at 05:15 AM

The Speccie carried an article on Blair, the public school in Edinburgh he attended had him sent down, for being a corrupter of youth. Prefects regularly pummelled him because he was a rotten influence on junior boys.
Some fool managed to have him re-instated. Blair has never changed his spots which explains why he became a communisto.
Whereas, if he had not been sent down, Phony Tony might well found a sounder outlet for his inclinations juvenile, a dope munching pop star.
If he wasn't the first rate liar and communisto that is, one could have a hearty chuckle over that telling insight into the fraud.

Posted by: d at July 15, 2003 at 10:00 AM