How Nelson Mandela’s passing bade me prefer Putin to Blair or Obama
Just as middle class prison inmates used to dread a visit from Lord Longford, so today world leaders do their best to avoid any State occasion where Tony Blair might be present. For Moral Tone is more than likely to try and flog them something via which he can earn his 10%. He was at it again at the Mandela funeral bash, introducing his clients to everyone from Barack Obama via George Bush to Vladimir Putin. And as attendance at the Great Father’s interment was something of a three-line whip, Teflon Tony had a captive audience at his mercy.
While going through his Ugly Rumours rock band stage at Oxford, Blair told anyone who’d listen that he fancied his chances as a pop promoter. I have no difficulty at all imagining the former British PM sleazing around the radio stations of the time to plug singles like Money Money Money, Heart on my Sleeve, and Dancing Queen: not for nothing did Derry Irvine refer to young barrister Blair as “The star closest to Uranus”. But given the forthcoming Acts of Treasonable Insults Bill I am expecting to arrive any time now, we’ll draw a diaphanous veil over that one. Suffice to say that there are many factors making me wish Blair had gone into the music business, but the overriding one is that he would now almost certainly be facing trumped-up charges for something he said to a small child in 1973.
I’m told, however, that at the selling aperture in South Africa, the Russian leader wasn’t in the mood for for buying any double-agents, or fencing toxic loans for Blair to sell on to unsuspecting old ladies from Dumbarton. Apparently, the world’s leading gay icon was looking somewhat down in the mouth….and it’s not hard to see why. There is, you see, one very important respect in which Russia is very like Greece: everyone in authority is crooked.
Mr Rasputin does not get enough credit for the fact that – leaving aside his megalomania and murderous KGB past – he is something of a genuine old USSR trouper who served time as a spook in the old DDR – not so he could stop unsuspecting tourists and demand American dollars, but because he believed in the Communist system. He may have many unsavoury traits, but he doesn’t like corruption, and he has a profound dislike for bureaucrats. He and I are as one on that, although I doubt if he realises it.
In an address to the nation a year ago this week, Putin made clear his irritation with bureaucrats who slow things down. Those who miss out on progress, Putin declared, would become “outsiders” in a world of increased competition. The RF’s leader has made a full recovery from his Communism, but he seems to me to have a genuine compassion for the struggles of the older, more traditional Russian. Yes of course he is a Tsar by any other name, but it occurred to me yesterday just how relatively normal the bloke is – and (dare I say it) suffused with many good intentions for his subjects…which I do recognise is what they are, but then that is very much a long-standing Russian preference: they like their leaders strong.
He is, for example, far more of a balanced statesman than any of the current Western crop could possibly hope to be. In this year’s Queen’s Speech delivered last week, Putin spoke about foreign policy with a realistically calm outlook that compared well with the recent antics of Obama and Cameron. “We do not aspire to super-power status,” he lied, but rather to have Russia conduct itself like a “mature, responsible great power”. Despite hysterical western propaganda goading its military axes on, Putin showed great restraint on both Syrian and Iranian issues this year. And here again, yes, of course I fully accept that if he still had the functioning, cutting-edge nuclear capacity of a Kruschev, Vlad would be considerably more bombastic. But what impresses me is a cognisance of the potential consequences of being a prat.
Our shower in the “Free West” don’t have that to any noticeable degree. If one reviews the Prime Ministerial career of David Cameron, he shows scant awareness of the dangers involved in, for instance, hobknobbing with corporate criminals – or doing business with nations who are highly unlikely to be straight in their dealings. I have first hand feedback suggesting that, on having to water down his Commons Syria War Vote – and then be humbled by a tepid response to even that – the PM’s reaction was not to think again, but to drag in his Whips and give them a pep-talk. That, I would submit, is the action of an arrogant idiot likely to get Britain into all sorts of trouble…if given half a chance.
Barack Obama similarly comes out very badly in any head-to-head policy comparison with Vladimir Putin. The Black Dude displays no contrition about rolling over and taking it from Wall Street, about spying on his subjects while lying his balls off on the subject, about subverting more elements of personal rights than Dick Nixon, or about displaying Foreign Glory Syndrome at a level higher yet than Dubya. But speaking last week, the Russian leader showed more honesty about his frustrations with turf wars and corruption in the Russian system than I’ve seen in six years of EU fantasies about its bright future.
Putin railed against “administrative barriers” for exporters, about “gruelling conversations” with the finance minister, and demanded that civil servants fulfill their duties “without excuses” and without “watering down” policy in a self-protective way. If Obama had gone public about that sort of sh*t from Wall Street banking firms, I for one would feel a lot more optimistic about the future than I do.
He also ploughed into another sensitive subject when he called for the “de-offshorisation” of the economy. He was referring of course to the ingrained habit of government-owned and affiliated companies not paying Russian taxes. The de-offshorisation drive, he openly admitted, had produced results that were “barely noticeable”. The same is true of making multinationals in Britain and the US pay their way: but there are two chances of either Obama or Osborne ever being similarly tough on the issue in public.
What I think it boils down to is this: forty years ago, many sensible people in the West pointed out to the deranged naifs of the Hard Left that the USSR was an empire based on (and stifled by) lies, altered reality, corruption, hypocrisy, and increasingly draconian laws to keep the disgruntled and betrayed masses in line. Today, I feel myself inclined to draw the attention of the West’s Barmy Right to the fact that their fanatical commitment to a neoliberalist ideal overlain upon an ethically shattered culture is, um, an empire based on (and stifled by) lies, altered reality, corruption, hypocrisy, and increasingly draconian laws to keep the disgruntled and betrayed masses in line.
Let me return full circle to where I began. Last week, the world’s “leaders” gathered to pay homage to a very special visionary. Nelson Mandela began his adult life as a follower of the Moscow line, and radical terrorist against the worst kind of biblical, braindead racism. Blessed with the same savvy idealism as Ghandi, the African seer didn’t just overcome every vicious attempt to dehumanise him: he emerged a greater human being capable of quite staggering wisdom and forgiveness. Were he looking down upon the mourners last week, and pondering a private assessment of how Blair plus Obama on the one hand and Putin on the other comported themselves during the remembrance, I rather suspect he would’ve placed the Russian top in the rankings.
I am thus forced to conclude that this too is glaring evidence of the extent to which Western liberal democracy politicians have become the prisoners of barked commands from the fanatical Mammonists. Rather, in fact, as Lenin found himself in a loveless marriage with Command Economy Marxists….who in turn gave way to the dictator Stalin.
The Slog 