Blair's post-election blues

Showing the gratititude and honesty typical of Labour MPs everywhere, British Labour MPs now want to stick the knife into the man they asked a country to vote for last week, on the pretext that not enough people did so. "The [Labour] backbenchers, many speaking publicly for the first time, have been moved to hasten Blair’s departure after his majority was slashed by 94 in Thursday’s general election." Read here. And that's just the backbenchers; his cabinet are little better, bickering about the cabinet posts offered them. Apparently the words 'hypocrite' and 'ungrateful' are both spelt L-A-B-O-U-R.

Hypocritical blathering is not solely restricted to British Labourites however. In the wake of Michael Howard's resignation comes navel-gazing from British Conservatives too, wondering where it all went wrong for them. I can tell them quite simply: they can trace it to the day they so cowardly abandoned the Thatcher Revolution that had once made them both popular and principled.

But the latest navel-gazing demonstrates they still have no idea where they went wrong. "The compassionate part of our Conservatism goes back deep into our history and must be renewed," says one tired old Tory sifting through his navel fluff here, offering a paucity of ideas as flaccid as any given by the 'Heseltinis' who once knifed Thatcher. "We sometimes talk as if all that matters is the individual and his or her freedoms but Conservatives have always valued the ties that bind us," he blathers to himself. "That's why we've never settled for the conventional bureaucratic welfare state. It's why we understand the ties of family, neighbourhood and nation." It's why they've been deservedly ignored by the country since at least 1993.

Blair stole what once made the Tories worth anything at all, and it's clear they still don't want it back.