Conversional Wisdom

I missed this from Alastair Campbell on Monday, which sums up the “Col Gaddafi is Tony Blair’s Fault” idiocy better than any other:

A lot of this is about our media, which moves so easily from one conventional wisdom – ‘Gaddafi is changing’ – to another – ‘It was so obvious he was never changing at all, and anyone who thought otherwise now has blood on their hands.’

He also provides a public service by reprinting Jack Straw’s Times article from last Saturday, about which I also wrote, in full.

Photograph: PA

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• postageincluded

  Yes, blaming Blair is idiocy. Unfortunately, because of the bungling of the Iraq adventure by, among many others, Blair and Campbell, intervention against megalomaniacs is now thought to be bad form.

  I suspect this will be the mildest comment on this piece. Troll on, fellows.

• coventrian

  So Blair’s personal ‘liar for hire’ continues to defend his former boss. What is this supposed to prove.

  To remind new readers, Alastair Campbell began his professional life as a pornographer, became a tabloid journalist and yes man for Robert Maxwell before becoming a sexer-up and war propagandist for Tony B£air.

  What a sad decline!

• http://twitter.com/Broxted Ciaran Rehill

  Earth, 2091. The death of the last Rentoul is reported from New London Zoo. A solitary figure it succumbed to diseases introduced by outsiders such as deep seated hostility to a mythical deity “Toe Knee”. It’s keeper, Ron Broxted Jnr wept as he swept up the cage for the last time. “Me Dad captured it after the Battle of Agouti Ridge, it was pining for champagne socialism”. Scientists think that the last Rentoul was a “missing link” between Tories (now too sadly extinct) and a hitherto forgotten subspecies called “Liberals”.

• AlanGiles

  It’s rather sweet how Rentoul runs to defend the honour of his boyfriend every day.

  Sweet – but predictable and banal and idiotic as the “webuyanycar” advert

• JohnJustice

  The comments below are a perfect example of how losers in an argument tend to attack the man not the argument.

• petersimplex

  Oh dear, here we go again.
  Straw: “an elected government which more or less works” (Iraq)
  How is that different from a dictatorship which more or less worked? (Libya) Isn’t it on that basis which Tony Blair forged relations with the good Sandhurst educated Colonel?

• porkfright

  Make way! Here comes the Judge! [Again-yet again]

• BlairSupporter

  @ petersimplex – a democracy’s “more or less” is a touch different from a dictatorship’s. Gaddafi didn’t do away with his support for terror and his WMD in order to turn the west into his kind of dictatorship. Also, I can’t recall any of our elected governments killing their own people – even if it were to retain “democracy” we wouldn’t do it. There is a fundamental moral and qualitative difference. Don’t you think?

• AbdulKareemaWheat

  Why don’t we stop pointing fingers and instead help those in Libya who seek to overturn this anachronistic government and it’s comic-opera leader?