This is a week where the dead and the undead are colonising the headlines.
This morning’s nationals 12th April] were full of sonorous warnings to Labour Leader, Ed Milliband from characters from the mercifully distant political past whom we thought we’d laid to rest years ago.
First came the old circus ringmaster and warhorse, Tony Blair, hugely rich now, if not yet beyond his own dreams – but missing the smell of the greasepaint. He had, as used to be familiar, nothing much to say – but he said it with a great sense of import. It was always so: ‘I say unto you’. Remember?
In what was clearly an orchestrated chorus of the undead, the coffin lids creaked upwards and, in turn, out came Alan Milburn ['Who he?', as Private Eye used to ask]; then the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson [sorry, Lord Mandelson] – the only one who actually used to have ideas, all of them devious but blessed with intelligence and leavened by mischief; and, God help us, David Blunkett, the ‘architect’ of some of the most illiberal and worst framed legislation this country has seen.
We were supposed to be impressed by these simultaneous manifestations. The actual impact was a shudder of relief that they’re toast – and disbelief that we ever tolerated any of them.
But this visitation had a purpose beyond the primary one of a last holler for attention from a clutch of has beens.
The journos thought [well no - they didn't think - they copied out the scripts they'd been given] – that the unholy ghosts were sending psychic messages to the current Labour party and to today’s Leader to get back to the true path as once revealed to the nation in the first coming of the divine figure of T Blair.
This true wisdom was ‘Me first’. These shades of Christmas past remember that wisdom and live by it still. They are each very wealthy men, farming their political careers for financial advancement.
But the journos were blinded by the razzle, just as they used to be.
The ‘message’ had a more direct focus than a note up the Westminster chimney to Ed.
Alan Milburn – he of the testosterone-driven ego founded on almost nothing but self-regard, was in charge of shaping the campaign for Blair’s last election. This was the communications supremo who came up with a slogan just bound to sweep the party to power with its galvanic impact: ‘Forward not back’.
Impressed? You should be. We paid him to produce stuff like this.
Milburn was, more meaningfully as it turns out, also Health Secretary and, around the time he left office, set up a profitable business with unrivalled contacts to supply – the health sector.
One of the pearls of wisdom falling from the tightly grinning Blair yesterday was: ‘How do we take the health and education reforms of the last Labour government [remind us - whose was that?] to a new level, given the huge improvement in results they brought about.’ [No praise like self praise - especially when we're seeing today the reality of those 'huge improvements'. We're dying with appalling standards of care and hygiene that make hospitals the most unsafe places to be. We've come to know of the scandalous mortality rates at Stafford Hospital - and we're numbed by the emergence of the infamous Liverpool Care Pathway.]
But Alan Milburn has a business to succour – and the handy rhetorical question of his master as to how we can take the health reforms of the last Labour government to a new level, signals the hope that the tills of the public purse can be made to tinkle newly for Alan.
Lord Mandelson said that whatever Tony was saying was right and was what Tony had always thought. Indeed it was. ‘Me first.’
Alan Milburn said that Tony was right to say what he was saying. It was certainly helpful.
David Blunkett said that Tony was right to remind folk that the pendulum had not swung leftwards. Of course it didn’t.There was no left left after Blair, only what he saw as right right.
Reeling from the impact of these intellects, we almost missed one more creaking lid lift to decant another whiff of formaldehyde from times past.
Pat McFadden [yes, we can't remember either - did we ever notice?] said that ‘Advice from a three times election-winning Prime Minister should always be taken seriously’.
How many elections did Margaret Thatcher win? Did the out of touch McFadden really think what he was saying here – and in this particular week?
They really have been away too long, these stellar talents. And how the memory and the mind fade during the long years out of the light.
What did Mr Millband say?
He delivered a neat dismissal of the presumptuous ones.
He sent out a Labour spokesman to say that he, Ed Milliband, ‘…was the first to recognise that politics always has to move on to cope with new challenges and different circumstances. For example, on immigration, Labour is learning lessons about the mistakes in office and crafting an immigration policy that will make Britain’s diversity work for all, not just a few’.
Wonder whose time in office and whose mistakes the current Leader was talking about? And, boy, were they mistakes. Who will forget what the banks did with Blair’s ‘regulation with a light touch’?
Back in your boxes, lads. Once was more than enough. You had your turn. We’ll be paying for it for a long time yet – and so will Iraq.
