The Truth About Tony

Tony Blair’s staunch support of the US after September 11th, and in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, has led many Americans to view him as an ally who shares American values. However, the policies advocated by Prime Minister Blair and his New Labor government in the UK have little in common with any values Americans actually cherish. This week, the Blair government was handed a stinging rebuke by parliament, which shot down the harsher version of a series of laws drafted by the government that, in the name of political correctness, would have eviscerated the concept of free speech in the UK. In its most drastic form, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would have criminalized any expression against a particular religious or racial group that it’s members found offensive. Of course, as any grade school child knows, there are a lot of pretty thin-skinned people out there who will be offended by just about anything. But the law was – not surprisingly – spearheaded by Muslim advocacy groups hoping to silence any criticism of their religion’s increasing violence and intolerance, and the deleterious effect of so many non-European immigrants on British society and culture. Tony Blair, blinded by his devotion to mulitculturalism, could not discern the motivations of those advocating the bill and blithely went along with it. He didn’t want to be called a racist, and was perfectly willing to annihilate hundreds of years of British political tradition to appease the Muslim mob.

In a particularly satisfying twist, the bill’s defeat was inspired by an episode of the American television show, "The West Wing" that broadcast in Britain last Sunday night, according to the UK’s Telegraph.

Slumped in front of the television on Sunday night, one of the leaders of the revolt watched with growing interest as Democrats won a key vote on stem cell research by pretending not to be around.

The congressmen hid in an empty office and then triumphantly emerged in force when the vote was called by the unsuspecting Republican speaker.

"That's where the idea came from," the MP, who declined to be identified, told The Daily Telegraph. "We had no big press conferences, no events announcing the coming protest. It was directly inspired by the West Wing," he said.

The Tories toasted their success with champagne on Tuesday night. Not only had the Labour whips blundered by failing to appreciate the scale of the rebellion on their own side: they had also been outsmarted by a classic "under the radar" whipping operation by the Tories.

As a result, Labour crashed to only its second and third Commons defeats since Tony Blair came to power in 1997.

To add to Miss Armstrong's embarrassment, the Government lost the second, crucial division by just one vote. Had Mr Blair stayed - and not gone back to No 10 as he was told he could - it would have been a tie.

The Government would then have won because the Speaker, Michael Martin, would have used his casting vote to keep the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in its original form, rejecting the watering down proposed by the House of Lords.

Fortunately, Blair’s New Labor MPs were so confident of victory, they were outfoxed by canny Tories following a TV show script. Britons have no idea how lucky they are. Unfortunately, the movement against free speech is a Europe-wide phenomena (see here), motivated by both political correctness and multiculturalist nonsense.

Blair’s intellectual bankruptcy is concisely outlined by Val MacQueen writing on TCS Daily.

Unlike his long line of predecessors, Blair is curiously uninterested in the history and traditions of the countries which make up the United Kingdom and the historical development of laws, including the freedom of speech and thought that the British have enjoyed -- in sharp contrast to citizens of European countries -- for 800 years. Sometimes he seems to be barely aware of the nature of the people he is governing and anyway, the past is another country. Enjoying far greater power than the President of the United States, Blair has, in the words of conservative columnist Melanie Phillips, "ripped the heart out of the … British constitution" and "has behaved like a constitutional vandal, fragmenting the United Kingdom and destroying the independence of the second chamber."

Most alarming is the New Labour focus on controlling not only speech, but thought. Political correctness is thought-control under a less threatening name, and The Times of London's Europe correspondent Anthony Browne has described the descent into a Kafkaesque world in his new pamphlet, The Retreat of Reason, published by conservative think tank Civitas. He demonstrates that the new ideology has effectively stifled public debate on topics the government doesn't want discussed. He adds that throughout all levels of government now, "there is an intellectually dishonest response by people who preferred political correctness over factual correctness".

He cites, among other examples, the explosion of HIV infection in Britain. The politically correct response is, too many teenagers are indulging in unprotected sex, which, as we know, won't stand up to scientific scrutiny, but never mind. The factual response is, immigration from Africa. With regard to the rise in anti-Semitic attacks, Brown cites the politically correct response of gangs of white skinheads. The factually correct response is Muslim youths.

The Blair government – rather like its American counterpart – maintains a rigorous policy of avoiding the subject of the damage being inflicted on the UK by recent immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants. The strict version of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would have effectively silence any criticism against radical Muslims or immigration to the UK. That was its specific purpose. But its defeat should offer little comfort to Britons eager to defend their cultural heritage and political freedoms. That such a bill was actually pushed by the government – and nearly passed – should send chills down the spines of both Britons and Americans. It should also send a strong warning about the dubious intellectual premises of Prime Minister Blair and New Labor.

The criminalization of dissenting opinions, even where such opinions are commonly held to be vile, is a step toward oppression. One doesn’t need to have read George Orwell to know that.