Jul 26, 2005

God bless Tony Blair

I heard part of his press conference today on the radio. I was especially pleased with this part:
And one other thing I want to say whilst I am on this subject if I might, neither have they any justification for killing people in Israel either. Let us just get that out of the way as well. There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, in Iraq, in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere, in the United States of America. There is no justification for it period and we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. Not just the methods but the ideas. When we actually have people going into the communities here in this country and elsewhere and saying I am sorry, we are not having any of this nonsense about it is to do with what the British are doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or support for America, or any of the rest of it. It is nonsense, and we have got to confront it as that. And when we confront it as that, then we will start to beat it.

Not for nothing, but Israel gets left out a lot in these discussions and I was pleased to see Blair go out of his way to single Israel out.

Harry also approves.
If you've seen the television coverage of that section you'll surely have noticed the passion with which Blair delivered those lines. I remember the days when I cringed at Blair's attempts to be 'all things to all people' and his all-too transparent attempts to tap in to what he saw as a popular mood or to make sure he was 'covering' this or that angle for a particular focus-group generated 'segment'. Yet today Blair spoke with real belief and conviction, at times bordering on anger.

...

It has to be said - when it comes to the big, crucial issues of our day we have a Prime Minister who really does understand the nature of the threat facing democrats globally. Few would have predicted it before September 11 but he is a politician who has the balls to stand up to the consensus in the media and in much of European and British political debate and say what needs to be said.

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