Across the pond

Keir Hardie, and the other founding fathers of the British Labour Party, must be turning in their graves. Tony Blair is joining the leading American bank, J P Morgan, as an adviser for a million dollars a year. For many Socialists that is far worse than coming out of the closet and kneeling down before the Pope. Notsomuch taking the capitalist shilling as selling out to the enemies of the workers, whose cause the Labour Party was founded to support.

Younger readers may need reminding that John Pierrepoint Morgan was the most powerful of all the robber barons of the nineteenth century. They not only ‘fired’ workers who dared to be trade unionists, they literally shot them on the picket lines.

But perhaps, at last, Tony Blair, like Hillary Clinton, is finding his true voice. Notsomuch New Labour as New Conservative. The only honourable course left for him is to turn in his Labour Party card and apply to join the Conservatives.

But, come to think of it, he might be too right wing for David Cameron.