Two posts back I called him the “silver-tongued bruiser o’ Dundee”. Here, on a late night show ten years 1 before being returned as the Right Honourable Member for Rochdale, he responds to the audience member – and political editor – who accuses him of being a Saddam apologist.
Tell me we don’t need more George Galloways. Love or loath him, he does what way too few in the limelight ever do.
He speaks truth to power. And how!
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- My bad. I have George’s appearance on the Irish talk show as 2013, but now realise that’s when the clip was posted. The host refers to Blair’s ‘recent’ resignation as Labour leader, which was June 27, 2007, so the show must have aired over sixteen years, not ten, before last week’s byelection. So that’s why he was looking implausibly youthful. The man’s not far off my age, for God’s sake!
Thanks for this Phil. I’d forgotten why I cannot help but like George Galloway despite dodgy views on a few issues I won’t go into. Put it this way, I’d rather be stuck on a desert Island with him than any other member of the British Parliament. But the reason I’m wriitng this is that this clip reminded me of something rather chilling. It explains why the UK always does whatever the Americans tell us to. (Or at least it’s a major factor.)
In the 1960s the US put tremendous pressure on the UK to put troops on the ground into Vietnam to fight alongside the Americans. Harold Wilson categorically refused. They put manipulative pressure on him of all kinds but he was adamant. (Thank you Harold!) Hence the various CIA and MI5 plots to descredit him. And other stuff. After this failure to dominate and control the UK the Americans came up with another strategy to have power over us by other means. A key one was to take control of the software that delivered Trident. They developed IT systems that are essential to the functioning of UK’s nuclear submarine fleet – both the working of the submarines themselves and the delivery systems of the warheads. They then ‘gave’ this to us and we greatfully received it as it saved us a load of money and anyway we may not have had the necessary expertise. Our whole Trident nuclear fleet of submarines is now controlled by the US. Not only can the UK not fire anything, it has to be done by the US – the US can fire nuclear warheads from any of our Vanguard submarine fleet without the UK being able to stop them. Basically we do not have a nuclear deterrent at all, the Americans have it.
In one of those conversations with a friend of a friend back in the days when I partied hard in all sorts of places, I was told that Blair was told that if he did not go to war with Iraq then the US would destroy the UK’s claim to nuclear power by disabling all the software that the whole show depended upon. Being full of the delusional arrogance that the UK is, and must of course continue to be, a major player on the world’s stage, Blair capitulated. As we have done ever since that last stand of good old Harold WIlson.
Only last month I had a chillling reminder of all this when we saw one of the US Orion nuclear submarines coming up the Clyde accompained by four helicopters, a plane of some ding circling high above, and a flotilla of boats surrounding it. At least if there’s a nuclear war we’ll be gone in the first blast being so close to Faslane. And I don’t fancy trying to live in a post nuclear apocalyptic world. Meanwhile today we have sun which means we’re off for a walk in nature far from the madding crowd. Thanks agan Phil.
Wow. What can I say – other than enjoy your walk Anne. The sun shines here too so I’ll do likewise.
While we can.