Why are so many senior politicians who have done their best to destroy their own countries in such a tearing hurry to apply their talent for disaster to huge global problems? The worst offender in my lifetime is probably Jimmy Carter, who, in four short years as President, brought his mighty country to its knees, economically and militarily.
Instead of apologizing to the nation he had so maladroitly humbled, and retiring with as much grace as he could muster (i.e.not much) to tend his Georgia peanut farm, he’s been whizzing around the globe for decades, sticking his nose into peace negotiations and elections, banging on about poverty and disease, acting as a cheerleader for the Palestinians against those beastly Israelis, and attacking Republican administrations whenever the opportunity arises.
Given the poverty and suffering his incompetence created for his own people, why didn’t he tear up his passport and try to make amends at home?
Because, one suspects, he’d been rumbled as a colossal idiot by the American people: the sight of this grinning ninny approaching their home would probably have had most Yanks reaching for their shotguns while simultaneously unleashing the hounds. So the rest of the world has had to suffer this self-important, unelected, interfering nincompoop meddling in its affairs – which are absolutely none of his business - for the best part ofthirty years.
As Enoch Powell famously said, all political careers end in failure. The rest of us reach a certain level in our admittedly modest professional lives which allows us to retire with some sense of achievement, no matter how slight, and the feeling of a job pretty much completed. In the revolting language of the self-help industry, we can fashion a justificatory narrative for our lives which prevents us from ending up rocking back and forth, grinding our teeth in a darkened room as we brood on our myriad failures. How many politicians feel that way when their careers implode (or they’re kicked out by the voters – or both)?
Gordon Brown – Britain’s very own Jimmy Carter – is busy writing a book which will no doubt reveal how brilliantly he handled the global economic crisis. Now, in the wake of Tony Blair’s monumental monstering of his successor, Gordy has shared with us his intention to undertake unpaid charity work, focusing on education in Africa in particular, and the developing (i.e. poor) world in general.
Education. Hmmm. Given the high levels of illiteracy and innumeracy in this country – despite every taxpayer having been forced to spend a fortune on the school system during Labour’s thirteen years in power (whether we made use of the system or not) – wouldn’t it make more sense for Gordy to stay at home and try to “make a difference” to the generation of illiterates he and his government did so much to create? What makes educating Africans so attractive? Because they don’t know what a humungously useless prat this semi-autistic Scotsman turned out to be?
If Gordy brings the same levels of understanding, adroitness and sensitivity to his new mission as he did to his previous one, the cause of African education is about to be dealt a potentially fatal blow. Mind you, it’ll be interesting to see what a man whose only answer to any problem was to spend more of other people’s money on it, without any noticeable impact, comes up with in a country where he can’t simply rob every tax-paying citizen whenever he feels like it to make him feel better about himself.
Tony Blair, of course, headed for the Middle East. He had more of an excuse for looking abroad for useless (but lucrative) employment. First, he evidently had a cosmically greedy family to set up for life (a million pound Central London flat for his daughter – ah, sweet!) Shame the Chancellor he was too cowardly to sack has made it so hard for the rest of us to pass anything on to the next generation, except debt. I also presume Tony needed to amass megabucks so that his ghastly wife would spend 24 hours a day, eyes acquisitively aglitter, on eBay, winkling out those elusive bargains that can do so much to fill an empty life, or scouring the globe for yet another property to cushion the pain of nobody being able to stand the sight of her. Secondly, Blair’s own party was still in power when he left office, and he knew perfectly well what a disaster his successor would prove, and, prudently, sought employment thousands of miles away to avoid the backspray when Gollum inevitably tripped and fell into the latrine.
But now that Tony’s true successor – the left-wing Tory, David Cameron – is in power, and now that he’s achieved his main goal (to eviscerate the basket case who was his former next-door neighbour) surely now he could do us all a favour and put a sock in it. After all, how much money can one woman spend on eBay– even one as obsessed with possessions and wealth as Cherie?
Otherwise we might all remember that the parlous moral, military and monetary state of this country is as much Blair’s fault as it is Brown’s.
I don't know why people are so unkind about Gordon Brown's book on the financial crisis. I have already made space for it in my bookcase between A Short History of the Cardboard Box and Learn to Cook the Albanian Way.
ReplyDeleteSunday, September 5, 2010 - 12:36 PM