C. Blair’s job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism

In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in.

Now he can only emit a long wail of impotence

Simon Jenkins

Who said books are dead? Did he blog or tweet, video or iPad? No, Tony Blair wanted to get a message across, so he wrote a book. He smeared the black staff on trees, stitched it and made people go out and buy it. Good for him.

Blair’s mildly engaging stream of auto-eroticism shows him memoirising much as he ruled. He uses the first person singular a million times. He stages everything. He fixes on a theme and controls the narrative. The intention is to smother an Iraq apologia in endless quotables on Gordon Brown and his emotional idiocy and general hopelessness. It is cruel, but has worked a dream.

Blair was a politician of great talent, and a miserable prime minister. The service he did his country was considerable, but it was done by the time he took office in 1997. It was to anaesthetise the Labour party while he turned it into a vehicle to make him electable and his newly espoused Thatcherism irreversible, much as Attlee had made welfarism irreversible in 1945…

When the Social Democratic party was formed in 1981, an ambitious young Blair abused them as “middle-aged, middle-class erstwhile Labour”, with only “lingering social consciences [to] prevent them voting Tory.” When, a year later, Anthony Blair fought Beaconsfield, he was for CND, against Trident and for withdrawal from Europe…

By the end of the 80s, ambition had worked a wondrous change. Blair abandoned nuclear disarmament and subscribed to the EU. He did a U-turn on privatisation…

When he became leader, Blair’s self-styled “project” dared not speak its Thatcherite name, but it understood that success could lie only in capturing the middle ground, in the “electoral necessity of bourgeois ascendancy”…

The party was torn to shreds as Blair scored victory after victory against “old Labour.” He turned a 19th century movement into a 21st century presidential machine, puffed up with candyfloss vacuities such as “traditional values in a changed world.” Blair’s appetite for cliché was, and is, gargantuan…

Blair blames much of this failure on Brown, but the failure was Blair’s. He left Brown in charge, with his co-architect of madness, Ed Balls – who without apology now thinks himself equipped to run the country. Blair never had the guts to sack either of them. As a result, one of the brightest sparks to cross the political firmament since the war can emit only a long wail of impotence.

The Guardian, September 2, 2010

Task 3. Identify clichés in Text A.

Task 4. Read Text B and write out:

- special terms on the subject of the article;

- abbreviations;

- realia.

Task 5. Read Text C and analyse the linguistic means used by its author to persuade the reader that T. Blair was not up to the job as Labour Prime Minister. Identify all clichés in the article.

Task 6. Watch Video 3 (Folder Unit 3) that features press review, fill in the grid as in Task 7, Unit 1.

Task 7. Read the newspaper extracts below and determine their genre. Translate Texts IV-VIII headlines into Russian.

I

An alliance led by the former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won a landslide victory in elections aimed at restoring democracy to the country, an electoral official said today.

But even before the tally was complete, Hasina’s opponents launched allegations of irregularities and forgery, casting doubt over whether the election will end a cycle of unrest that has made the South Asian country virtually ungovernable. The party led by the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said it would make a formal comment on the result today.

II

The NHS has enjoyed the biggest increase in funds of all the public services, with spending up from £34 bn in 1997 to just over £94 bn in 2005. Staff numbers have risen, with more consultants, GPs and nurses. The number of people on waiting lists for operations has fallen since 1997. The drugs bill has risen 13 per cent, 118 new hospitals and 188 GP clinics have been opened or are being built.

III

The International Monetary Fund predicts the UK economy will grow by 2.9 per cent in 2005. The interest rate is 5.25 per cent. Total increase in taxation is £3,100 per household. Unemployment now at 1.7 million (2005), down from 2m in 1997. Government debt has fallen from to 44 per cent of GDP to 36 per cent of its disposable income. Total mortgage borrowing now is well over £1 trillion.

IV