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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The WEEK<BR>ending 19 September 2004</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><BR>MARTYR TO OFFICE</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Internet rumours that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's 16 year-old
daughter Kathryn had attempted suicide in the spring add to the image of the
office as a martyrdom. Blair's wife Cherie revived this picture of suffering
with her book about Prime Minister's wives called 'inside the goldfish bowl',
co-written with Cate Haste, the wife of novelist and TV presenter Melvin Bragg.
It was Bragg who lent his insider's authority to speculation about the state of
the Blair's happy family, when he said on a television interview that the Prime
Minister had had a wobbly due to 'intense family pressure' in the spring.
Bragg's interview, promptly disowned by Cherie, resurrected the story that under
pressure over the Gulf War Blair had had to be persuaded not to resign by senior
colleagues – with even 'rival' Gordon Brown joining in the unlikely chorus of
'don't go'. Though the press are sufficiently intimidated by Cherie's litigious
threats, the World Wide Web is a hothouse that quickly turned Kathryn's woes
from exam nerves, into weight problems, before settling on bullying at school
over her father's responsibility for the Iraq War. The only thing that anyone
who is not in with the Westminster gossip can deduce is that the Labour
administration is hampered by an excessive self-obsession that has precious
little to do with politics.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>'THE LAST REFUGE OF THE SCOUNDREL…</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>…is patriotism', said Dr Johnson. But in our times, the last refuge of the
scoundrel is a sudden interest in climate change.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· Margaret Thatcher made her first speech on climate change at the
Royal Society in September 1988, just as her government had exhausted its
political programme of curtailing organised labour, and preparing to introduce
the poll tax.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· Democratic Senator Al Gore announced an 'ozone hole over
Kennebunkport' (home to then President George H Bush) in 1992, in an attempt to
revive the fortunes of the paralysed party. Trying to enlarge his role in the
Clinton Administration, Gore's 're-inventing government' policy of September
1993, fired off in every direction, including a '$2 million government programme
to clean the air by cutting bovine flatulence' (George Stephanopolous, All too
Human, 210).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· That same year British Prime Minister John Major – his party riven
by dissent over Europe – helped kick the Rio Summit into gear, inviting other
world leaders suffering from the post-Cold War blues to 'a vast international
summit to discuss hot air' (John Major, The Autobiography, p 510).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· On 27 August of this year, George W Bush – up till then a sceptic –
embraced the argument that global warming is caused by man-made emissions, in a
move widely understood as an appeal to swing voters at a time when his bid for a
second-term was in the doldrums.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· In September of this year, ailing opposition leader Michael Howard,
thrashing around for an issue, castigated the Prime Minister for not signing up
for the Kyoto agreement on emissions, promising that the Conservatives would
take the lead on climate change.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>· And finally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned on 14
September that 'time was running out' to check the effects of climate change.
Most observers think that it is Blair's government that is running out of time
in its efforts to convince the electorate, and indeed the historians, that Blair
is more than just a liar.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The issue of climate change is one that draws out the worst in people. If
anyone really believed the arguments that industrial emissions were killing the
planet, they would take drastic action to reverse the course of human
history.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Instead the imagined problem is sufficiently vast to preclude any real
action, so global warming activists feel at liberty to jet to conferences all
over the world, adding to the hot air, rather than reducing it.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For politicians, climate change is an attractive issue precisely because it
allows them to avoid real problems in the here and now. No doubt the activists
will take comfort from the fact that all of the world's great powers now agree
with them over global warming. But instead, that ought to give them pause for
thought.<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>