The Blare of Blair

This is an exciting book on a story about which we still do not know the end. Was it a genuine step forward by an authentic Christian world statesman, or was it all just 'spin'? Sophie Loussouarn has interviewed all the actors.

TONY BLAIR’S POLITICAL ODYSSEY

by Sophie Loussouarn


Now that the lights are going out all over Britain in these months of Brown twilight, Blair gleams like a star in the East. This book deals with his decade at Downing Street from a French angle. The man of destiny certainly appealed to French personalities as varied as Nicolas Sarkozy and his rival, Ségolène Royal -- they even used him as a model for their own campaigns.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1953, got an education at the Scottish boarding-school Fettes and went on to study law at St John’s College, Oxford. That, at least, is the official version. In fact he was more interested, at Oxford, in drama and rock’n roll than in either law or politics. However, he eventually joined the Labour Party and became an MP at the sprightly age of 30. Immediately he was recognized as one of the party’s rising stars: the advocate of the modernization of ‘Old Labour’, the party of arrogant dogmatists.

When he arrived in the United States he was excited by the look of the Democratic Party and and was especially inspired by Bill Clinton’s manner of running politics. So, not surprisingly, after the death of John Smith, a Labour traditionalist, he won the leadership contest as the man of ‘New Labour’, a viable choice for voters. He was the most charismatic figure in British politics. He knocked Clause 4 out of the Labour Party Constitution: the boldness of his action attracted a whole body of voters, ranging over a broad spectrum of Middle England and young professionals -- Thatcher’s electorate.

After 18 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party won a landslide victory in 1997, making Tony Blair the youngest British Prime Minister since 1812. He was cheered when he arrived at Number Ten with his family. It was the dawn of a new era: Blairite Britain was young and trendy. Blair launched ground breaking constitutional reforms, such as Scottish and Welsh devolution and the reform of the House of Lords in order to rebrand Britain. Blair’s economic policy never questioned the Thatcher legacy and bolstered sustainable growth, encouraging enterprise and innovation. He severed the Labour Party’s traditional links with the trade unions and came closer to the world of business and finance. Blair’s foreign policy was interventionist, sometimes messianic, in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo. These very positive actions were based on religious convictions.

Trouble began for him after 9/11, when he began supporting Bush and his crusade against terrorism -- a novel form of the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Blair’s decision to back G.W. Bush’s military intervention in Iraq was to be considered a stain on his premiership; it did prevent him from achieving his social reforms in health and education.

His grandest achievement was probably the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, along with the apparent success of his economic policies. In fact, it is too early to say what his eventual legacy will be. He is the first Labour Prime Minister to succeed in winning three successive elections. He will, one imagines, be remembered for the ‘Third Way’ and for establishing Labour as the dominant party at the turn of the Millennium. He was, nevertheless, forced out of office in 2007 amidst a storm of controversy.

Plumbers of the human condition by Richard Lewis

Why not just let the publishing industry die? Richard Lewis argues that these people are fighting for a lost cause, not our interests. For us creators, he notes, the current crisis opens a window of worldwide opportunity, there for anyone with the courage and the imagination to grasp it.


We should strike. It's as simple as that. But not any old how: strike smarter. Pickets are so last century. Show up for work as usual, just bypass the industry. Writers have historically allowed themselves to be swindled by the notion that giving away their rights and margins to a morass of middle-men confers status and prestige; that in effect you are not really a writer until someone else publishes your work. How did that happen? Partly because capitalists owned the means of production and distribution, but also because writers fancied themselves as being a cut above lowly trade. It's very powerful still and if it continues it will be entirely facilitated by our own vanity. Blogging has democratised publishing to some extent (I have written about this before) but is still considered to be "amateur" writing. We still judge the merit of a writer by his publishing house and not by his writing. This is not going to change overnight. But it will change. And possibly sooner than we think.

CASE STUDY
Look at what has happened in the music industry. Technological advances have made it successively easier for musicians of all varieties to firstly record and produce their music themselves and, more recently, to market and sell their music themselves. Home recording is now accessible to anyone with a computer (ie everyone) and indeed Apple's Garageband recording software comes bundled free on any Mac. The internet — and specifically the "Web 2.0" social networking phenomenon that includes myspace and facebook — has made it possible to market worldwide for free. Lastly, the MP3 file format has hit the tipping point in terms of consumer acceptance, thanks to the iPod, meaning that a musician can feasibly offer this 100%-profit format and expect to get sales, instead of shipping costly CDs.

The music industry behemoths fought this tooth and nail. They are fighting a losing battle. However, musicians embraced it. Of course they did. Because finally the workers were able to control the means of production and distribution. Of the last ten music purchases I made, half were from "unsigned" artists that I admired, from whom I bought directly. I knew what I was buying, I was able to listen to it online via myspace and I was perfectly satisfied with the "quality" of what I was buying. It was cheaper than buying it in the shops and I even got a feel-good buzz, knowing that the musician was taking all the profits from the sale. Now, just how well are the retail purveyors of CDs doing? Very badly is the answer.

Web 2.0 allows artists of all kinds to build an audience, which they may then choose to sell to. And it works. I have been surprised and delighted at just how easily it has worked for me. I sell my music online and people actually buy it. People I don't know. Orders come in from the US, Europe, Latin America ... This means — in music at least — that the barrier has come down in consumer perception and "unsigned" artists are now no longer automatically rejected as being somehow below-par. This is such an important step.

The oldest of Generation Y are now just approaching 30. This means pretty much anyone under 30 now has a hard time remembering the days before the internet, the days before blogs, the days, even, before facebook. They are connected, they spend 20% and upwards of their time on the net (according to Martin Sorrel at WPP), they want stuff now, 24 hours a day, at a price that's fair, they are resistant to marketing hype and big corporations and they trust online sources as more authentic.

Right, now back to the writing industry (which for some reason is known as the publishing industry):

Publishers sell books. It's a 20th centurty model that is now past its sell-by date. Writers, on the other hand, sell writing. Amazon's "Kindle" electronic reader has been a big success, prompting a slew of imitations from rival companies, which will bring the price down and encourage adoption, which will beget further innovation and so-on ... until we get to the iBook.

This is for us, I think. Anyone who thinks this isn't going to happen has their head in the sand. Instead of moaning about the increasingly punitive (read desperate) deals we get through the trade, we need to let it die and instead be proactive and instrumental in wresting our business back. And, as I said right at the inception of SOAF, this means writers need to come down off their high falutin horses and manage their business. Like plumbers. We are plumbers, in fact — of the human condition. People are moaning about recession as though it will kill us all. Get a grip. We are at the very beginning of a fantastic opportunity. If we don't occupy our territory this time, someone else will take it. Again.

Desperate Publishers, 2009

Richard Lewis


I know the UK has a recession on and all — and I know the pound isn't what it was — but do publishers now need £540 so badly that they'll sell at any price?

I just had an offer from one of my publishers to sell 500 copies of a book (cover price 6.99) to Borders for 1.20 a copy. "It would really only work if you accept 10% of net receipts, rather than the standard royalty. Would you be happy with £60?"

Booksellers should just let their customers upload their own books, filled with pictures of their cat, or their arse, plus poems about same. Then writers and publishers could all get back to going down the pub. It would be a weight off all of our shoulders. Come on YouDoggerel.com, do us all a favour!

I offered to loan my publisher the £540 if it was urgent. So far no response. I hope this doesn't mean they've gone bankrupt since they sent the e-mail.