Tony Blair and the press blackout.

Quite by chance I had an early lunch break today and listened to Tony Blair extolling the virtues of Labour government, well to tell the truth a lot of it was why not to vote Conservative, after the war business I don’t trust the man.

The old question, would you buy a used car from this man? went through my head, although to be fair it also goes through my head when David Cameron speaks.

Frankly in terms of charisma and sincerity politicians don’t seem to be what they were, staying with the used car analogy I feel a bit like seeing two used cars in garages on either side of the road and the car dealers main selling points being that if I buy the one from the garage opposite it will breakdown just after the warranty has run out.

Here in Thanet South we don’t really have the option of going off and buying a car elsewhere, as it is likely to be a tightly fought marginal with only Labour and Conservative votes counting for much.

Anyway back to Blair, as his speech came to the end the BBC news commentator said he would next be answering questions from the audience, well as someone who voted Labour in the last two elections I thought there were a few questions that I would like to ask him. Would he have taken us into Vietnam if he had been prime minister at the time and the Americans had asked him to? Did he think that police crime figure targets actually made the police reluctant to prosecute people? Being examples.

Well the speech ended and I have to say that I was pretty much astonished when they threw all of the press out before the questions, the BBC camera went black, something that immediately made me think of the blank pages in the pre apartheid South African papers.

As public relations exercises go I really don’t think I have seen a major political speech end so badly.

The tree I believe may be a Politician Tree it’s twisty enough although I have been assured that it is Morus Nigra.