Colonel Tony Blimp

By Cernig

Well, that's it then. Tony Blair finally revealed for who he truly is - a white, middle class Little Englander who has never struggled for a damn thing in his entire life and is entirely convinced that only people from his exact demographic should be allowed to lead the great unwashed into a bright future where the underclass will worship at the altar of Little Englandness.

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

...Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that "the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids".

Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: "When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?" Mr Blair said there needed to be an "intense police focus" on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders "taken out of circulation".

Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair's speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. ... He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."

A "black culture" problem. Yeah. And the high rate of knife attacks in Glasgow and its surrounding towns is a "Scottish culture" problem...or maybe just a "Glaswegian culture" problem. The same kind of crimes are horribly common in Manchester. Maybe that's a "Northern culture" problem. How about Moscow? Or Latvia? A culture evolves due to multiple factors, but skin color is not one of them.

A study released by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies last August noted that children who have been a victim of crime may be more likely to carry knives. It also said that children, young people, those living in poor areas and members of black and minority ethnic communities were more likely to be the victims of knife crime. Calling government policy "incoherent" it said the government "should look at the root causes - the inclination or desire to resort to violence."

That inclination is something that is widespread and is certainly not based upon colour. It is heavily infuenced by social deprivation and given a local character by local gang subculture which themselves began in reaction to extreme poverty - in London, the "Yardies" and in Glasgow the "Neds" - but knife-wielding soccer hooligans are as likely to be from affluent Essex as from the poorest parts of Sunderland.

But let's keep some perspective here. Violent crime in 2005/06 was around half what it was in 1995

Blair and his clones managed to hijack the university Labour movement in the early Eighties and ever since have had as their guiding principle only their own lust for control. That lust has taken many forms since their electoral successes - based entirely upon a con-job that Blairites cared - including joining that other control-freak Bush in his Iraqi misadventure, their ceaseless search for new ways to spy on the British populace, their demands for ever more draconian powers to detain and imprison and, as in this case, their drive to demonise every segment of British society that isn't exactly like them. An entire new generation of Colonel Blimps in socialist clothing. Blair and his ilk would disguise their reading of the Daily Telegraph by hiding it inside the front pages of The Guardian.

(For a more American view of the story, with some interesting comments, check out The Moderate Voice.)