Tony
Blair, with his wife and children, own ten houses and twenty seven
flats. Their London house in Connaught Square is worth over £8
million.
Yesterday
he emerged from Connaught Square to do the rounds of the studios and
tell us that The Labour Party must "build a new progressive
coalition" with the Lib Dems.
He
attacked Jeremy Corbyn for advocating policies "which are hopelessly out of date and not suitable for addressing the problems
of the 21st Century." He went on to warn us that "Labour's aim is
not to trend on Twitter or to have celebrities temporarily fawn over
us, our task is to win power".
This
from the man described by the BBC as “the arch-exponent of
celebrity endorsement.”
Amongst
those who ‘fawned’ over Tony at No 10 when he was PM, were Sting,
Sir Elton John, Bono, David Bowie, Bob Geldof, Mick Hucknall. Joan
Collins, Dame Judi Dench, Cilla Black, Clive Anderson, Rosie Boycott,
Delia Smith, Sir Richard Branson, Melvyn Bragg, Kevin Keegan and not
forgetting Phil Redmond, the creator of Brookside. The theatre
director Trevor Nunn, the conductor Sir Simon Rattle and the
architect Lord Rogers, also sipped and supped with him. The full list
is boringly longer.
Here
is what is out of date. Tony Blair’s personal ‘fortune’ is,
according to that left-wing newspaper, The Daily Telegraph an
estimated £60 million.
This
in the context of a country where the richest 1% of own more than
twenty times the wealth of the poorest 20%.
An
Oxfam study concluded that “more than 20 times” is an
understatement with The Office for National Statistics emphasising
that information on wealth inequality in the UK is "seriously
incomplete" and that it’s particularly hard
to measure the wealth of the very rich.
While
people at the top get influence, opportunities, power and invitations
to pontificate in TV studios , people living in poverty miss out on
the basics - like a decent education, healthcare, food and jobs. The
‘out of date’ Corbyn has been there to remind us of these facts.
On
the same day that Blair was cabbing it from Connaught Square to Sky
News and on to the BBC, Jeremy Corbyn was visiting flood victims in
Rhydyfelin in Pontypridd. Two days earlier he was helping feed the
homeless in Slough while the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, was
at Belmarsh visiting the imprisoned truth-teller, Julian Assange.
Fuck knows where Boris Johnson was and I doubt we want to know!
Are
we really sure the right person is in No 10 today?
