Unintentional Joke of the day

Apparently on learning that Labour shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner MP had raised the question of whether the Good Friday Agreement should be seen as a "shibboleth," Tony Blair said

"I don't know how anyone can say that."

If you want to know why that is funny, and have a bible to hand, look up Judges, Chapter 12, verses one to six.

POSTSCRIPT

Actually that's just been topped for unintentional humour by the Labour party spokesman who confirmed this afternoon that Gardiner will be staying in his job despite his open disagreement with what passes for Labour polity on Brexit, as follows:


They really are not even bothering to pretend to tell the truth, are they?

"Barry Gardiner fully supports that position."

Really?

There is a recording on the BBC website, which you can find and listen to here, of Barry Gardiner explaining in the clearest possible, if rather rude, language why he thinks the first of those tests is rubbish. (He uses an Anglo-Saxon expression for "rubbish.")

Comments

Jim said…
are they like the 6 tests for joining the Euro?
7:03 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Surprisingly considering who came up with them, the tests for joining the Euro actually did make some sense (part of the reason we are not in the Euro is that there was no time when all six were met, which I regard as a result.)

Stephen Bush in the New Statesman recognises that Labour's current six Brexit tests, if you will excuse the language, really are "bollocks"

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2018/04/why-barry-gardiner-was-right-call-labour-s-six-tests-brexit-deal-bollocks
10:03 pm
Jim said…
They are not reason we never joined.

The real reason is because at the time Tony Blair knew there was never a time he could have won a referendum on the issue. The six tests were really just a way holding off until the time he thought he could win one came along. Of course it never did, so it was a good way for him to keep campaigning yet saving face at the same time.

Had the time he thought win came along, then the six tests would have been "met" by nothing more than political spin.
2:33 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Had he thought he could get away with it, Blair would have joined the euro without a referendum, just as Brown ratified and signed the Lisbon treaty without a referendum.

I agree with you that Blair would have called a referendum on joining the Euro had he ever thought he could win, and in that circumstances he would have found some way to claim to have met the six tests.

Similarly he would have claimed the six tests were met before joining the Euro without a referendum had he thought people would stand for it.

But the six tests never were actually met, and IMHO that is one of a number of reasons why Blair never thought he could win a referendum - the press would have torn his arguments on the subject to pieces - and similarly why he didn't think he could get away with scrapping the pound without one.
6:50 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more