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- Brown’s & Blair’s Poetry Choices
Comment at end
20th March, 2008
I met a man who wasn’t Blair
He wasn’t Blair again today
Oh how I wish he’d go away.
According to rumours doing the rounds – (emanating originally, it seems, from Matthew Parris) – a cabinet minister uttered these words. The hunt is on. But could it have been Mr Parris himself – trying to cause trouble for Labour? Perish the thought.
But if it was a cabinet minister, who was it? Come on now! Own up. Whoever you are, you’re my kind of guy/gal!
[Pic: Gordon Brown, John Hutton, Tony Blair]
Or is it “Love Actually”?
Business Secretary John Hutton denies that he is the poet. Accused by his Tory shadow Alan Duncan of being behind the lines which appeared on the Spectator website on 15th March, the minister shook his head and looked slightly embarrassed.
Mr Hutton denied the verse was his. “I would write better poetry than that.”
Oh I don’t know, Mr Hutton; it’s not bad actually. In fact I am sorely tempted to see the hand of a journalist wordsmith here rather than a political one.
Tell us more, Mr Parris. Please. We can hardly wait.
Excerpt from Parris’s ‘That’s the Britishness I love’, Times, March 13th:
“Oh dear. You just sit on the bench at Portcullis House in Westminster and MPs come up and offer horridnesses. This variation on the nursery doggerel is from a Labour backbencher, via another Labour backbencher – but composed by a Cabinet minister who must not be named:
At Downing Street upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t Blair.
He wasn’t Blair again today.
Oh how I wish he’d go away.”
If it IS a Cabinet Minister, who is the man/woman most likely?
Geoff Hoon, David Miliband, Hazel Blears, John Denham, Alan Johnson, John Hutton?
We can just picture the minister sitting at the cabinet table, doodling away, as Gordon tells ’em like it is! Longing for sofa government again, when at least the PM listened to SOMEbody!
I wonder what David Cameron’s, Brown’s or Labour MPs’ versions of this would look like? Here are my quick efforts:
Cameron’s Lament
Or Gordon Brown’s?
Brown’s Vision
(there could be SO many of these, let’s be honest!)
Labour MPs’ Lament
Yes, Labour may have boobed big in dumping their election winner, but now, sadly, they need to bear this in mind (to paraphrase):
What is this life if full of care? We have no time to yearn for Blair
//////////
UPDATE: (Just had to add this)
Brown’s eulogy? Blair’s elegy?
Do these choices tell us anything we didn’t already know? What’s on their minds today? Legacies? Responsibility?
Anyway, they are interesting choices by both men. They both refer to death. Whose death(s)? Why?
Psychologists, get analysing.
Gordon Brown
The Hands of Others
by James Stockinger
“It is the hands of others who grow the food we eat,
Who sew the clothes we wear,
Who build the houses we inhabit.
It is the hands of others who tend us when we’re sick
And raise us up when we fall;
It is the hands of others who lift us from the cradle
And lower us finally into the grave.”
Tony Blair
The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Martin Ivens has some amusing and interesting asides to Blair’s shadow on Brown’s shoulder.
Blair to Lecture at Yale University
Tags: 1. Tony Blair, at downing street upon the stair, Brown (Gordon Brown & his Labour Government, from June 2007), Brown's Government, cabinet ministers, defence secretary, from June 2007, I met a man who wasn't blair, John Hutton, labour government, matthew parris, missing blair
Tony Blair 
March 21, 2008 at 8:37 am |
I wonder what makes us think that only one person is responsible for this, how do we know it wasn’t the whole cabinet?
March 21, 2008 at 9:47 am |
Hi there, and thanks for your comment,
Technically it WAS the whole cabinet. Of course, because he was the PM and leader, the brilliance of the silver-tongued Blair meant he was first among equals, and carried great authority amongst (most of) the cabinet then.
And because of the rest of the then cabinet’s desperate need to let us keep calling it “Blair’s War”, they usually avoid reminding us of their collective responsibility.
There are also arguments about how much “evidence” they were shown by the Attorney General at the time, on the question of legality.
The Straws, Browns etc of this world don’t dwell on this aspect much either because if they do, and are seen to have kept quiet when they might have insisted on more information, they could be accused of acquiescence, weakness or even incompetence.
But the whole cabinet IS responsible apart from the one who walked out – Robin Cook, and he, sadly, is no longer with us.
Why do you think they are not keen on deeper investigation when some might think that would give them the opportunity to hang it all round Blair’s neck and his alone? Imho, because if such a search found against Blair, it would also be found that they are all guilty parties, if only by negligence.
Not that there SHOULD be a deeper investigation at this time, anyway. This call is all political manouvering from the Lib Dem/Scot Nats/ Welsh Nats, as was the Cash For Honours nonsense.
I recall hearing recently that there is no record kept as to how individual cabinet members actually vote. Someone asked how Brown had voted in the Iraq cabinet meeting. The answer was, ‘we don’t know’. I reckon he voted for. He recently implied as much, to be fair to him. And if he hadn’t – somehow I reckon that information would have slipped out some time between 2003 and 2007!
Blair has never, EVER tried to pass responsibility for this decision to others or even to spread the load. People might, possibly correctly, accuse him of being presidential, but that was a style he developed, partly it seems, due to the quality of his cabinets, much of the time. But he WASN’T the ‘president’ – and it was up to the rest of the Cabinet to make sure he knew it, if they were so anti the invasion.
If they didn’t, it must be because they too were convinced by his arguments.
December 22, 2009 at 11:32 pm |
[…] Mr Hutton, which cabinet minister coined this little ditty, referred to here in March 2008, when Brown had been PM for less than a […]