When Blair Set Up His Institute For Global Change ...

Mick Hall @ Organized Rage is of the view that:

If calls for a national government and a re-run of EU referendum grow we'll all have to decide which side we're on

When Tony Blair announced earlier this year he was setting up a new organisation many on the left believed this was simply a spoiler as the Copeland and Stoke Central by-elections were due. They were mistaken and current events are slowly revealing what lays behind Blair's latest political wheeze.

So what is his master plan and how does he believe he will achieve his aim of stopping Brexit, and will it ever amount to much more than a figment of Blair's warped imagination?

It became clearer after he announced he'd established his Institute for Global Change, arguing the centre ground needs re-energising. Never mind that the centre ground of British politics has moved far to the right politically since Blair was PM. What he regards as the centre ground today would have made even Margaret Thatcher raise an eyebrow: left social democrats, socialists, the Greens, environmentalists, trade unions all have no place in it, nor do social democratic nationalist parties like the SNP and SDLP.

Blair's centre ground is made up of neoliberals like himself, George Osborne, and other Cameronite Tories along with their former bed fellows the Liberal Democrats, rightwing Thatcherites like Ken Clarke, the Blairites who remain in the LP, Katharine Viner - the editor of the Guardian - and the middle class flotsam like Polly Toynbee who surround her. Plus influential members of the British security services whom he promoted beyond their wildest dreams.

Multi national corporations and the Banksters will provide the cheque books which will allow the knowhow to brought in from the private sector. Media access will be guaranteed by the Russian oligarch and owner of the Evening Standard Alexander Lebedev, with his son Evgeny acting as his point man.

As the year goes on we can expect nudge tactics from them all in their attempt to gain public support for a government of national unity and a second EU referendum.

One thing is clear, Blair and his creatures in Parliament, the constituencies, mainstream media and the newspapers have given up on the Labour party as a way to achieve their aims.

Those Labour MPs who believe Jeremy Corbyn is a disastrous leader and must go, have the solution in their own hands. Currently, would-be leadership candidates need the support of 15% of the parliamentary party for their name to be added to the leadership ballot. If Corbyn's opponents were to support lowering the threshold to 5% of MPs, which would allow an MP who is more in tune with the membership to become a candidate. Jeremy could retire as leader with dignity knowing a left wing candidate from the next generation could at the very least enter the contest for the leadership.

That Corbyn's opponents refuse to do this is indicative not only of their contemptuous attitude towards the party membership, but their complete lack of confidence in their own ability to win a leadership contest. Thus they smear and sneer at the Corbyn leadership in the most hapless manner, believing with the help of their fellow collaborators in the mainstream media they will push the party over the proverbial cliff and leave them free to join a government of national unity or a new 'centre party' if it evolves.

They have woken up to the fact they would have to expel over three million members to regain complete control of the LP and this would mean fighting a long war of attrition with the membership and they neither have the time, people or inclination to do this. Besides having been defeated by the membership twice in the last two years even the most hard headed dunderhead like their useful idiot Tom Watson must have understood for them the LP is a lost cause.

What I find revealing about Blair's current campaign to rehabilitate himself is how bleeding heart liberals like Polly Toynbee have revealed their true selves so openly by flocking to his banner. Having spent the last seven years writing articles which oppose Osborne's austerity measures, she now retreats into a right-wing class prejudiced Blairite bubble.

After George Osborne the architect of so much human misery was made editor of the Evening Standard, she flips to the dark side having this to say about the most odious man in Britain:*

He will stiffen the backbone of the majority of remain Tory MPs to take back control from the Brexit extremists and their bully press. Facing down those wreckers needs this schemer, yet more Machiavellian than they are.

If he means to use the Standard as an antidote to killer Brexit, then urge him on: go for it, George!

Toynbee understands Osborne and Cameron infected British politics with:

mean-minded malice, kicking the weak, and leaving in his wake a trail of 500 food banks feeding over a million people made destitute by his policies.

As she writes just that in her article, but none of this matters now to the once fragrant Polly.

She along with all the rest of the Blairites understand perfectly the only way Brexit can be stopped is to replace the Government of Mrs May with a coalition government of national unity. To do this Blair set up his Institute for Global Change and began to get his ducks in a row. Osborne's appointment to the Standard is just one of them.

Before people get to soppy about the EU it failed to protect working class people against austerity and the massive cuts to benefits. Nor the sky high cost of housing to rent or buy, the imposition of the lump, or Zero hours contracts as it's called today, anti-trade union legislation, fracking, invading other peoples countries on the pretext of humanitarian intervention, and countless other barbaric acts imposed on us and innocent people overseas by British governments over the last 30 odd years.

To be blunt the EU has become an undemocratic neoliberal sinkhole in which the writ of the billionaires and the multinationals runs free. I voted remain but forget all the tosh about fake news and folk who voted leave being brain washed. When millions voted leave they made their decision on how their lives have changed for the worse over the last decade, and what they perceived was happening in their local community.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the current EU president when PM of Luxembourg wrote the book on how multi nationals and millionaires can avoid paying tax. First he made Luxembourg a tax haven then helped infect the EU with neoliberalism.

A social European Union which put the well-being of it's citizens first is a distant memory.

When people are suffering oppression and want, they reach for the nearest political vehicle they hope might bring them some respite. Where the LP failed to go, Ukip stepped into the void. When Cameron gifted the nation a referendum on the EU every reactionary politician and bigot offered up Brexit as the solution on which to hang these peoples woes, they grabbed it with both hands. And this was almost inevitable given they had come to believe the LP had all but abandoned them in recent years.

If and when Brexit begins to go pear shaped as it may in all probability, and the calls for a national government and a re-run referendum grow, we will all have to make up our minds which side we're on. Do we side with the touts, banksters, corporate shysters, media hacks, parliamentary Quislings and war criminals, or the ordinary folk who voted Brexit in good faith?

* Osborne could be a potent weapon in this Brexit war by Polly Toynbee.