I have had harsh words to say about Reform UK in the past, and as a terminally stubborn character I most likely won’t retract them.
Nonetheless, it would be a betrayal of my misguided teenage self not to take some joy in one thing Reform will accomplish, without any real effort. Every geriatric old fart who spent the first decades of the 21st century trying every trick in the book to resurrect Social-Democracy will die knowing it was all for nothing. All of the endless, ridiculous, self-promotional documentaries made about the New Labour “revolution” using taxpayer’s money will not save the whole period from being remembered, if at all, as an inane blip of self-destruction in the national record. David Aaronovitch will pass on knowing that no “transformation” happened during his lifetime, that the country still is populated by the same nasty, racist white English it was in the dreaded 1950s. People will only discuss the New Labour period, in the history books, as something which caused Reform U.K. Even if Britain becomes a country with Latin American demographics, these people will no longer be the protagonists of the story.
This is why the following cannot be allowed to happen.
The Blair Creature, B.liar, his Tonyness – cannot be allowed to swan off into the sunset with a private fiefdom in which to oppress probably the most victimised people on earth. He must be forced to live out his twilight days, among impotent riches, watching every part of his political legacy be dismantled without fuss.
It is strange to see J.D Vance and Donald Trump, who have championed the freedom of the British people, reward the man who introduced the laws under which old women are arrested by the police for tweets and Christians treated as terrorists for praying outside abortion clinics. Blair does not speak Arabic or Hebrew, he is almost as detested in that region as he is in his own country, there is nothing qualifying him for this role besides, I imagine, aggressive self-promotion behind the scenes.
Britain is now perceived as a sufficiently oppressed nation, that I believe third world rhetoric such as “this appointment is an insult to the British people,” would not go unheard of in Washington. G.B News should interview a grooming gang survivor on the topic just as one would interview a Holocaust survivor on Kurt Waldheim’s U.N presidency. If Reform U.K spoke out, it would also serve to differentiate them from the Trump movement, without necessarily offending the Donald.
As much as it is joked about, it is, in fact, an objective facet of reality that Tony Blair lied to Parliament in order to start a war in which working-class British men were shot dead and had their limbs blown off so he could pretend to be important for a year. There are ample grounds, even suggested in the Establishment Chilcot Inquiry, for prosecuting him, with Parliament acting in its role as Supreme Court, for perjury if not War Crimes.
Taking Zia’s public presentation at face value for a moment (entering ‘the world’ of ‘politics’ instead of Meritocratic Analysis) he seems like the Reform figure best placed to make this demand. A refreshing thing about Yusuf, even if we don’t take his public presentation at face value, is that he doesn’t have Farage’s chronic insecurity before the British Establishment. His comments on China have shown him to be the only Reform person willing to break with the last remaining shibboleth of Woke Britain: Atlanticism. Making such a demand will also immediately redeem Zia in the eyes of sceptical, older Reform loyalists who will repay him with unconditional love and respect. You ‘aight white boy.
Such a demand will force Zack Polanski, EyeUpLovely and the bald money man on YouTube to defend a platform of letting Tony Blair live as a free man. Reform don’t really need to persuade anyone anymore but as others have pointed out, complacency at this point is the enemy. Starmer’s new strategy is hedged on the fact that, if Reform dominate the air-waves for two years, it will gradually eclipse the hatred that the ideological Left have for him and mobilise a general anti-Fascist coalition. Although such a constituency is not big enough, by itself, to give Labour a majority, Reform should be aiming for a landslide of Starmerite proportions to destroy both old parties for good. Splitting the Left-wing vote, with an eminently Right-wing policy, is a good move.
Part of the reason the Left dominated the 20th century is that they had a far greater interest in memorialising themselves in History. “Apartheid” was being taught in schools less than a decade after Nelson Mandela escaped prison. The Right has “won”, for brief periods, many times in the past (cf. Yarvin: ‘the Reagan revolution’) but when it does, it is content to rest on its laurels and assume invincibility. People within Reform will no doubt be asking themselves, ‘why do we care about culture? About the curriculum?’ And the answer is that it, more than anything you can do under Democracy, will determine whether the Reform government is simply the last gasp of the Dinosaurs, or the beginning of something new. An effort would be made, by an ambitious government, to devote at least some resources to rewriting the story of Britain in the 21st century. Seeing Blair pay for his crimes would be a small step in that direction.