Current Affairs

The Neenah Cherry song 7 seconds, is about starvation, war, pestilence and disease. Bob Geldoff got onto the phone to his mates and pushed to save the millions dying in Ethiopia, but the originator of the war in the Middle East – Tony Blair took advice and argued that $9,000 would cut the population of Gaza by 500,000, and that a super city could be built with floating islands, a super port and each plot of land could be purchased with Bitcoins paid into a Trust.

The idea of course was just a presentation away from becoming a reality. The 3 million Gazan’s would not have a say in how their land is appropriated by an elite that would be advised by Boston Consultant Group (BCG), the Tony Blair Foundation(TBF) and Israeli venture capitalists. Of course Blair denies that he had anything to do with the presentation or any input, but once presented with email evidence by the Financial Times (FT) admitted that there had been two members of the TBF involved.

Of course business is business and it is the remit of the TBF not to take into consideration the arguments surrounding their clients human rights problems or whether there are any other considerations that should be taken into account. The TBF is worth over $180 million and the ideology behind the arguments of the way they do business is nothing new to the way that Blair does business. In an article in the FT he praised Margaret Thatcher, John Major and wished David Cameron the best of luck in his new government. The same government that slashed spending, slashed the NHS and pushed for a cost of living cut that demolished the essence of the economy and increased borrowing from 70% of GDP to 80%. The rest of the economy was demolished by Brexit and the COVID pandemic under successive governments.

Tony Blair was a fortunate prime minister, he was rewarded by John Major with an economy that had climbed out of a recession caused by Major’s governments insistence that the state join the European single currency. Though the recession was deep and house owners were hit with interest rates of 10%, the Major government did balance the books and bring debt to 60% of GDP and an economy that was at last moving in the right direction.

With a slush fund of $75billion Blair invested in the civil service, the NHS, military and other avenues of government, which signalled that the economy had been freed from the shackles of recession. Most of the economy was smoke and mirrors, but the success was real and the elements of the economy that were conservative were furnished with government investment that allowed the economy to boom. The failure of the economy was that it led to increased borrowing, a fiscal deficit and a war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new model Blair pushed was very much an investment led argument of renewal, large projects were pushed by publicity machines and the City was booming through investors given the courage to place their money in generative projects. But as said, it was all smoke and mirrors, very much a case of PR agencies pushing government arguments that sold the country into debt that maligned the confidence of the next government, which lost the confidence of the City and sunk the UK economy into a moribund spiral of recession.

The smoke and mirrors are still at the forefront of the TBF, they advise freeing economies from the shackles of repression and investing in new projects that renew infrastructure. Their presentation piece is the miracle that is Dubai, an economy that has regenerated itself from being an insignificant island state where airlines landed to cheaply re-fuel, into a place that grew 100 fold on being a tax free haven where you can get a drink in one of the new hotels, buy cheap gold that has been smuggled out of war zones and sky high buildings that have been built on the backs of labour imported from the sub-continent. Of course the secret police are more wary, but the reality is that it is a destination that rewards those with wealth to live a comfortable life.

Even though Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi intelligence, the Blair Foundation found the idea of doing business in Saudi Arabia too tempting to ignore. In 2021, the TBF signed a contract with the Kingdom to act as advisers, with the sole purpose of consulting the state on how to renew its economy, public image and re-imagine the security apparatus that had cut the journalist into little pieces in the consulate in Istanbul. But the elements were all there, the Saudi’s with a slush fund fuelled by oil prices that were anywhere between $80 and $120 per barrel when the war in the Middle East was being fought, were going to invest in their economy with a new city. The image of superstructures and a new gig city are the image that Saudia Arabia wants the world to see.

Other Blair projects are in Tajikastan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and elsewhere across the old soviet republics. But they all have something in common, a government that is autocratic. The idea that these economies can be freed are imaginatively repackaged by the TBF, as their autocratic leaders build cities that reflect the secret police mausoleum their leaders so desire. The concentration on these autocratic governments by the TBF has proved profitable, but the freedom to vote is determined by polling irregularities, government edicts and secret police officers torturing and throwing those in jail that challenge the autocrats leadership.

As far as anyone knows the TBF is advising the present UK government, the present leadership have followed the pattern of Tony Blair’s premiership and invested heavily in the NHS, government departments and mechanisms that represses arguments outside the House of Commons. The middle road that has been pushed by the government is hamstrung by debt levels that have meant that the government do not have a slush fund to invest, but are more reliant on the tax receipts that they receive from voters. The ideas of TBF have been challenged by an economy that has lost a lot of its dynamics that were underpinned by membership of the EU. The government is really struggling to manage the foundations that TBF have advised, but the reality is that it is not an economy that is  likely to grow until the remnants of the Brexit economy become stronger.

The ideas that the TBF bring to government are smoke and mirrors, and though there has been tremendous growth across the platforms they are involved in, those platforms are dependent on the governments of these autocratic governments to invest their hard earned wealth into the economy. It is not so much an argument that has been discovered by the TBF, it is very much an argument of new Keynesian thinking, which releases the wealth of a country into projects that perform perfidy functions and that is investment, growth, security and repressive mechanisms that instil power to an elite that is credited with an economy that is just smoke and mirrors with a very ugly security apparatus.  

As for the civilians in Gaza, they are struggling with a man made famine that has destroyed any vestige of their lives. Education has become secondary to survival and malnutrition has led to suffering and death. Lives exist in refugee camps that are just plastic sheeting and anything is better than the refugees present existence under constant bombardment. But the TBF is willing to sell out the people of Gaza for a dream of a landscape that they will not be part of. The lives of Gazan’s before the war will be forgotten in makeshift refugee camps in other countries if the TBF plan had been put in place, but the lives that have been spent in this war are just numbers to organisations like the Tony Blair Foundation.