I think I've got Tony Blair figured out.
Jan. 20th, 2005 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbIt has taken ten years for me to understand the so-and-so; and (as was to be expected) it was religion that gave me the clue. Tony Blair has just promoted one Ruth Kelly, a universally respected junior minister, who just happens, however, to be a devout Catholic, a member of Opus Dei, and to have managed her last few years' work at the Treasury (which is reputed to be brilliant) during a nearly continuous pregnancy - she had four children in six years. Clearly not a person who regards contraception or abortion highly.
This drew my attention to Blair's religious attitude. Blair's wife and children are Catholic and reputedly devout. He goes to church with them and has actually been present at a private ceremony with the Pope (although I cannot believe the rumour that the Pope let him take Communion as well - that would be in violation of umpteen-squinchy Church laws about schism). At the same time, he is a strong supporter of abortion and half-a-dozen other causes that do not resonate well with Catholic doctrine or spirituality. Yet he goes on the same way. For seven years or more he has done this constant double act, appearing in Catholic churches every sunday, the picture of devotion, fuelling rumours that he is about to convert, but sticking to a policy that pleases neither the moralist conservative wing of the Church (who notice with distaste his continued support for abortion and such things) nor the socially-minded "liberal" area, which regards his privatizing and big-business-friendly policies with disgust. (Some of us orthodox, such as yours truly, are not too enamoured with them either.)
Shall I tell you what Tony Blair is? He is a flirt. He is the male version of what the English call a prickteaser. The difference between a flirt and a tart is that the flirt has no intention of actually doing anything. He or she is always dropping hints, always leading people on, because leading people on is what s/he does. If you want an example of a flirt at work, just follow the agonizing saga of the succession continuously promised and continuously denied to Gordon Brown (no wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer is supposed to be brooding and jealous; that is exactly the attitude of the victim of a flirt). His flirting is not, in the main, sexual (although his popularity among women has always baffled me), but it certainly is in every other way the exact picture of the worst, most agonizing, most heartless leader-on of lovers.
This drew my attention to Blair's religious attitude. Blair's wife and children are Catholic and reputedly devout. He goes to church with them and has actually been present at a private ceremony with the Pope (although I cannot believe the rumour that the Pope let him take Communion as well - that would be in violation of umpteen-squinchy Church laws about schism). At the same time, he is a strong supporter of abortion and half-a-dozen other causes that do not resonate well with Catholic doctrine or spirituality. Yet he goes on the same way. For seven years or more he has done this constant double act, appearing in Catholic churches every sunday, the picture of devotion, fuelling rumours that he is about to convert, but sticking to a policy that pleases neither the moralist conservative wing of the Church (who notice with distaste his continued support for abortion and such things) nor the socially-minded "liberal" area, which regards his privatizing and big-business-friendly policies with disgust. (Some of us orthodox, such as yours truly, are not too enamoured with them either.)
Shall I tell you what Tony Blair is? He is a flirt. He is the male version of what the English call a prickteaser. The difference between a flirt and a tart is that the flirt has no intention of actually doing anything. He or she is always dropping hints, always leading people on, because leading people on is what s/he does. If you want an example of a flirt at work, just follow the agonizing saga of the succession continuously promised and continuously denied to Gordon Brown (no wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer is supposed to be brooding and jealous; that is exactly the attitude of the victim of a flirt). His flirting is not, in the main, sexual (although his popularity among women has always baffled me), but it certainly is in every other way the exact picture of the worst, most agonizing, most heartless leader-on of lovers.
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Date: 2008-01-25 09:39 am (UTC)