Not Without Honour, Save In His Own Country

The ascended incarnation of the Vicar of Downing Street has struck back at those feral beasts, the British mainstream media, which did so much to keep him from trotting into Iraq at George W Bush's heels. "Reading the papers in Britain, you'd end up thinking I'd lost three elections rather than won them," Tony told the Sunday Murdoch, as though anybody doubted that winning against the likes of William Hague, Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith were within his capabilities.

"If I did what these people who criticise me here wanted," Tony whined, "I'd end up just sitting in a corner." This is a misconception. Neither I nor anyone else who tries to salvage a measure of self-respect by criticising the Vicar of Downing Street in any of his luminous manifestations wants him just to be sitting in a corner, unless he plans to commit seppuku there. Some of us, for example, would like to see him on trial at the Hague, or even in Baghdad. Some of us merely wish him in Hell. Some of us, including myself, would like to see his assets seized and paid as reparations to the Iraqi people, and the Vicar himself deported to Iraq and put to such work of reconstruction as is commensurate with his age and physical condition.

Tony was also at pains to stress that it is untrue that nobody likes him. Again, this is a rather obvious point. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has accused Tony of not being liked; the problem is that his friends and disciples tend to be such charming anthropological curiosities as Hazel Blears, Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring, George W Bush and, indeed, the proprietor of the Sunday Murdoch. Still, once he gets away from the dreadful tax regime which somebody or other has set up in Britain over the last thirteen years, Tony tends to feel his aura slipping back into mellower mode: "There is a completely different atmosphere around me outside the country. People accept the work that you are doing, as it is. They don't see anything wrong with being successful financially and also doing good work". Indeed, as far as Tony is concerned, doing well and doing good have always been more or less synonymous, though a few thousand Middle Easterners whose loved ones are resting in the peace he has helped create might possibly beg to differ.