Tony, Your Silk Stocking's Hanging Down

Her Madge Gawblesser is to confer upon Britain's most prominent war criminal one of Britain's most ancient and ludicrous honours. The Most Reverend Tony Blair is to be appointed a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, a title invented by the fourteenth-century king Edward III, who would have been proud to acknowledge Tony's bag of Muslims as his own. Like Edward and the National Johnson, Tony is a member of the Church of Rome, and like Johnson's his conversion was most likely motivated by something in his trousers. I refer to his wallet, of course: rumours of hanky-panky with a Murdoch spouse aside, Tony's besetting sin has always been middle-class avarice rather than upper-class lust. The Press Association notes his bestowing of the cognomen "People's Princess" on Diana, and does not neglect to mention his discretion in waiting until after her death to do so. A mere footnote to this glittering achievement is the fact that his reverence "was the UK's leader during Allied military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan." He just happened to be there at the time, you understand. The Press Association is also tactful enough to note Sir Tony's time as a "Middle East envoy" rather than as a Middle East peace envoy, and to forbear from mentioning his profitable stint providing public-relations advice to the dictatorship of Kazakhstan.