A QUESTION OF "HONOURS" - WHILE BLAIR GETS AWAY WITH MURDER?

Of course, the "cash for honours" debacle confronting Blair today is really a case of Blair flouting his own legislation, since it was his government which imposed financial transparency on political parties. As it turns out, it seems that in Blair's book, such legislation only applies to the others!

That being said, this kind of wheeling and dealing has always been common practice by all ruling parties, more or less hidden - and was even an open policy under prime minister Lloyd George, after he became PM, way back in 1916!

However, one has to ask if the media storm generated by this "scandal" today is actually proportionate to its real consequences? After all, who cares whether some wealthy parasites buy themselves one of those honorific titles of "Lord" or "Sir", or the like? For the rest of us, such antiquated adornment belongs to the past, and is just as irrelevant as the monarchy!

The hot talk in town today, is whether Blair will be forced to resign or not, over the sleaze issue. But wouldn't it be ironical - and in fact a cynical twist of politics - if a question of ancient symbolic "honours" was to achieve what the opposition to Blair's bloody slaughter of the Iraqi and Afghan peoples, failed to achieve?

Of course, what is at stake on this score, is the authority of the state. Blair can afford to resign over sleaze, which only implicates himself and some of the high fliers in his party. But he cannot afford to resign over his war policy, which implicates the entire state machinery, all the main parties and the capitalist class as a whole.