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'...but the public does not believe in these fairy tales

Posted November 30th, 2006 by Tom

[Beret Tip to morningstar in the Comments]

Lord Steyn has long been more than a bit miffed with Tony Blair - coming from South Africa where he was a long-standing critic of apartheid (which is why he came here) he's been a thorn in the side. Who will rid me of this turbulent, er, former judge.

Anyway, he's used his position in the Upper House to put the boot into Blair, Bush and the warmongers, and boy is it pleasing to hear what are broadly speaking Blairwatch's views from a parliamentarian, particularly given the activities of the Keystone Kops morons in the Commons (see yesterday's post on the appalling DPMQs).

A few choice lines from his speech to the Bar Council (who, if I'm any judge, are a fairly receptive audience, being the people who have to wrestle with Home Office legislation for a living):

Long after the Prime Minister and his present Cabinet have gone, our country will pay a price for an abdication by our Government of independent responsibility in foreign affairs
Encouraged by the excesses of the war against terrorism many countries have adopted repressive policies, believing them now to be justified.
Our Prime Minister back the Bush administration in its war on terrorism however lawless and outrageous the means adopted.
Due to the conduct of our Government we share in the shame

Now, this all comes from the Mail's coverage, but we don't want to give you just Paul Dacre's rag's view, by dint of sheer Googling effort, I've found the entire lecture in a PDF on the Bar Council website.

I strongly recommend having a read - snippets reported in right-wing newspapers is one thing, but Lord Steyn is one of the good guys and deserves to have the full thing read widely. Indeed, the speech is actually a good deal more damning even than the Mail's report, which concentrates on the bits damaging to Tony Blair. He does spell 'Cheney' wrong, throughout.

Lord Steyn sounds just the

On November 30th, 2006 barnacle_bill (not verified) says:

Lord Steyn sounds just the man to be opening for the prosecution over in The Hague.
Might my Christmas wishes of an early visit from Inspector Yates, swiftly followed by a special rendition flight over to The Hague for poodle, be coming true?

The correct spelling of

On December 1st, 2006 ziz (not verified) says:

The correct spelling of "Cheney" is "cunt"

Thanks for posting this. I

On December 1st, 2006 ianLP59 says:

Thanks for posting this. I have read the speech in full and thoroughly agree with all that Lord Steyn had to say.

I didn't catch much news yesterday because of other commitments. However, I would be interested to know how much cover and analysis this speech provoked on the air waves from our beloved but sadly post-Hutton emasculated BBC ?

Ian

I did check yesterday -

On December 1st, 2006 Tom says:

I did check yesterday - having twigged that the Mail had edited it to appear to be more an attack on Blair than an attack on the US/UK way of doing foreign policy, I wanted to see how the BBC had spun it, only to find that they were either hiding it very well or had ignored it totally. A search today for Steyn Bar Council returns nothing at all of any relevance. In fact, the Mail appears to be the only national to cover it online, according to Google.

The most recent Grauniad reference to His Lordship is from Monday, but it's worth reading anyway

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1957895,00.html

As an aside, is it just me or does the BBC's search engine suck, and indeed has done so for years?

Thanks for mentioning this

On December 1st, 2006 Captain Haddock (not verified) says:

Thanks for mentioning this speech, which is a jolly good one. I'm not going to hold my breath, however, for any of the MSM to have a headline "Bush and Blair trash international law".

Nice ref to Pinochet1998, "

On December 1st, 2006 frog says:

Nice ref to Pinochet1998, " crimes under international law , such as torture, could not be considered as within the official capacity of a head of state " .

However, this seems to have been contradicted by the recent Saudi Torture case, where they claimed sovereign immunity, and got away with it ?