let us start the new year with a quote from the great boris johnston

What, nothing? Not a peep, not a dickie bird? How long can Blair maintain radio silence? If some soap star had popped her clogs or some Newcastle striker had gone to the great subs bench in the sky, then you may be sure that the Number 10 machine would have chuntered out some tabloid-friendly quote.

This is the Prime Minister who once used an official statement to call for the release of "Deirdre" from her fictional Coronation Street jail -- and yet he won't give the nation the benefit of his views on the death of Saddam Hussein.

You will note that in the case of all the soap queens and pop stars whose deaths were marked by Downing Street, Blair had no personal knowledge of them, let alone responsibility for their deaths. In the case of Saddam Hussein, Blair was not only personally implicated, but for better or worse he has implicated the entire country...

...Was this what we fought for? Is this really the lesson in human rights and Western values we hoped to deliver to the people of Iraq? This wasn't justice. This was a sectarian lynch mob. This was a snuff movie.

How dare the Prime Minister pretend that it is somehow nothing to do with him? He was the only Western leader of any importance to join George W. Bush in the war to remove Saddam.

It was Blair who sent thousands of British troops to join the coalition, and Blair who authorised the spending of at least £5 billion on a war in Mesopotamia, and it was Blair who was therefore directly co-responsible for putting Saddam Hussein on the end of that rope....

...Or am I wrong? If so, please could the Prime Minister get a T-shirt on and get out of that Bee Gee mansion and just for 30 seconds could he do what he normally does with such practised ease almost every day.

Come on Tony, give us one of your sound bites. What is your reaction to the Saddam snuff movie? It was Tony Blair who persuaded so many of us that Iraq would be better off without Saddam. Can he give a single piece of evidence in support of that claim? ...

...If he can't articulate his thoughts -- our thoughts -- on the disgusting death of Saddam, then he has ceased to give leadership. His premiership is effectively over.

personally i don't care either way over madman insane's death, but i do find it interesting that bliar is very silent on the issue. that is until, erm, he backed a probe into the videos of the hanging. sorry bliar boy, but if you're going to use mediaeval forms of justice then you can't go about sanitising the politics. afterall, the point of public executions is that they're, erm, public.