Is there anything more irksome than an exiting leader offering the world, when their entire time in office has been an utter debacle?
While the subject of this post is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, such a question could easily apply to his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, his predecessor Tony Blair, and even President George Bush.
As the economy spirals out of control, Gordon appears on our screens daily with his jaw hanging slackly every five words, as brief expostulations on how Labour can save the economic cosmos ooze forth.
Although I have long held that the day I quote a Conservative MP would be the day I decline a chocolate truffle, decline I must, for George Osborne expressed the financial reality:
Gordon Brown will do anything to avoid telling this country the truth. So as he won’t, I will.
The cupboard is bare. There is no more money. Tax revenues have collapsed. Unemployment costs are rising. Borrowing is out of control. Labour has done it again.
It’s no good talking about the big up-front tax giveaways we might like to make, or the big spending increases it might be nice to have. Because I repeat: there is no more money. [Source]
Gordon swiftly recovered in the aftermath of the defeat of the $700 billion bailout bill in the United States to condemn such a seemingly selfish action.
Which is ironic, given how little Labour has delivered since its hey-day of Cool Britannia, for Cool Britannia it certainly shall be this winter as the credit crunch forces pensioners to seek warmth in bed all day, and the rising costs of fuel loom with grim tidings.
Then there is Tony; skulking around the Middle East peddling peace initiatives after shaking hands on immeasurable occasions with the very man who has wreaked the havoc that has blighted the lives of countless Iraqis, Palestinians, and Afghans.
The irony is not lost: Tony, the warmonger turned peace guru; Gordon, the economist turned human death-nell to the British economy; and now, Ehud, who single-handedly brought Lebanon to her knees in 2006, posits a landmark deal for the Palestinians.
According to Olmert, Israel should withdraw from almost all the territory garnered during the 1967 War, in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syria:
I am saying what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in east Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights. We have an opportunity that is limited in time, in which we can perhaps reach a historic deal in our relations with the Palestinians and another historic step in our relations with Syria. In both cases, the decision we must reach is a decision that we have been refusing to accept for the past four decades.
We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the significance of which is that we will withdraw from almost all of the territories, if not all of them. We will maintain control over a certain percentage of the territories, but we will have to give the Palestinians a commensurate percentage of our land, because without this, there will be no peace. [Source]
How lovely such words are! Yet how futile and useless, as the former leader exits in a flurry of scandal with little or no influence with which to enact such sentiments.
As the Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Malki expressed: “We wish we had heard this personal opinion before he resigned. It is a very important commitment but it came so late.”
Too little, too late: the expression is swiftly becoming a maxim for our times.
[Image via: Cecilia]
