Blair's PR-connected firm Centreground Political Communications has, apparently, been behind a truly cringing ceremah event in Penang held by the Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional government.
In a pre-election effort to proclaim their 'cool image', Najib and other party heads had spurred-on the crowd to entice South Korean star Psy back on-stage. Introducing him earlier, the announcer must have worryingly realised the mood of the crowd: "Are you ready for Psy? Yeeeees. Are you ready for BN? Nooooo." And, apparently reluctant to be seen endorsing Najib and his increasingly unpopular administration, Psy seemingly reverted to 'gone-gone style', much to the acute embarrassment of the expectant clique.
It's rather pleasing to see both the BN elite and Blair's PR coterie undermined by a singer whose globally-renowned hit is actually about sending-up pretentious high-earners.
The hasty stage exit is also, perhaps, a bleak omen for the money-driven BN, a crony cabal which has bought it's way to power in Malaysia for over half a century. How fitting that Blair, a man in similar shameless pursuit of wealth and seeking to shroud his own dark record should be so closely associated with the BN network.
Aside from using some classic understatements about Blair's 'tarnished image back in the UK' - he's actually a prima facie war criminal, a rather more serious indictment to be noted than any mere populist deficit - this piece from the Sarawak Report offers some illuminating background to the PR disaster and key insights into Blair's own wealthy operations.
Najib's apparent desire to style himself on Blair the 'cool moderniser' suggests all the same political nous as the Psy fiasco. And with all those earnest Blair advisers around him peddling the 'Tony brand', we see how that process of vanity-money politics comes together. As a desperate Najib and his worried BN friends spend millions on Blair's public relations 'expertise', they probably won't be thinking too much either about the million lost Iraqis and millions more still suffering the tragic consequences of 'cool Tony's' judgements.
One also wonders what ex-PM Mahathir Mohamad, the BN's most adept image man, money politician and now relentless critic of Blair's war crimes makes of the latter's advisory role in the current BN propaganda. The dark paradox of it all.
And so it goes on. The politically-connected get richer, the voters get seduced and lied to, the 'foreigners' get bombed and the politicians get ever-shadier in how they cover that mass deception. And all the while, criminal ex-leaders like Blair get ever-more pots of cash to dispense their facile advice on how to keep spinning the same brazen lies.
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