Dander

When my dander is up, I don’t mind saying it is not a time to be a visitor at Blunt Mansions. I am normally an equable enough chap – slow to form hasty judgement, and equally swift in taking my time when responding to a crisis.

But certain things seem to get my dander up.

I’m not a doctor, so I cannot even tell you with any certainty where my, or anyone else’s, dander is located. I imagine it to be somewhere between the small intestine and the liver. I am sure someone with medical knowledge will enlighten me.

One thing I do know, however: a dander’s natural state is to be down. It is happiest when immotile, snuggled away not doing anyone the slightest harm. For the most part, we go about our day-to-day life without the slightest awareness of its workings.

When provoked, however, the dander can easily grow to four or five times its normal size, fuelled by gall, ire and bile. It can be prodded into life by the front page headline of any edition of the Daily Express, particularly if the words ‘asylum seeker’, ‘rising interest rates’ or ‘immigration’ are mentioned.

Most recently, I have found my dander stirring whenever I witness the attempts to canonise Tony Blair, our ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ prime minister. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of these rabid anti-Blairites you sometimes see popping up on the TV every now and again to have a go at the PM. But nor would I pretend to be one of Tony’s staunchest defenders.

I am, at heart, a man of balance. That doesn’t mean I have any truck with liberals, of course. Rather, I err towards the words of the late, lamented Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Ebbw Vale MP who warned us that ‘People who stay in the middle of the road get run over’. I steer my course through life more as the drunk who makes his way home late at night, having squandered the few quid he’d put by for a taxi on one last drink. I stagger to the left, then I stagger to the right – but I never follow the white lines.

For the most part, I find this keeps my dander well in check. But Britain’s apparent willingness to jump into bed with our American cousins at the slightest invitation – whether this be the first Gulf War or the current one, brings my dander out in all its fearsome glory. I cannot (and will not) believe that the best interests of the British people are served by this ‘special’ relationship.

And Tony Blair’s lasting legacy will, I’m afraid, be precisely that he fed this same relationship with a slavishness bordering on sycophancy. I heartily hope that Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, will steer a different course in seeking out a ‘special friend’. But I’m not holding my breath.