Now, there’s nothing personal about this letter. I only want to help: I’m not even a crank or an 80 year-old anti-war protester disagreeing with your policies. It’s just that I’ve paid the VAT and tax on the beer that I plan to calm-down on whilst typing this letter, and theoretically, that means I’ve already helped pay for your air-tickets. In my own insignificant way, I’m a shareholder in you - by extension, every jobless British drinker is - and it gives me a warm glow deep inside just knowing that fact. And I hope it does the same for you. But I have to admit; my blood did run as cold as a helium vodkatini when I heard that open-mike jam you did with the President the other day:

“Yo, Blair!” Yo, Blair???

“Mi been checkin’ ya television tonite: bredrin’, you wuz bear bumming dat Bushman t’ing!” - isn’t that more like how The Kids are supposed to talk these days? - that George friend of yours sounds like some kind of mid-80’s Mall-Rat. What sort of signal do you think that sends, now that the rockets are flying and millions look to you for some sort of manly guidance? And by the way: you stood there and took that insult off George Bush? You’re supposed to be representing us as a Nation! All 56 million potential screaming targets - remember?

Anthony, mate, that finger-snap was a bad diss and one serious credibility cock-up in front of the entire planet; and what kind of Gang Name is “Blair”, anyway? - latest member of the X-Men? WWF tag-team? Either give the job up, mate, or change your PR person and youth-slang dictionary: what that sucker MC actually said was that he thinks that your rhymes were wack. He made you look like you were his pee-wee runner (and would probably be his prison bee-yatch too, if you ever got banged-up together for war-crimes), and yet you took it with a smile... He’d leave you holding the bags thinking they were sweeties, that’s for certain. He mugged you off with that snap of the finger! And us, too.

But I’m not writing this to talk about off-the-cuff knitwear-talk between Gang Buddies: I’d like to share my thoughts with you regarding your public reaction to the Lebanon crisis. Congratulations, Tony - it was a pure, Blair, classic! You surpassed yourself this performance darling; You shone. As do many fishy products, when they get near their sell-by date - if that was your political Apotheosis, then I can only thank you for your unexpected gift of honesty. It was almost physically painful.

I have never seen anything that even came close to that performance you did with George Bush earlier today as Hizbollah carried on rocketing hapless Israeli Arabs while Israel retaliated by laser-bombing loads of conveniently-forgotten Maronite Christians: talk about a World Crisis - it is, if you live in London. When you went running up those aeroplane stairs like the first sane man out of Sarajevo, it really looked as if you had something useful to impart to a distinctly jumpy world. Alas, like so many other of your previous well-intentioned drives and initiatives, it ended up actually achieving nothing but yet more footage of you smiling fixedly into the cameras while telling us that everything’s Going Really Well: you’ve got to stop doing that, Tony - it’s giving us the creeps, now that so many people are dying every day.

Nixon telling a stunned nation that He Was Not a Crook or Clinton looking the camera straight in the eye and denying those gobble-allegations were just basic, grey-line peccadilloes compared with your say-nothing defence on Lebanon - Dick and Bill were only doing their jobs by flatly-denying those tapes and tadpole-traces: you, on the other hand, were staying deliberately stumm while helpless babes and UN observers were getting spread all over the landscape, as you spoke, on every news channel on the planet.

You could at least have had the basic decency to suggest that, you know, maybe tentative immediate cease-fires weren’t such a poor option when it comes to targeting pressing humanitarian issues - but, no. You didn’t. I think the abject implication of your silence is going to take the next few months to sink in... I still can’t quite believe what I saw: It wasn’t what you did - or rather didn’t - do during that press-call, more like the way you did it. It was horrible to watch. Are you sure you’re not the Antichrist, Tony? Surely no ordinary mortal could have that amount of Front, and still expect to claim any kind of moral authority over his constituents afterwards. It was awesome.

It wasn’t so much the politics that shocked or disturbed me - they were as blatantly obvious and up-front as The Sooty Show, and it wasn’t too hard to work out why Bush was grimacing almost as badly as you were every time he had to speak his lines - but the presentation of the show that weirded the fuck out me. To be honest with you Tony, I think you’ve got a bit of an Image problem these days: you really don’t inspire “your people” with too much confidance when you Stand Up There - in fact you’re beginning to frighten the crap out of them. I know image is what you do best, but it really doesn’t seem to be working for you at the moment, especially now that you actually have to do something.

It’s bad enough having all those Hard Kids from the Estate spreading rumours that you’re George’s “special little joey”, but when, every time you get back together with him on Telly you start going all shy and gooey and doing everything he says... well, there’s a phrase for it in the Philippines, but it’s too graphic to print in a fashionable webzine like this one. At least try and look as if you’ve got some cojones! A word of free fashion advice, too - Please: stop smiling! And the next time he snaps his fingers at you, threaten to “jook him up bad-style in front of the cameras for doin’ dat” - imagine his face if you said it! You’d get through to The Kids then. You’d get ‘nuff respect.

Even a word or two of mild warning directed at you-know-whom would have been enough to raise a Moderate cheer back home - taking the microphone off Bush, MC style, and THEN threatening to “mash-up both-a dem fightin’ baaackside” for “fuckin’ with mi runnings ‘fore Caarnival” would have bought the roof down... But you blew the chance, forever. A pity; you could have been really popular again, just like back in ‘97 - but it’s probably too late for that now unless this war seriously starts crossing borders and it comes down to a toss-up between you or Gordon from your school as Head Monitor. Hmmm...

No. That was an unworthy thought from me. I realise you’ve been under a lot of strain, and that I should stop being such a negative person and try and look on the bright side of your domestic and middle-eastern policies; I empathise with your hurt. But the thing is, Tony, you only ever seem to start acting dangerously like this when you’re around that George Bush kid. He seems to bring out the worst in you - I think he encourages you, somehow. I know that it’s a good - and even honourable - thing to “hang” shoulder-to-shoulder with your friends on the Street, especially when they’re down-on-their-luck and don’t seem to have any other mates to “run t’ings” down the Mall with them, but, please, think - that George boy could get you in serious trouble: surely the police have been called out to your school enough times lately... Didn’t what happened to Johnny Prescott teach you anything about human nature?

You have to realise, Tony, that George Bush means real business when he jokes about causing trouble with the other older boys outside school; I think you’re getting way out of your depth when you’re out with him, and I’m not the only person who’s been saying that - he’s been seen doing deals with some very unstable and dangerous people. The thing you have to remember, Tony, is that George can afford to take these stupid risks - he’s got nothing to lose, compared with you. He comes from a very large family who live down in the trailer-park, they all own guns, and they can always form a circle and look after themselves if any of the people George has annoyed come looking for him in the middle of the night: people disappear out there in Texas. Now you can’t really do that in a Semi in Islington, if George has annoyed the people downstairs, can you? Do you see my point?

So, unless you come right out and say, ‘So what? - I live in a ****ing bunker, motherf**ker! And so do all my Crew!’ and start throwing your arm around George’s shoulders and telling the cameras that you always, deep down, wanted to be a Gangster, and “how much you love and respect this guy!” every time you meet, I’d ease-off a little with the Holier than Thou bit when you’re away from him: Saddam must be laughing his loose, floppy, pants off. And that can’t be right.

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