A bizarre little row has emerged on P-7, with Downing Street officials accused of mopping up some of the more colourful language used by Tony Blair at his press conference.
It’s interesting at how the BBC reported this however, claiming that Blair said that he would be “reduced to ‘a little puddle of water’.”
This is what Blair actually said, word for word:
It really is not good enough for people, I think I heard Ken Clarke or someone say ‘oh, the police always ask for this type of thing.
It is just not good enough, It is not responsible.
But you imagine if when I was running, in 1994, when I was running for the leadership of the Labour party and we’d had the worst terrorist attack in this country just a few months before I was running for the leadership – and the then Conservative government had said we need this legislation because the police tell us it’s necessary, you tell me how easily I would have got away with saying ‘sorry I am just not doing that’.
You tell me how many of your newspapers and your media outlets would be saying ‘oh well fair enough, there is no need to question him at all.
I wouldn’t have got away from any TV studio or any interview with anyone without a little puddle of water being where I once was.
It doesn’t sound to me like he’s suggesting he’d be reduced to a little puddle of water. It sounds to me like he’s suggesting the media would be so nasty to him that it would make him wee which would be left on the upholstery after he left the studio.
The question is, did this sort of thing happen all the time when he was getting started in 1994? Have the media been involved in some kind of elaborate cover up? Are the pants for incontinence? I think we should be told.