Dinner in the desert

The media, having just given Mr Cameron a fine eulogy for his courage and statesmanship in office, are now, in the wake of the Chilcot report, seething with outrage at Mr Blair. The public, too, if we believe what the outraged media tell us.

Some of us were already outraged by Blair even before he won his first election for Labour by a landslide in 1997. We outraged ones were even more outraged at the enthusiastic media, who almost without exception were writhing in foaming-mouthed paroxysms of joy at his election. It can't last, we told ourselves.

Given the repellent unpalatibility of the Conservative opposition we couldn't find it in our hearts to be outraged at the deluded fools who voted for Blair in their masses in 1997, giving him the largest majority of seats achieved in recent times, larger even than the previous disastrous Labour landslide in 1945.

Some Conservative voters, outraged, withheld their votes: that was the first time I heard someone demanding a 'None of the above' box be printed at the bottom of every ballot paper.

The outrage recurred, heightened, at the subsequent election in 2001, which Blair also won. His own party spineless, the opposition spineless, the media spineless and the electoral turnout dwindling as more and more people stayed away from the vote.

The invasion of Iraq, now such an outrage, started in 2003. Two years later the electorate were so outraged at Blair and his dodgy dossiers that they voted him into power yet again.

It would be tasteless and hurtful to ask those grieving relatives of the 179 service personnel who were killed and those of the many more who were severely wounded how they voted in 2005 or even 2001.

Outrage followed outrage as the crown was handed on to Gordon Brown without bothering for a specific mandate. When Brown lost in 2010, no one else managed to win, even against that defective specimen, so there was even more outrage as that un-British thing, a coalition, installed itself as a five year fixture and governed on the basis of promises for which no one now claimed responsibility.

The fawning media transferred their affection to David Cameron, the 'heir to Blair' as he styled himself, and since then outrage has continued to follow outrage.

Many slippers have been thrown at TV sets in these last twenty years. To what purpose, we ask? Where to with our outrage now? It is quite impossible to choose between them: the media, Blair, Cameron, the useless troughers and timeservers in the Commons and the repellent 'nobles' in the engorged House of Lords, both of whom now tell us they were 'lied to' by the evil one.

It's as though we outraged ones have been invited for dinner to a Bedouin tent and our host has just presented us with a large plate of tribal specialities. The blueflies of the desert have already taken their seats.

As guests we can have the first choice of the tastiest morsels: perhaps a sheep's eye or two, or something that once dangled under a goat or wafted behind a camel. We simply can't do it: all sphincters tremble and swoon, threatening to void at both ends as we just look at that steaming and fragrant platter being held under our noses.

Thank God! we say: at last, Theresa May is here to free us from our misery.