If you listen to Anthony Charles Lynton (known as "Tony") Blair, you would think he was English. His accent, especially when he is interviewed on TV is one known as "esturine" or Estuary English.
Blair has been on the stump this week attempting to rescue his party's fortunes in Thursday's elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and many English local government seats outside London. For many this seems like Dracula advertising a cure for anemia but today "our Tony" produced an amazing display of amnesia.
Part of his sales pitch has been the prospect of an imminent handover to Gordon Brown, finally making good on the Granita pact. This is from the BBC report today:
He told party workers: "In all probability a Scot will become PM of the United Kingdom, someone who has built our economy into one of the strongest in the world, and who, as I have said many times before, would make a great PM for Britain."
Lest people forget, Blair was born in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland. His adoption of his fake esturine accent is as genuine as the Texas drawl of the Connecticut cowboy squatting in the White House.
Blair's actual birthplace, the Queen Mary Maternity Home, was demolished last year. The Edinburgh News piece goes on to tell Blair's early history.
His father was a junior tax inspector who spent his evenings and weekends at the family home in Willowbrae studying for a law degree from Edinburgh University.
The young Tony Blair lived in the two-bedroom semi-detached house at 5 Paisley Terrace with his parents, Leo and Hazel, and his older brother Bill, until he was 19 months old.
The Blairs sold the bungalow in late 1954, when the family emigrated to Australia, where Leo had been offered a lecturing job in Adelaide.
The connections with Scotland did not end there:
He had come from a middle class family and his father had wanted to be a Conservative MP but illness ruled that out.
The young Blair was sent to the famous Fettes public school in Scotland before going on to Oxford and the Bar.
It was during his time at University that he demonstrated a rebellious streak and a love of rock and roll - playing guitar in a band "Ugly Rumours" - which he retains to this day.
His interest in politics developed later and he paid his dues by losing the hopeless Beaconsfield contest before being rewarded with the safe Labour seat of Sedgefield the following year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
Fettes is a "public" school in the British sense of being an exclusive fee-paying establishment. It is the "Eaton" of Scotland. Sedgefield is in the north of England. Typically Scots from such a background have a very English upper (middle) class "received pronunciation" accent but Blair drops this for his public appearances, a function perhaps of the trend among the "Champagne Socialists" of the fashionable Islington area of London the Blairs lived in prior to Downing Street. Real upper class socialists like Lord Stansgate (AKA Anthony Wedgewood Benn, lately Tony Benn) make no such pretence, even if they are in similar danger of their names disappearing entirely. But then Blair was never a Socialist. Just someone who would do anything, say anything to get elected. And say it in any way that would sell.