If Only

Well, who would have thought that Tony Blair would keep on cropping up in the news? Wendi Deng Murdoch, indeed? And that damned Chilcot Inquiry just keeps on keeping on. What's to be made of it all - surely we can accept the words of  senior politician? If only.

With my sincere apologies to Rudyard Kipling:

IF you can keep your lies when all about you 

Are changing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust your vote when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their voting too;

If you can spend and not be tired by spending,

Or being lied about, spread still more lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can spin - and not make spin your master;

If you can promise - and not make deeds your aim;

If you can meet with Nissan and Mercedes

And treat those different trade blocks just the same;

If you can bear to hear the crap you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make more crap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and sell 'em up to worn-out fools: 

If you can make one heap of your expenses 

And risk it on one turn of bribe-and-graft,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your craft;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after honour’s gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the lie which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your secrets,

Or oligarchs - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can fleece you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of falsehood spun,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a politician, my son!