The Sunday Times of London reports that Prime Minister Tony Blair spent £1,800 in taxpayer money on make-up for his media appearances between 1999 and 2005:
Of late he has had something else to conceal, as Carole Caplin, the Blairs’ former lifestyle guru, recently let slip: “He’s in dire straits, he’s put on weight. I can’t believe the change in him since I’ve not been there.”
Caplin added: “I got him off coffee, alcohol and he’s gone into all those things again.”
Lord Bassam of Brighton, a government whip, disclosed that a total of £815.67 had been spent during that difficult year when Blair was under particular stress and getting too many late nights.
He claimed that no records were available for Blair’s early years in Downing Street. But in 1998, when Blair appeared on a Sunday morning television programme to defend himself over the Formula 1 sleaze row, commentators remarked how thin and sick he looked.
No comparative figures are available for cabinet colleagues such as John Prescott or Charles Clarke, but they are not thought to be big fans of wearing cosmetics, even for television appearances.
During the election campaign it was strongly rumoured that Blair was wearing a “spray-on” tan because he looked so healthy despite days of grey weather.
Even members of his own family helped to fuel the rumours, privately speculating that Blair’s tan was “too good to be true”.
[snip]
Claudia Croft, fashion editor of The Sunday Times, said: “So much of our political information comes from TV that politicians are like movie stars now — image is everything. Blair takes it really seriously, he’s like the Tom Cruise of politics.
It’s not surprising to find that a politician willing to back a war based on fake intelligence would do so while sporting a fake tan. But it does add another layer to the foundation of the argument that the War in Iraq was gussied up from the start.
And it begs the question: how much taxpayer money has George W. Bush spent on cosmetics?
5 Comments on "Lipstick on a Lap Dog"
upyernoz:
this reminds me of the controversy about clinton’s $200 haircut on the LAX runway that disrupted air traffic nationwide. it turned out to be bullshit, but that didn’t stop all major newpapers from printing the story
JLo:
Oh, come now, Matt. You know you’d want to look as fabulous as possible if you were the PM–especially after “Love, Actually”. Don’t hate the playa, playa–hate the game.
Matt:
I’m not claiming that this is major news — and of course it is part of the game — but it’s also emblematic of Bush and Blair’s efforts to mask the reality of the Iraq War to the citizens of their countries.
IMO, it’s a good thing for war to take a physical toll on a country’s leader — at least it shows that somewhere inside that noggin might lie a conscience.
publicorgtheory:
Robert McNamara’s probably a good example of the physical toll. By the way, what’s the story with Secs of Defense and round, rimless glasses?
Suzy Shedd:
You mean that box on George’s back during the debates was his MAKEUP kit? Well why didn’t he just say so? We can all understand that a guy who’s in charge needs a little No.2 Beige to even out his skin tone…
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