Hazel Blears is the epitome of New Labour populism. She is the friendly face of outflanking the BNP to the Right. Portrayed as a bouncy little “no-nonsense” politician, “no-nonsense” and “common-sense” are code for “very very right wing indeed”.

In this video interview with George Monbiot, she reminds me irresistibly of Gracie Fields, if Grace Fields were campaigning for Oswald Mosley:

“‘Ee, Ducks, don’t you worry about that Mr Hitler, e’ll do alright. Just you think about the ordinary working folk here in’t mill. That’s what I call decent politics, like.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/video/2009/apr/25/monbiot-meets-hazel-blears

Except that the Blears act is very thin indeed. Seven minutes in to the Monbiot video, he challenges her over New Labour support for the evil “President” Karimov of Uzbekistan. Blears pretends hardly to have heard of Karimov, and as Monbiot presses, she makes out that she knows nothing about Uzbekistan and is only interested in “Jobs and education for the people here in Salford”.

But Blears has played a key role in New Labour’s support for Karimov. In October 2005 Hazel Blears told the House of Commons that the Islamic Jihad Union had been responsible for bomb attacks in Tashkent in March 2004. In fact, there were no bombs in Tashkent in 2004. I was able personally to inspect each of the alleged bomb sites within hours – and in one case minutes – of the alleged explosions, and there were no bombs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/oct/19/foreignpolicy.uksecurity

A very full description is given on pages 325 to 340 of Murder in Samarkand.

The purpose of the false bombing campaign was to provide cover for the shooting dead of several dozen dissidents, and more importantly to establish a new black ops “terror” group, the “Islamic Jihad Union”. This group, never heard of before, was immediately blamed by the Uzbek government for the “bombs”.

In fact the Islamic Jihad Union was a creation of the Uzbek and German security services, with CIA involvement. The “bombs” were timed for the day a senior level delegation of German MPs and MEPs were in Tashkent. The motive behind creating the “Islamic Jihad Union” was to firm up political support for the controversial German deployment of troops in Afghanistan, supported by the German airbase at Termez in Uzbekistan, which is still operating.

German security services have since arranged a series of terror scares in Germany over pretended planned bombing campaigns by the “Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union” inside Germany, to continue to whip up German public support for their alliance with the odious Karimov.

Blears specifically told the House of Commons that the Islamic Jihad Union was reponsible for the “bombs” in Uzbekistan, and then defended this in subsequent debate against sceptical MPs.

For her to pretend to Monbiot that she has no idea what he is talking about on Uzbekistan, is sickening. The woman has “Fake” stamped all the way through her.