G8

It would be very odd if people came to protest against this G8, as we're focusing on poverty in Africa and climate change. I don't quite know what they'll be protesting against. Tony Blair in Dundee, March 2005.

Blair's mixture of perplexity and faux naivety is no off the cuff response. There is a clear strategy unfolding before us. The Prime Minister and his cohorts in government and in the police, special branch and MI5 have been busy with their strategy of trying to undermine and marginalise protest against their failed policies when they meet at Gleneagles this summer. The first part of the strategy is to separate the 'good protestors' from the bad ones. This is done first, by whipping up fear about the prospects of trouble at the G8 summit and second by suggesting that New Labour is on the side of the angels. They are building on the 'progressive consensus' in the phrase recited by rote by Schools minister David Miliband.

Spinning the G8
by David Miller
ZNet

More info about the next G8 in Scotland can be found here.