Sharpe attacks Blair, Bush

6 October 2004

BARCELONA- British author Tom Sharpe on Tuesday used a presentation of his latest novel in Spain to lash out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair for supporting the US-led war in Iraq.

“Tony Blair is right wing, much more to the right than (former prime minister) Margaret Thatcher,” opined Cambridge-educated Sharpe, attending the presentation in Barcelona late Tuesday of his latest satirical farce Wilt in Nowhere.

“He is doing much more damage than Thatcher and is destroying our faith in politics,” Sharpe alleged.

Warming to his theme, Sharpe, 76, added: “(US) President (George W.) Bush doesn’t need toilet paper. He has Blair,” and said he hoped that Democratic challenger John Kerry would unseat Bush in next month’s US presidential election.

Sharpe, who gained notoriety with his debut novel Riotous Assembly set in apartheid-era South Africa, also drew a parallel between the US-led and British-backed invasion of Iraq with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, which led to Britain declaring war on Hitler’s Germany.

In a further dig at Britain under Blair, Sharpe, who spends part of the year on Spain’s Costa Brava, said he opposed the British government’s long drawn out battle to ban foxhunting.

“I am in favour of foxhunting because foxes kill chickens,” said the novelist, adding, by way of criticising Spain for good measure, that “they have more luck than bulls.”

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news