So according to Tony Blair "without God's Truth at its centre, no community can fulfil its potential." The pursuit of maximum short term profit without proper regard to the communal good is, he says "a mistake and leads to neither profit nor good". If this is so than just where was he when his Government were making it clear that they "had no problems with people getting filthy rich"? Why was his government presiding over a continuing deregulation of the banking sector that nearly led to economic meltdown?
With his family circumstances now almost a byword for acquisitiveness this is taking his recent Catholic conversion much to far. When he finally appears as a penniless mendicant in sackcloth and ashes we might just believe him. No, after Iraq, probably not even then!
Interestingly as part of this "analysis" he distinguishes two different senses of the word community: "one to distinguish it from government, to emphasise civil society ... the other is just to describe the general community of public opinion". Both of these attempts at definition are interesting but ultimately facile. The former because it shows how in his mind the discourse around "community" is deliberately posed as being against government and the state and can then be used as a stick to beat public provision - as part of a discourse that pushes privatisation and is prepared to use the "voluntary and community sector" as a smokescreen or accomplice in this process - classic New Labour.
The notion that public opinion is itself a community sucks any possible meaning out of the word that it ever claimed to have in the first place.
And here he is making this humble submission whilst holidaying on a millionare's yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean!
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