"Sometime The feeling of momentous change is illusory"

So says Geoffrey Wheatcroft in an excellent article entitled "The final destruction of the neocon project" ( www.hindu.com/2007/05/12/stories/2007051204151100.htm ). Now that that slimy dolt, Tony Blair, is leaving, people are speaking of his leaving as if it is a change of tide of history. These are the same people who said that the events of Sep 11, 2001 changed everything.

The people who say this are wrong.

These were symptoms of a changed world. The world changes when technology changes, when systems change, when money moves and when people move. The world changed when the question that Al Qaeda posed became possible. The world changed when technology enabled asymmetric warfare on the part of small groups of radicals to strike back at large states with their own technological capabilities. The world changed when people switched economic and political systems in the Warsaw Pact countries. The world is changing as money flows into capitalist economies in emerging markets. The world is changing (in spite of the best efforts of white Europe) as people with weird colours, names, religions and histories reverse colonise North America and Europe.

The neocon project was a project of another time and another world- its ruthless prosecution will only hasten the realisation in many countries of the state of flux the world is in.

Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Howard, George Bush, Stephen Harper- these are all people of a rapidly passing era. It is worth mentioning that the socialist Segolene Royal is part of this brigade as well. Sarkozy is contemptible but not one of these. He is too raw and too much an outsider in so many ways that he is well suited to a world that doesn't care too much for France or Britain.

These are dinosaurs in this new world. People like Clinton, Paul Martin were one foot in both camps. Clinton to his credit, seems to be able to be the changeable beast he always has been. But the new leaders- well, we need them now. Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama- will they make the cut?