Tony Blair’s Good Side
Transparency, consultancy, and the careers of former prime ministers
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair first came to my attention in 1993, when I was a law student in Cardiff (oddly, at around the same time as Victoria Starmer). I had little interest in or awareness of Westminster politics then, though I’d been involved with Friends of the Earth and in council tax and anti-apartheid protests since returning to Britain – to Brighton, at first – from Canada in 1989.
Blair attracted my notice because my studies often demanded that I read Hansard, the collective name for the tomes that are the official record of parliamentary debates. Almost every time I looked up a debate, one voice stood out in its articulacy, clarity, and vision. I was delighted to successfully vote for that man and his party in 1997.
How times do change.
When I think of Tony Blair now, I first think of the bizarrely pugnacious Christmas card he and his wife Cherie once distributed. But mainly I think of him centre-stage in the United States Congress after 9/11.
There was a telethon to raise funds for the families of victims of those terrorist attacks in the immediate aftermath, with slebs doing the hosting and answering some of the phones. A review of that strange event described Tom Cruise as “priapic in the moment”, a phrase that perfectly describes Blair in Congress as everyone rose and applauded him for his unconditional support. I’d already been sickened by the oral blank cheque he handed George W. Bush just after the attacks, but that moment sealed my dislike for him, which had already been growing year by year.
For one thing, there were the people he chose as ministers. Some of whom I met in the course of my work and found to be odious idiots, not least Jack Straw.
I met someone else through work back then who is now quite famous and in possession of more power than most. The details she revealed to me of her past experience within the Blair administration were appalling. We’d both signed the Official Secrets Act at some point in our lives, so it seemed fine to discuss such matters over happy hour beverages in central London. It was quite the informal postgrad education, making me feel blushingly foolish at my past naivety based purely on political spectrum placement.
By the time he left government, complicit in war crimes in my view, I found Blair sufficiently repellant to pay him no further mind. But he has proved inescapable.
Last week I watched a documentary on the 7/7 London bombings, and there he was, sitting to favour his ‘Good Side’, delivering plenty of pensive gazes into expensive carpeting. Delivering outrageously hypocritical bollocks to camera.
“It’s important … that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.”
🦷 Blair’s first statement after the bombings
Eighteen years on, Blair had this to say about 7/7:
“We realised it was done by people who were British, people who’d been brought up in Britain, who’d frankly enjoyed all the advantages of being British, um, and all the support that the British society and state gives people. Obviously, what that showed you was that there were people within our own society who wanted to cause deep, profound harm to our country.”
He went on to admit in the same programme that “The policy to go to war in Iraq, I think that was the trigger, and that’s why 7/7 happened.” However, the interviewer then asked, “You accept that the invasion of Iraq has acted as a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda and made Britain a greater target?”
To which Blair responded, “Well, they will use any issue. They will always have a reason.” He added:
“When … when people say, ‘Well, you caused this terrorism. In the end, if you’re a political leader, you can’t take decisions on the basis of what a terrorist might do. You take decisions on the basis of what you believe is right. Now, you may end up being wrong, and it may be that people disagree with you, but you … you can’t have policy governed by the reaction of people who then go out and kill completely innocent people. The way of defeating it is to defeat it, of course, by security measures, but also by going after the ideas of these people, this evil, bankrupt ideology based on a perversion of Islam. And the best way of doing that is to show how the values of freedom and tolerance and respect for people of other religions and races is the best way to lead our lives.”
Just look at all this respect for people of other religions and races. Such freedom very respect much values.
That war cost trillions. The Chilcot Inquiry into it alone cost £9 million. In addition to the millions killed or maimed, nearly 4 million people were displaced. The Independent notes that “The numbers do not account for those who were killed as a consequence of war destroying society’s healthcare systems, resulting in just as many deaths from malnutrition and disease.”
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, of course.
Slippery. The Right Honourable Sir Tony Blair KG is a dangerously slippery individual. And that way with words I so admired 20 years ago is part of his arsenal – though I do now find it’s been made banal and hollow by too many paid speeches to people eating rubber chicken at 10 grand a seat. And perhaps by his awareness, at some level, of the increased need for caution about what he says publicly. Of his ‘legacy’.
I’ve written for Byline Times in the past about the dangerous things former PMs can get up to, and how naive we are to let them. It astonishes me that John Major is of the same party as the rancid and traitorous Johnson and Truss, but then again he came up through a very different Tory party, at least as it appeared on the surface then. We hear from him rarely, and when he does make a public statement it’s measured, statesmanlike, and apparently with a view to protecting democracy and the rule of law. It is, dare I say it … admirable.
In the next week or two I’ll take a deeper look at what Blair has been up to since leaving Downing Street. (I’m also itching to bitch about AI, so let’s see what mood I’m in). The information is out there, though not always easy to find. As I noted recently, he gets at least some of those he ‘advises’ to sign NDAs.
But as a sneak preview: I do think it will prove arguable that Tony Blair wields far more power behind the scenes and globally than he was able to as prime minister – partly because there’s no strong spotlight on him, he’s mostly free to glide about in the shadows – and that this is not a fucking good thing. He used to be leader of the opposition. Who’s the opposition keeping him in check now?