For one so quick to turn his back on British public life, Tony Blair finds it hard to avoid the limelight. His tarnished glamour, exotic foreign jobs and money-making guarantee headlines. The country has not come to terms with his legacy. The jury is not only still out on Blair but it is arguing loudly about the trial evidence.
Unlike some of his predecessors, our last prime minister has made life easy for his successor, Gordon Brown, the friend who became his chief opponent, then his assassin. But as long as he is true to his personal motto, “Don’t retire, don’t expire”, Blair can’t avoid controversy. Weeks ago, he was the favourite to become the first president of Europe. His candidacy infuriated the anti-war left and provoked the ire of the Conservative party. In the new year, all eyes will turn to him again when he appears before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war.
Blair’s enemies in the press and the Labour party are looking for a crucifixion but fear a whitewash. If Chilcot and his colleagues fail to oblige them, they will write the indictment. “Fantasist, liar, American poodle, CIA agent and warmonger,” goes the chorus. He’s heard it all before.
TB’s love/hate affair with the media continues too. In more measured terms than his embittered wife, Cherie, he ticks us off. “I’ve got a problem with the media. They don’t approach me in an objective way,” he tells our interviewer in News Review today. “Their first question is how to belittle what I’m doing, knock it down, write something bad about it. It’s not right. It’s not journalism.” Yet the former first couple have both communicated their disquiet through the pages of The Sunday Times. The Blairs still need us — “feral beasts” though we be.
The thing to understand about Blair is that all the good things about him made him bad too: his virtues were his vices. Guile is a necessary political weapon; he used it well. Yet a reputation for cunning is self-defeating; the good Machiavellian hides his purpose. New Labour spin outlived its purpose: what is the point of spinning if everyone talks about the spinner? What if the spinning advances no agenda other than re-election? And sensitivity to public opinion is a weakness as well as a strength. Some unpopular causes were worth fighting for. Some colleagues, or rather his neighbour at No 11, should have been faced down, not placated.
John Arlidge, our interviewer, doesn’t take Blair at his word that his greatest regret was not to drive public service reform, rather than the decision to join an American-led war. I wonder. Interviewing him at No 10 before his departure, I got the impression that he was desperate to be credited with domestic achievements. His failure to move Brown from No 11 after the 2001 election meant he couldn’t get past a monumental “roadblock to reform”.
Education, education, education had been his clarion call. He launched his city academies and specialist school programmes late in the day. Even then, their freedoms were circumscribed by old Labour hostility.
Blair’s premiership marked no great change in this country’s post-war history — that distinction goes to Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher; his triumphs at the ballot box were not matched by corresponding domestic achievements. If the record at home is patchy, then his steely idealism abroad led to triumphs. Unanchored by realism on the ground, it also led to failures.
Balance, the name of his Westminster game, was lacking in foreign affairs. New Labour, for instance, utterly failed to make the case for integrating this country further in the European system largely because its road map showed only a one-way street of concessions to Brussels. Blair never seriously sought a quid pro quo in returning rights and responsibilities to Britain, as the rhetoric of European subsidiarity suggested he ought. That really would have been a third way.
The circumstances weren’t right and the premises were flawed but even as a sceptic I admit there was a grandeur to his conception of a Europe tied by Britain to America. The pygmies of Brussels last month would have none of it.
The entrails of defeat are now on display at Chilcot. The government’s failures to plan for the post-war occupation of Iraq are glaring. Yet when I see the buck-passing of the bureaucratic class as it parades before Chilcot, I feel a twinge of sympathy for Blair. So it was all Tony’s fault, was it? The brass hats who boasted of their “soft cap” peacekeeping triumphs in Northern Ireland and sneered at American stupidity hardly distinguished themselves in Basra. Later, those same military geniuses advised Blair that Helmand would be a picnic for our brave infantry. That’s not my analysis, by the way, but that of a disillusioned soldier who heard at first hand the rosy predictions.
The diplomats were outraged by their exclusion from “Blair’s wars” and are now having their fun. Sir Christopher Meyer, our red-socked former ambassador in Washington, offers the most deadly criticism: Lady Thatcher would have forced Bush to do his homework on post-war Iraq; Blair rolled over and had his tummy tickled by Bush.
Let’s put this failure in context, shall we? Bush’s own secretary of state, the five-star general Colin Powell, also failed to concentrate the president’s mind on the aftermath, showing all the weakness of a career staff officer who had risen by patronage. Even the hawks in Washington, however, couldn’t get a post-war planning decision out of the president, according to the best accounts. No decision, no plan.
Bill Clinton, a shrewd judge of political character, had advised Blair to hug Bush close. Although he and Bush hated each other, the 42nd president never underestimated the 43rd. Instead of the cretin portrayed in the European press, Clinton discerned a brutal political operator with ferocious willpower.
Would Maggie have done better? She told Bush’s father to face up to Saddam Hussein, it is true. However, there was not an awful lot she could do to deflect her pal Ronald Reagan from invading the sovereign Commonwealth territory of Grenada. One suspects the Iron Lady would also have sent troops to fight alongside the Americans in Iraq, WMD or no WMD. She rather liked that sort of thing. And Blair, remember, was not always a pushover. He had persuaded Clinton to bomb the Serbs out of Kosovo and reduced him to screaming rage with his insistent demands for troops on the ground.
The liberal interventionist foreign policy Blair espoused had saved Kosovo and saved Sierra Leone. Saddam was more than a genocidal maniac — he was a menace to the neighbourhood who should have been removed at the time of the liberation of Kuwait. The so-called realists got their way then and never devised a workable way out of a foreign policy impasse. Everyone’s an expert on Iraq now. The fatal American mistake was to decommission Saddam’s army, says received wisdom. Maybe, but most Iraqi soldiers had already gone Awol before the fatal order.
Blair’s case for war, the dodgy dossier and all, was fatally compromised. Weapons of mass destruction were never found. Yet asked by Fern Britton last week whether he would still have gone to war if he had known Saddam had no WMD, Blair carefully replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him.” He didn’t say he would have gone on to remove him, only that it was morally right to do so. There you have him in a nutshell: a wily lawyer and a man of God who gambles with the ace of spades hidden up his sleeve.
Yet as Brown mounts his class-war offensive against toffs, City bankers, the private sector and the aspiring middle classes, we may come to look back on phoney Tony with rather more affection. We may remember Mr Blair as the man who invented a modernised socialism with a human face — even though it had more than a few warts.
Order By:
Would you like to post a comment? Please register or log in
function blogURL(bUrls) { window.location=bUrls; } fieldset { float:left; width:165px; border:0px; margin:0px; padding:0px; } OUR COLUMNISTS
Columnists
Select David Aaronovitch Simon Barnes Camilla Cavendish Jeremy Clarkson Giles Coren Robert Crampton Daniel Finkelstein Michael Gove Anatole Kaletsky India Knight Dominic Lawson Leo Lewis Rod Liddle Magnus Linklater Ben MacIntyre Bronwen Maddox Minette Marrin Carol Midgley Caitlin Moran Richard Morrison Matthew Parris Michael Portillo Libby Purves William Rees-Mogg Melanie Reid Peter Riddell Hugo Rifkind Sathnam Sanghera Frank Skinner Graham Stewart Andrew Sullivan Rachel Sylvester Janice Turner Guest contributors
Blogs
Select Alpha Mummy Archive Blog David Aaronovitch Asia Exile Baby Barista Blockbuster Buzz Gerard Baker Charles Bremner Big Brother Mary Beard Comment Central Consumer Central Cricket Blog Eco Worrier Faith Central Fashion Formula One Ruth Gledhill Inside Iraq Ariel Leve India Knight Money Rafael Nadal News Blog William Rees-Mogg Rugby Sinofile Mick Smith Sports Commentary Irwin Stelzer Peter Stothard Surf Nation Technology Travel Urban dirt Video Wimbledon
Cartoon More cartoons Peter Stothard
The Editor of the TLS writes on books, people and politics
A Don's Life
Mary Beard of Cambridge and the TLS on culture ancient and modern
Eternal life in just four, simple steps? Comment Central MOST READ MOST COMMENTED MOST CURIOUS Most Read Skip Most Read Today The 50 Biggest Movies of 2009 Saab 9-3X 2.0 Turbo XWD Police expect Mumbai-style terror attack on... Drug giant General Electric uses libel law... MOST COMMENTED Skip Editor's Pick Today if(isArticle == "true" && articleHeadlines.length!=0){ for(var j=0; j=45){ headline = articleHeadlines[j].substring(0,44)+"..."; } document.write(""+headline +""); } }else{ fSubmitMostCommented('http://community.timesonline.co.uk/ver1.0/Direct/Process'); } MOST CURIOUS Skip Most Curious Today Wonder sweetie to end wrinkles Who's a pretty dead boy? Parakeets to be shot Las Vegas tycoon is secret buyer of... Comedy clubs to reopen after ditching... Focus Zone Need to Know:
Industry sectors news at a glance. Interactive heatmap, video and podcast
Business Travel:
Everything the Business Traveller needs to know to make a better trip
Winter Sports:
Get ready for the winter sports season, with our resort guides and snow reports
Mapping Business:
We are backing British business, what is the confidence of the nation and what businesses are succeeding?
The Future of Energy:
Growing demand for energy, oil that is harder to reach and the rise of carbon dioxide emissions. We examine the energy challenge
Europe by Train:
With rail travel in Europe on the rise, we review the benefits of travelling by train
My Dinner Party:
In this special section we explore new food trends to help improve your dinner party and impress guests
More reports:
Enjoy further reading from Travel to Fashion, Business to Sport, discover more
Need to Know Business Travel Winter Sports Mapping Business The Future of Energy Europe by Train My Dinner Party More reports Births, deaths, marriages
Place your announcement
Business city guides
Overseas contacts and local business information
Crossword Club
Sign up today or try one of our free demo crosswords
Free CV Review
Sell yourself! Have your CV reviewed by experts
Announcements
Search The Times Births, Marriages & Deaths
Online Sudoku with daily prizes Find a Lawyer
Cut your legal costs
Classifieds Cars Jobs Property Travel Cars Skip Cars of the Week Ferrari F355 F1
1998 £47,955
Lamborghini Gallardo
2004 £56,950 Essex
Apply for car finance?
Check your free Experian credit report before applying
Great car insurance deals online
Car Insurance
Search for more cars and bikes Jobs Skip Jobs of the Week Director of Operations – UK
£100,000 Barnardos UK
Law Commissioner for England and Wales
£123,460 pa The Law Commission London
Job Opportunities Available
Hampshire County Council
Global Sponsorship Executive
Competitive + bonus + benefits Manchester United Central London
Search more Jobs Properties Luxury development in the heart of Battersea.
Moments from Battersea Park.
Double-fronted 4 bed, 4 reception house near Eltham Palace.
For sale with Winkworth
Eager to get on the property ladder?
Find out about shared ownership.
Looking for a Mortgage?
See your free Experian credit report beforehand
Search for more properties Holidays Skip Travel of the Week Hong Kong, Bangkok, Phuket & Dubai from only £1199!
Includes flights, accommodation with room upgrades, transfers city tours in Hong Kong and Bangkok. PremierHolidays.co.uk
Ski Weekend Specialists since 1986
For your�ultimate tailor-made ski holiday, click here
Great Travel Insurance
Get covered on your travels with a superb range of policies at great prices. Visit InsureandGo.com
Hawaii�free nights,�breakfasts, upgrades & more!
Choose from the beautiful landscape and tranquil beaches of Oahu, Kauai, Maui & Big Island.
Search for more holidays Place your advert now
Search Ad Reference:
Where am I?
Home Comment Columnists Martin Ivens Contact us Back to top NewsCommentBusinessMoneySportLife & StyleTravelDrivingArts & EntsArchive Times Online Times Archive Google TLS Archive
Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times, or place your advertisement.
Times Online Services: Dating | Jobs | Property Search | Used Cars | Holidays | Births, Marriages, Deaths | Subscriptions | E-paper
News International associated websites: Globrix Property Search | Milkround
Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here.This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
Blogs
The Editor of the TLS writes on books, people and politics
Mary Beard of Cambridge and the TLS on culture ancient and modern
Industry sectors news at a glance. Interactive heatmap, video and podcast
Everything the Business Traveller needs to know to make a better trip
Read Full Article »