When I was a kid, I dreamt of meeting famous footballers and pop stars. Through my journalism I’ve met literally hundreds of them, and in all truth it’s rarely a massive thrill anymore. It’s nice work to have, but work all the same. Nowadays, I wish I could meet politicians I admire. Bibi, obviously. But also high on that list would be Tony Blair.
I came close once. When I was in Israel in the summer of 2006, myself and my friend Susi got wind that Tony Blair was staying in a hotel just down the road from ours in Tel Aviv. We both instantly had the same idea: seek him out, shake his hand and congratulate him on his moral stance on Iraq. We really wanted to, but didn’t fancy our chances of getting close to a serving and embattled Prime Minister, especially in security-conscious Israel of all places. So we stayed by the pool instead.
When I read about ridiculous episodes like this during the commemorative service for the dead of Iraq at St Pauls on Friday, I wish we’d made the effort. I wish I could tell Mr Blair how grateful and admiring some of us are for the stance he took on Iraq and Afghanistan. In both wars he was courageous, moral and entirely selfless: everything a leader should be. It was upsetting to see the effect that Iraq visibly had on his health. Upsetting but awe-inspiring: that’s real leadership right there, etched into his face.
As I wrote in Not In My Name: “With Iraq, Blair threw out of the window his obsessions with spin, approval and short-term gain. In doing so, Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister truly came of age as a leader and a man. In contrast to when Thatcher went to war for the people of the Falklands Islands, Blair knew full well that his stance on Iraq was never going to reap electoral dividends. He also knew it could wreck his legacy. In making his stance, he demonstrated all manner of qualities that he’d previously only shown in spasms: he was steadfast, courageous and self-sacrificing.” I met Alastair Campbell last year and told him how much I admired him and Blair for Iraq and related issues. The surprise on his face said it all, really.
It’s become so mindlessly trendy to diss Blair. I wish I could tell him how much I admire the many, many other great achievements of his reign – including his swift and decisive action on gay rights. I also admired him for his faith, even though I do not share his brand. I will always remember how calmly he dealt with sneering questions about religion from the likes of Jeremy Paxman. It was on the world stage, though, that he starred until the end. Even in the closing months of his premiership, he continued to take a moral stance by resisting enormous pressure to condemn Israel’s defensive action against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
It’s interesting when people compare Blair to President Obama. True, there are similarities in terms of presentation and in the hype that greeted the coronation of both leaders. But I remain to be convinced that Obama has the moral clarity or courage to make the sorts of difficult, perhaps unpopular decisions that are badly needed internationally, not least over Iran. I hope I’m proved wrong.
In the meantime, respect to Tony Blair.
I walked past Campbell in the street last year and now you’re making me regret not saying something similar to him!
On an unrelated note, did you read Robert Crampton in the Times on Tuesday? “I have just made my first visit to Israel, and I’m here to report that Israeli women (and the men, come to that) offer the only serious competition to Iceland and Italy in their exceptionally high standard of physical attractiveness…If anything the Israeli women are even sexier than their Nordic and Latin counterparts, because so many of them are armed and in uniform.” More here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/robert_crampton/article6871793.ece
I think Blair was the best PM of my lifetime, so far. I have always quite liked the man, who may have done some foolish things, but as you say, he did come over as serious, principled, and pretty decent. Even his conversion to Catholicism was handled well: he did it as quietly as he could after he had stepped down as PM. It was a private and personal thing, that he didn’t wish to have a bigger impact on the country. And I also like someone with religious leanings: I don’t see it as something to be mocked at all.
i agree with you one hundred percent best pm in my life time who had the courage of his convictions to take action instead of turning the other cheek. I would like to meet him one day day and shake his hand. He must think every one in the uk hates him. I don’t never have not everything in life is black +white hope he gets a fair trial in the Iraq Inquiry.
I very much appreciated Blair’s stance on Lebanon II as well, particularly when so many of his government and countrymen were running around like headless chickens doing the ‘we are all Hizbollah now’ pose. I even sent him an e-mail to tell him so. I doubt he ever got to read it though.
Great makeover on the blog Chas!
I do not approve of Tony Blair’s political position generally. However, he was as you write positive on international affairs. I feel he will be remembered with more positivity than he is held in now.
I can think of just four positive achievements that Tony Blair can be given credit for: resolving the Northern Ireland conflict, reduced primary school class sizes, civil partnerships, and the minimum wage, although even here it’s been a case of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, since even people on the minimum wage have to pay income tax.
On the negative side, we’ve had an astronomical growth in state spending, a bloated and inefficient public sector, stealth taxes, the trashing of civil liberties, the surveillance society, the database state, a ludicrously lax immigration regime, not effectively tackling Islamic extremism at home, failure to reform Tory sentencing policy, and so on.
Anyway, even though I’ve never particularly liked the man, I agree with you that Blair-bashing has gone too far. Nowadays it seems most people can’t mention his name without using the words “who took us into war on a lie.” I never had a clear opinion on whether the Iraq War was right or wrong in principle, but I just don’t understand how it became such an obsession for a generation. And for so long. I’m like, “It’s happened – just get over it! Change the record!
“I never had a clear opinion on whether the Iraq War was right or wrong in principle, but I just don’t understand how it became such an obsession for a generation. And for so long. I’m like, “It’s happened – just get over it! Change the record!”
Yeah, get over Iraq people. Only $600,000 billion and counting spent, hundreds of thousands dead, millions dispossessed. While you’re at it, get over 9/11 & get over the Holocaust.
Perhaps you’d like to visit Iraq & ask the people there to “get over themselves”, whilst you American dolts weep over 9/11 year in, year out.
How would you like to tell Jewish families to “get over” the Shoah & “change the record” considering it happened over 60 years ago.
Perhaps this “obsession with Iraq” shows that people are CONCERNED about what happens to others, rather than being “trendy” as Mr.Burden so dismissively believes. Could it be that to not be concerned about the Iraq conflict would’ve been preferable? But then, without these trendy protests & opposition, you would have nothing to post on your self indulgent blogs.
People in Britain got out of their homes & protested because they cared. You mock their concern & side with the bastards who you pay your taxes to.
If Tony Blair was on the ballot here in the states last November, I would’ve voted for him.
“It’s become so mindlessly trendy to diss Blair.”
Considering that the majority of people, in Britain at least, view Blair in negative terms, I’d argue that the “mindlessly trendy” minority are those who lionise Blair, as you do. You seem to find popular opinion contemptible, but facts remain facts & the fact is Blair took part in an illegal strike on Iraq, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths & millions of people made homeless.
Of course, you’ll argue that the war was “just” because “Saddam gassed his own people” and “was a ruthless dictator”, but, like your fanboy worship of Israel, your support for Blair is the mindlessly trendy ignorance of the neo liberal.
I detest Blair, his “neo Labour” Thatcherism & globalist imperialism & I am neither mindless nor trendy.
Blair is not some celebrity you can write post modern drivel about & the very real victims of his actions in Iraq could not care less whether you loved him or I hated him. Judge the man by his actions…his actions left hundreds of thousands of anonymous people dead and a country in chaos…but don’t let that human reality conflict with your blinkered hero worship of a man who is paid £100,000+ to relate to ill informed American audiences how he sought to “bring democracy to Iraq”.
“You seem to find popular opinion contemptible”.
On the contrary, I have no problem with popular opinion. Or democracy, as it’s also known. I believe the Iraqis deserve it too. So do they, which is why they now flock to the polls which the anti-war movement wanted to deny them.
Not sure where you get this idea that I and all the commenters on this post are American. I’m not. And with one exception, they’re not.
Dom: “Yeah, get over Iraq people. Only $600,000 billion and counting spent, hundreds of thousands dead, millions dispossessed. While you’re at it, get over 9/11 & get over the Holocaust.
Perhaps you’d like to visit Iraq & ask the people there to “get over themselves”, whilst you American dolts weep over 9/11 year in, year out. ”
Okay, I could have expressed that more tactfully.
I would never argue that the war hasn’t done tremendous harm in terms of lives lost, children orphaned, people disabled, and so on, I don’t mean to trivialise this and I have no intention of telling the people of Iraq to “get over it”. But the fact is, we can’t change what’s already happened, so I just think it’s time for us in the West to draw a line under it. Blair and Bush are never going to be prosecuted for war crimes whether we think they should be or not.
I recognise that there were valid arguments both for and against the war and it will probably take at least 20 years to judge whether it’s been (on balance) a success. I don’t have a high opinion of Tony Blair (to put it mildly), but the Iraq War was not just his pet project – it had a broad measure of support across the political spectrum.
Tony is a good guy, his wife eh. She claimed she understood what drives someone to be a suicide bomber, then just two weeks later sits in a cathedral in Madrid at a memorial sevice for those poor people murdered by you know who looking all mournfull.
I’ll get over the the misguided Iraq war once the Israeli’s get over the Nazi Holocaust! I will never forget, or forgive, the neo-Cons & their arrogant apologists like Chas. Neo-Labour will never get my vote again for allowing Blair to get away with the war and the assault on basic civil liberties.