LONDON, 23 September 2004 — This time last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair must have been counting his blessings that Iraq was out of the picture for a little while giving him a chance to return to the domestic agenda and perhaps even think of a walkover in next year’s election.

In fact, it was just two weeks ago that he held his monthly press conference at Downing Street and praised exam results in schools across England, talked about reshuffling his Cabinet and addressed (or tried to address) issues of fox hunting, pensions, the Olympic bid and drinking laws. He left Iraq where he and most of his government prefer to leave it: Far away. But like a true democracy, the Blair government cannot ignore issues that it is desperate to get rid of. The issue of Iraq is not far away. First, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan comes out to declare the war in Iraq as “illegal”, then a British hostage is taken in Baghdad and eventually, Tony Blair is using phrases like “we are at war” again.

And indeed we are. The British public is at war with itself. We’re very confused here. We really want to re-elect the Tony Blair we got in 1997, a young, dynamic yet charismatic prime minister who promised to make society a better place for all of us, but all we see today is a stubborn international player who looks only ahead, and doesn’t learn from the past. A lot of people are seeing this new guy as power-hungry. Maybe it is Blair in transition.

As BBC Question Time celebrated its 25th birthday last week, in a special program “Down Memory Lane”, the British publics were reminded of our 1993 shadow home secretary who spoke fondly of the UN:

“Our perception of the United Nations and the role of the United Nations has changed a very great deal. I mean, many people previously, people in fact from my own political persuasion, would not have wanted intervention either by the United Nations or others, and yet increasingly now we see ourselves drawn into these conflicts whether its in Somalia, or former Yugoslavia, or indeed in Iran”

As shadow home secretary, Tony Blair was keen to leave international affairs in the hands of international bodies. He was happy to be “drawn into” conflicts only where intervention was seen to be necessary. That was 1993. The 2003 Blair no longer needs to be drawn in. Ten years on, Blair believes in pre-emptive war — even that without support from international bodies.

Is this a mistake that Blair needed to make to learn a valuable lesson in foreign policy and international relations, or has Blair completely lost the plot and changed his mind about diplomacy?

It could be a bit of both, although Blair has refused to employ the many opportunities he’s had to apologize and admit any responsibility. Evidently, he is clearer on the latter. Blair has changed his mind. He’s not the man he was in 1993; ten years of Whitehall have changed the man we all fell under in 1997. Some may describe him as hardened, or cold.

He failed to comment on the situation of British hostage Kenneth Bigley — as if Britain is happy to acknowledge that government is a corporation with a bureaucratic management structure, where decisions are made in private and consumers only made aware of any profit or loss.

He failed to apologize over the 45-minute claim, the WMD claim, the entire war, despite calls from the Liberal Democrats to “just say sorry” and move on. He hasn’t realized that it is easier to recruit people to support your cause if you admit mistakes and ask for help in solving the problem. He has paid no heed to Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s concern that the war in Iraq was illegal. All this from a man who once said of the United Nations:

“If we are going to give this new potency to the United Nations it has to be more than simply the United States, Britain and France and one or two other countries. It has to be a real forum for world opinion, which can be mobilized effectively, and which acts always as the aegis of international law so that the power of the United Nations is never subverted simply for the power of one or two countries”

— Tony Blair, BBC Question Time, 1993. [email protected]