It is foolish and selfish for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be still hanging around at this stage. Gordon Brown, the present chancellor of the exchequer, has been chosen already to be the next leader of the Labour Party, and hence prime minister, for the Labour Party still has a comfortable majority in the House of Commons. Westminster and Whitehall are marking time until Brown takes over on June 27.
Wanting to be part of the “celebrity culture” to the end, Blair has been making himself busy carrying out a number of extensive and extravagant farewell visits abroad. At the end of May he made a five-day tour of Africa, which his media critics described as a vanity parade. He touched down in Libya, Sierra Leone and South Africa — three countries where he believes the United Kingdom has a good story to tell. He notably kept clear of the agonizing and spreading crisis in Darfur.
Toward the end of his ten years as prime minister, Blair has decided the United Kingdom should play a leading role in Africa. Many African states are in the Commonwealth. His interest in this vast continent is genuine and his record is not unimpressive. Blair told his critics when in Africa: “What I have done in the past, what I am doing in the present, I have done for the future. That’s the only thing that matters.”
The Labour government likes to take credit for Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s decision to remove his weapons of mass destruction. These turned out to be at a very early stage. Labour ministers tend to ignore his considerable interest in improving relations with the West for at least ten years previously. I expect he was also fearful of possible American military action against Libya. That said, the United Kingdom’s diplomatic and intelligence effort was significant, and in March 2004 Blair flew to Tripoli to meet the Libyan leader in his tent in the desert. Inevitably he was criticized for going to Libya. Col. Qaddafi and Libya are controversial subjects in the United Kingdom, but I have no doubt it was politically courageous and a wise move.
During his recent visit on May 29, Blair and Col. Qaddafi discussed, so we are told, cooperation on counterterrorism, British help for Libya’s legal system, and cooperation on defense and commercial ties. BP is resuming its operations in Libya after 30 years and has won a gas exploration deal worth 454 million pounds.
Next the prime minister flew on to Freetown in Sierra Leone for talks with President Ahmad Kabbah. Blair would like to be remembered for the so-called “Blair doctrine” (rather than just for Iraq!) in which he argued a moral case for using military force against a perceived and selected evil. Britain intervened successfully in Sierra Leone using only a few thousand soldiers — including the SAS — and separately from the United Nations. His reputation is high on the streets of Freetown.
The prime minister used his visit to South Africa, and his courtesy call on Nelson Mandela, to draw attention to the reconstructed links between the United Kingdom and South Africa following the end of the hideous period of apartheid.
There is a strong feeling in the Foreign Office, which I fully share, that dealing with Robert Mugabe’s unpleasant and failed dictatorship in Zimbabwe is best left to the African states. Blair’s clear message to his South African audience was that ending dictatorship, corruption and poverty in Africa was the responsibility of today’s African leaders. He told his hosts:
“Wealthy nations and Africa face a choice. Our challenge is to support the good. Africa’s challenge is to eliminate the bad.” In what was seen by many as a rebuke for South Africa’s politicians, he pointed out that decades of bad government in Zimbabwe have resulted in a third of the population fleeing that country, and life expectancy has been reduced from 60 in 1990 to 37 today.
It will be remembered Blair set up a Commission for Africa some years ago, and made sure Africans formed a majority of its members. It was charged with suggesting what the rich countries should both be doing, and also not doing, to help African states reach the full potential.
In 2005 the United Kingdom had the presidency of G-8, the club of the world’s richest states, and at the Gleneagles summit Blair persuaded those attending to support large aid budgets and back debt relief for the poorest countries. These issues have just been discussed again at the G-8 summit in Germany.
Blair’s supporters claim that he used his farewell visit to Africa to remind Africans of some crucial home truths, in particular the need for a higher quality of leadership in Africa.
