I have never liked Tony Blair. I remember clearly the first time I saw him on television. He was not yet the big star politician, not yet leader of his party, just a young impassioned member of Parliament fiercely arguing his ground. He was different enough for me to note him: He had such raw ambition and moreover, he had almost messianic zeal at a time when most politicians were, well, better versed in irony and cynicism than in idealism or heart-felt optimism. I looked at him and felt an intense visceral dislike for the man. It came straight from the gut. He struck me as someone deluded enough to do serious harm.
In 1997, I was alone in my circle of friends in not supporting Blair at the general election. Had I voted, I would have voted for John Major and it would have been a clear-cut, easy decision. Why? To be fair, I had difficulty in justifying my support for a discredited government that needed to be kicked out of power, just as Labour now needs to be kicked out simply for being there too long. Power corrupts as the adage goes. Politics needs change in order to thrive. The moment politicians feel overly secure is the moment they start to act as if they are unaccountable. I could see that Britain needed a change in government, but I could not shake my instinctive distrust of Blair.
From the start Blair acted as if he was unaccountable. He won his first election on a landslide. He had a massive parliamentary majority. He was feted and adulated. The cult of Tony and Cherie was up and away.
He could do no wrong. Blair’s charm is perhaps part of his weakness. He knows how to win friends and influence people. He instinctively knows what to say to win over middle-class voters, how to appeal to them and connect with them. In short, he knows how to win elections. He also likes to be liked. Politics is personal with Blair. It is about him, about Blair the man, the father, the good Christian. Not surprisingly he has the personal confidence of the zealot.
When we look at Blair’s legacy after ten years in power, two main themes emerge. The first is his persona, his style of leadership, his mastery of spin and manipulation, his place in the constant spotlight on the world stage. The other of course is Iraq. The war dwarfs everything else that Blair has done or could have done. It is by it alone that he can be judged. Once you have taken your country to war, once you have taken lives, all other policies and decisions become meaningless in comparison. People’s lives in Britain may have improved on Blair’s watch — and even that is arguable since much of this improvement would likely have happened regardless of which government happened to be in power — but this in no way can compensate for the destruction of people’s lives and livelihoods in Iraq.
The damage that Blair has done onto the world lies not just by taking Britain into an illegal and ill-conceived war that has irremediably ravaged a country, fuelled generations of terrorists to come and helped further extend the chasm between East and West, but in the personal betrayal that it encompassed. Blair was in the unique position of being the statesman on the planet with the best chance of influencing the decision to attack Iraq. He had his chance to alter history and he chose war.
Had the Conservatives been in power, Britain would have undoubtedly also gone to war. Blair’s foreign policy stands shoulder to shoulder not just with the US but with the Conservatives he ousted out of power. The nature of Blair’s betrayal is quite different because he is the only leader who could conceivably have made a difference. He could have used his alleged influence in Washington to attempt to rein in the neocons. I am not naïve enough to think that this would have stopped Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld from going to war, but I am brave enough to hazard a guess that if Blair had said no to Bush, if he had not behaved like America’s poodle, the world might be quite different today. But then again it was inconceivable that Blair would not back Bush not just historically but personally. As different as Bush and Blair may be in terms of intelligence and intellect, as close they are in terms of conviction and self-delusion.
I watched Blair’s resignation speech on Thursday with mixed feelings. I waited for him to apologize for the war whilst knowing full well that it would not come. It was classic Blair: Emotional, emotive, personal and glazed over with that earnest “I did the best that I possibly could” wash that is his trademark. But it wasn’t, was it? He had ten years in power at the helm of a government graced with a trusting electorate and a thriving economy. He had the opportunity to do so much, yet in the final analysis, he lost sight of the worthy goals that put him in power — improving education and healthcare, reducing poverty and unemployment — and got mired in the illusory belief that he could change the world for the better, when changing his own country should have been enough.
