Apologies to those of you who have been waiting all day for my comments on the Chilcot Report. I’ve been on a brewery tour today in Amsterdam. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. I have not yet read the entire report – I am setting aside all of 2017 to do that – but I know the gist of it and have done for years. We rushed prematurely into war and Tony Blair’s reputation is in tatters.
Oddly enough, I resigned from the Labour Party when Blair followed Bush into Iraq. I was not against ousting Saddam Hussain, one of the worst tyrants in world history, because there might have been a time when it became desirable. But that time was not 2003.
As someone who has been described by the swivel-headed hard left brigade as a Blairite, my resignation from the party because of the actions of Blair does not seem to have registered with them. That Iraq was an almighty blunder and a tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people who died and were wounded was something I acknowledged right from the start. At the time, I was in a minority but that was then and this is now. We are all experts now.
I do not care that Blair’s reputation is in tatters because, frankly, it deserves to be. I am far more sad for those who lost their lives, the lives of their loved ones and those who were wounded, many severely.
I still maintain that had Blair not made his disastrous decision to take us to war, he would still be a substantial political figure today. Back in 1997, after 18 years of Tory rule, ‘New Labour’ was the only kind of Labour that could possibly win an election. Purged of Trotskyite extremists and with the likes of Benn and, yes, Corbyn (a minor player, always was, always will be) confined to talking to people who agreed with them, Labour embraced the centre ground and so won. We can argue that they went too far right of the centre ground but that’s for another time. By invading Iraq, Blair lost Labour the centre ground, possibly forever.
Whether Blair lied to the British public is a matter of opinion. Personally, I don’t think he did. I think he really believed in what he was doing but only Blair himself will know the truth. Is he a war criminal? Clearly not. But he will never recover from his almighty error.
All prime ministers like their wars. They seem to like to be defined by them. I doubt whether Tony Blair will like to be defined by his war but he will be. What a legacy.
I’m not a Blairite, I don’t even know what the term means. I believe in Labour values, all of which I learned in the school of life. I make no apologies for saying that I worked and campaigned for the election of Labour in 1997, as I had done in many elections before, even when the party was besieged by Bennite tomfoolery.
Today was hugely damaging for the Labour Party, as is the continuing presence of the man who is today steering it to hell in a handcart, Jeremy Corbyn, who is probably at a rally somewhere tonight, talking to people who already agree with him and wallowing in the final fall of Blair.
How Labour, and the country, needs a towering figure to see us through these dark times, to rebuild the country after today’s entirely unsurprising news about Iraq and after the the calamitous decision of Britain to leave the EU. Instead, we have Jeremy Corbyn and one from Theresa May, Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom to take us forward. Good luck with that one.
From abroad, I see our country as a ship being buffeted around by rough seas whilst the captain has jumped ship. We seem to have run out of leaders just when the country needed them most. And when we had one we really believed in, he led us to a war which should never have happened. Who can we trust today?
