Yearning for Tony Blair?
Truly, the souls of men are full of dread …
Passionate supporters of the European Union have conducted the debate over Brexit as a moral argument. Opponents of the EU have been painted by some as bigots and hidebound racists. After the election in the United States of Donald Trump, Brexit became a microcosm of the larger discussion about the future of the West and championing the EU became a shorthand way of rejecting so much of what Trump represented. Brexit — which side you stood on it — turned into a test of decency. And in this contest, the Remainers claimed to be on the correct side of history.
So it was unsettling to witness a section of the Remain camp — the camp that says it is morally superior to Farage and Trump and their supporters — choosing to resurrect Tony Blair. The Opposition is in tatters and everyone is terrified. But what amount of fear justifies running into the arms of a man who could plausibly be prosecuted for war crimes?
As Prime Minister, Tony Blair did not demonise ethnic and religious minorities as vigorously as Farage does. Nor did he ban Muslims. But he bombed them. And in doing so, he incubated the crises that cripple us today. Tony Blair said this morning that the government was willing to throw all its resources at Brexit. These would be a fraction of the resources that the Foreign Office has lavished on containing the problems that Blair’s decisions have given rise to.
The mention of Iraq sometimes prompts eye-rolling. It should provoke outrage. Blair subverted democracy at home and inaugurated a gratuitous war of aggression abroad.
There have always been those who have tried to compartmentalise Blair’s record. He may have committed massacres abroad, they say, but he did good things at home. The leftist ideologue Polly Toynbee, for instance, admitted in 2005 that she “supported Tony Blair right through the 2005 election, despite the Iraq war” because she believed “he had one more election win in him”. She dumped him only “when he plummeted in the polls and became a liability for Labour”. The calvary of Iraqis Toynbee could tolerate and overlook. It is the prospect of losing the munificence of a supposedly leftwing government at home that petrified her enough to abandon Blair. George Orwell, condemning the insularity typified by Blair apologists such as Toynbee, says somewhere that Western nations’ self-cherishing self-images are built on an “unspoken clause”: “not counting niggers”. As long as Blair did “good things” at home Toynbee and others were willing not to count Blair’s “niggers” — the victims of his unprovoked war of aggression.
Polly Toynbee is old. The person who introduced Tony Blair this morning was not. This is dismaying — but it is also dangerous. The ascent of Trump and Farage has created opportunities for those whose policies enabled the rise of Trump and Farage in the first place to launder their reputations. Tony Blair has spent the years since leaving Downing Street as a lavishly paid servant of autocrats and plutocrats. He has nothing to show for his time in Jerusalem as the Madrid Quartet’s Middle East envoy. In 2012, I interviewed a close adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas in his office in the PLO’s compound in Ramallah. When I invited him to list Blair’s achievements, he shook his head. “He comes and listens to us. Then he goes away. Nothing happens”. Blair kept a suite in the American Colony Hotel and lobbied to advance the commercial interests of companies that employed him.
In the panic generated by Brexit, Blair sees an opportunity. Blair’s audacious attempt at self-reinvention — after Chilcot — is a measure of Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to offer leadership. But the fact that Corbyn has failed is not a reason for the rest of us to falter and permit Blair to occupy the vacuum created by the Labour leadership.
The substance of Blair’s speech, in any case, did not depart from the prejudices of our time. Its core message was this: pro-EU campaigners must emphasise that immigration from the EU is not of the variety that “people most care about”. Its core message was a dogwhistle.
If you’re spending your days complaining about Trump and Farage but feeling nostalgic about Blair, something’s profoundly wrong with you. And if Blair is the tribune of your cause, you should find other causes.
Resist what you regard as the authoritarianism of Trump and the bigotry of the Brexit brigade — but reject too Blair’s bid to profit from your fear of that authoritarianism and bigotry. Do both. Otherwise, your outrage at Trump’s and Farage’s racism will amount to nothing more than self-indulgent theatre.
A million dead Iraqis, millions more maimed and mutilated, and a region in free fall: remember these facts. Don’t let their unrepentant author capitalise on your fears. Don’t let Blair exploit your terror of Brexit to sanitise his reputation.
