Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Tony Blair, Iraq and 'good faith'

David Hughes reviews the debate between Charlie Falconer and Michael Howard this morning.

Here's his take:

Falconer parroted that claim this morning: “At all times the Government acted in good faith. Butler came to that conclusion”. At which point came Michael Howard’s knock-out punch. 

The former Tory leader reminded us that Blair had told the Commons the intelligence relating to Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction had been  “detailed, extensive and authoritative”. Yet Butler had concluded it was “limited, sporadic and patchy”. In other words, Blair translated “limited, sporadic and patchy” into “detailed, extensive and authoritative” in his desperation to persuade Parliament to back the war.

Good faith, Charlie? You must be joking.

I have two problems with this analysis.

First, it doesn't quite nail it. It is possible for Blair to have made his statement in good faith provided that he believed that the evidence was detailed, extensive and authoritative.

Butler only says that Blair would have been wrong to hold this belief, not that he didn't really hold it. Michael's pair of quotes may indeed show lack of good faith. But they are more likely to show a credulity and a desire to believe what he wanted to believe.

Of which - on the question of the existence of the weapons - I was guilty too. But I wasn't Prime Minister with access to the same information.

My second problem with the analysis is this. If Tony Blair honestly believed that it was highly likely that there weren't really weapons, why did he act as he did.

You see, if he didn't believe there were WMD he would have been proposing going to war knowing that it was extremely likely that none would be found. He would be proposing a course of action he thought likely to lead to political disaster for him.

Why would he do that?

This is the reason why I think the "lack of good faith" criticism is so much weaker than other explanations of the Prime Minister's behaviour over Iraq.

The importance of President Blair

 
 
Fascinating piece in the Independent this morning about Tony Blair's candidacy for President of the European Council (Hat Tip: Guido).

The import of it lies not in the claim that President Sarkozy has cooled on Blair's candidacy - I wasn't sure the evidence justified that interpretation.

The import, instead, lies in the terms of the debate over the selection of a President.

Explicitly the argument is over whether Europe should have a weak or a strong President. President Sarkozy believes in a strong President, hence his support for Blair:

He told Le Figaro that the EU had still not decided whether it wanted a low-key managerial "president" or a "strong and charismatic" figure who could "symbolise" Europe. "Personally, I believe in a Europe which is strong politically and symbolised [by a strong president]," he said.

Meanwhile:

Other EU leaders, including the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, would prefer to limit the new presidency to the tasks of business manager and referee, not political "symbol" or leader. They would therefore prefer not to have a political "Big Beast" such as Mr Blair in the job.

Here is the real issue after Lisbon.

Does the Government want a strong President of Europe. And, if not, why are they joining the Blair camp?

It is tempting to regard the choice of a President as being all about our view of Tony Blair. There is much more at stake, constutionally, than that.

Indeed it may prove that the choice - or failure to choose - Tony Blair is more important than Lisbon itself.

The "Predecessor to Cameron" Strategy

Someone I know who worked on Tony Blair's speeches has been in touch (by leaning across from the desk opposite mine).

Having heard the Cameron speech, and all the criticism from the left and praise from the right for his theme, Phil my contact suddenly recalled Tony Blair's 2004 speech on the modernisation of the civil service.

Here is the "money" quote:

I do not believe in a minimalist state. But I don’t believe in Big Government either.

You can read the rest of his "Predecessor to Cameron" speech here.

I think it would be interesting to put this to Labour critics of Cameron's argument as well as to Conservative enthusiasts.

Blair on how his son, Leo, made someone a lot of money...

Did the election of Bush change the course of British history?

So Barack Obama has chosen his first foreign leader to meet. And it is......

Tony Blair.

Of course.

Which leads me to speculate - how would Tony Blair look now, if Al Gore had been declared the winner in 2000?

When George Bush was elected I got it completely right. Because, er, I had completely misunderstood everything.

I got it right because I thought it was a turning point in Blair's Premiership. But I only said this because I thought - embarassingly wrongly - that a Republican President might be distant from Blair and that this would change the feeling in the press that Blair was part of a politically successful international third way.

I hadn't entirely made this up. In his meetings with William Hague, which I attended, George Bush had been extremely sceptical about Blair and his similarity to Clinton.

But what I - and George Bush, for that matter - had underestimated was the strength of the relationship between Britain and America. In the end, for a UK Prime Minister to refuse to support the US President in a major conflict would be a difficult (not unprecedented - look at Wilson and Vietnam - but difficult) decision.

And we all know what happened.

Clearly Tony Blair would not have advanced the idea of the Iraq War if Bush had not. The comments that he and Jack Straw made in the early days after 9/11 strongly suggest that Mr Blair would not have come up with the idea on his own or pushed it if Mr Bush had not.

Once the war became a serious proposition Mr Blair supported it. He became convinced of its necessity, but a major reason was his strong view that we needed to remain America's ally.

I do not believe Al Gore, despite his strong antipathy to Saddam (as histories of the Clinton regime relate) would have started the Iraq War. This isn't impossible. But I think it unlikely. And naturally, without the war Mr Blair's relationship with the liberal left and public opinion would be different. They might not have gone off him so badly.

Perhaps he might even still be Prime Minister. After all, Mr Blair's stance on the Lebanon War accelerated his departure, but absent the Iraq War his stance on Lebanon would not have been anywhere near as controversial.

And if Mr Blair was still Prime Minister, David Cameron would find being heir to Blair a much harder strategy to follow. The next election would look rather different I think.

There is, however, another consequence.

The left might not have distanced themselves from Mr Blair, if Gore had been elected. Equally, however, Mr Blair might not have distanced himself from the left. And that might have made him a less good Prime Minister in certain respects.

The Iraq War broke the third way.

It made Mr Blair understand that some issues simply couldn't be triangulated. He realised that sometimes he had to choose. And choosing felt good. He begun doing it on a range of public service issues where - arguably - it would have been better if he had begun choosing earlier.

In all sorts of ways, the decision of the Supreme Court that installed George Bush as president changed British politics fundamentally.

What do David Frost and Tony Blair have in common?

Last night The Times London Film Festival opened with a superb new film - Frost/Nixon.

It is based, of course, on the story of David Frost's interviews with the ex-President. The task for the main actors (Frank Langella plays Nixon and Michael Sheen playes Frost) is to make their characters look and sound like their very famous real counterparts, without lapsing into mere impressions.

They succeed triumphantly.

On the way home from the showing I was reflecting on Michael Sheen's extraordinary facility. He was a brilliant Tony Blair in The Queen and has now repeated the difficult trick in Frost/Nixon.

And then it struck me. Aren't David Frost and Tony Blair in a certain way rather similar?

I am not saying this to detract at all from Sheen's performances, which have been awesome. It is simply that having the roles played by the same actor made me think about the similarities.

As did the brilliant bit of dialogue towards the end of the film when Nixon suggests Frost would have been a better politician and he a better interviewer.

Frost is buoyed up by an enjoyment of life, by boundless self-confidence and by a self-conscious enjoyment of his own fame and the company of the rich and famous. Blair has all that religious stuff going on, but in other ways his self-assurance and pragmatism resembles the bouncily successful Frost. As does the way other people's foibles and insecurities leave him baffled.

Why Tony Blair should be furious

How do you suppose Tony Blair feels on hearing the news that Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown have played pat-a-cake pat-a-cake make up men? I suspect he might feel a little like Christopher Hitchens when Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley started yukking it up:

I suppose I can understand why people are glad when they see Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting down together and consenting to "power sharing" in Northern Ireland—and just in time for Good Friday, too, as if to consecrate a Protestant-Catholic brotherhood just on the verge of the various feasts of the resurrection. But the phony photo-op still made me want to spew.

Of course, Hitchens's objections were a little more serious. Thousands of people died. But Blair could be excused for feeling furious at the wasted hours and wasted energy he expended mediating a row which in the end turned out to be a whole load of nothing.

Read the best accounts of the Blair years and you will realise that the Mandelson-Brown dispute was a serious distraction, a serious problem, for the Government. And it reduced Blair's ability to do his job. It wasn't merely a political impediment, it was a serious governmental one. The great thing about Tony Blair was that you just know that he'll be forgiving and look on the bright side of the reconciliation. But the proper reaction? Fury.

Tony Blair makes his Daily Show debut

Jeremy Paxman is as nothing compared with Jon Stewart.

How do you think the former PM held up last night?

Part II

Leo Blair and the MMR

I feel like a bit of a chump.

I strongly defended the Blair's right to privacy over MMR, arguing for that position at The Times leader conference and sticking to that line in any number of private conversations.

My main argument was that, never mind Mr and Mrs Blair, Leo Blair had rights and this was part of his private medical record.

So am I impressed to discover from Mrs Blair's memoirs that the family (to whom I am generally very sympathetic) are happy for this detail to be public now she is selling a book?

Er, no.

Read all about it

Top ten list of things Gordon Brown could do without right now? I reckon Cherie Blair's memoirs would be on there.

So he won't like Saturday's Times much. Because the book expected in the autumn is out....now.

My colleague Janice Turner has been interviewing her and the paper will be bringing you extracts and exclusive stories over the next week.

Starting right now.