The rise and rise of Blair Inc

4 September 2010

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This memoir is not a requiem for Tony Blair’s past, says Fraser Nelson. It’s a manifesto for his future — as a highly paid freelance statesman with no electorate to hold him back

While Thatcher’s memoirs were an unapologetic defence and celebration of conservatism, Blair makes no such defence of Labour. One gets the sense of a political hermaphrodite, who has plenty of experience and opinions but has been left without a home since his party, New Labour, was destroyed. He praises the Lib-Con coalition, and denounces those who ‘lazily succumb to the idea that more state spending dressed up as fiscal stimulus is the sole answer’. He declares himself to be a ‘progressive’ — which is a notoriously catch-all label. Like Bill Clinton, he is something of an International Good Guy who carefully avoids any political cul-de-sac.

What he does with this new status is revealed in the postscript. ‘I begin as one type of leader — I end as another,’ he says. A leader? But surely this is the retired MP for Sedgefield? No, this is an entirely different beast: a statesman without a state. ‘I have never felt a greater sense of frustration, or indeed a greater urge to leadership,’ he adds. But whom would he lead? And to what purpose? He talks about his ‘world view’ — that ‘globalisation, enabled by technology and scientific advance, is creating an interdependent global community... The drivers behind this are not governments but people, and it is an unstoppable force.’ And what type of people? It is fairly clear what he thinks: that power is shifting to a new global elite which transcends nationality and government. And this is his new hunting ground.

He has arrived in this job by roughly the same means as he landed his last one: copying Bill Clinton. Blair’s memoirs reveal his infatuation with the American ex-president, and the pearls of wisdom about how spin is half of the political battle. Ten years ago, Blair looked on as Clinton left the White House, his reputation tarnished by a sex scandal, and went on to carve out for himself a new life. His new role involves the best bits of being a statesman — the red carpets, the presidential suites, the first-class travel — but with less of the irksome media scrutiny. The first step to achieving it was to renovate his image. Had Clinton limped off to Wall Street and written an embittered book replying to his army of devout critics, he would have come across as a loser — and his global currency would have fallen rapidly. Instead, he started on Aids charities, became known as a freelance statesman and even ended up helping to free hostages from North Korea last year. No small turnaround for a man once hounded in the White House by a special prosecutor for the lies he told about his affair with an intern. What Clinton managed to do was to combine Jimmy Carter’s post-presidential sanctimony with Henry Kissinger’s money-spinning advisory contracts.

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Steve

September 2nd, 2010 4:51pm Report this comment

This is bad and will do nothing to enhance his post-premiership reputation despite what Mr Blair seems to think.

That being said, an old buddy of mine served in Afghanistan and said that Blair's fairly regular visits, even after he stood down as PM, were appreciated by the troops and did not receive much publicity. History will judge him harshly, but he has at times shown great character.

Tony Makara

September 3rd, 2010 2:47pm Report this comment

Tony Blair works overtime in an attempt to cultivate an image for himself. As a contemporary Prometheus, all-knowing, foresighted, and with a Weltanschauung based on a contrived version of Liberal Democracy that has to be imposed in the most absolute top-down style.

This is the mindset of a man who places himself above cause and consequence. A man who perceives of people as being bit parts in a chess game of the political Gods.

One might rightly conclude that Mr Blair is a man who has truly become divorced from the real world, detached from the feelings of others, in his relentless drive for auto-adulation.

Indeed a man for whom the manipulation of others has become his very raison d'etre.