Blair witch project

I had been wondering where Gorgeous George Galloway might pop up next. Defenestrated from his seat in Bradford West, humiliated in the London mayoral elections — where he received 1.4 per cent of the vote — and no longer apparently an attractive proposition to the reality TV producers, his public life seemed sadly to be drawing to a close. But nope, here he is with a film about the person all left-wing people hate more than any other, Tony Blair. It’s a good film, too, in the main.

The Killing$ of Tony Blair was partly crowdfunded and it may well be that the only people who watch it will be those who forked out to have it made. Which is a shame, because while it does not tell us anything particularly new about our former prime minister, it is a meticulous documentation of Blair’s odious, immoral and almost unbelievable money-grubbing-from-despots venality — and indeed the process which led to the catastrophic and illegal invasion of Iraq, the deaths of perhaps a million people and the region being plunged into sectarian chaos.

Galloway is a terrific presenter, dapper in his left-wing hat, all boilerplate rhetoric, biblical quotations and growled sardonic asides. It has to be said that there is not much equivocation: George does not go in for ‘on the one hand’ sort of stuff — but it may well be that the time for equivocation is over. Instead he interviews a long succession of people who hate Blair — former allies, such as the lovely and decent Clare Short, political enemies such as David Davis, a succession of appalled lawyers and former diplomats and, rather irritatingly, one or two boring luvvies like Will Self and Stephen Bloody Fry. They all dutifully stick the boot in, some with great insight, others (Fry) with less.