I remember the moment I realised that Tony Blair was going to be prime minister. It was just after the exit polls on May 1, 1997, and The Daily Telegraph where I worked was holding a wake because of new Labour’s landslide. But most of us were feeling elated. After five years of John Major and his cones hotlines, we weren’t sure that things could only get better, but they would certainly get more interesting.
I’d voted for Bambi with his people carrier, mugs and chipped-tooth smile. When a wise older columnist told me she pitied me having to bring up my children under a Labour government, I smiled. I hadn’t even had babies yet.
Ten years and four children later I still didn’t think Blair’s time in power had been a calamity. The Dome and foot-and-mouth disease had been obvious disasters but he had briefly brought hope and shaken the kaleidoscope. Britain had become a more tolerant nation. My children benefited from Surestart; women were given longer maternity leave. Mr Blair began to tackle failing primary schools and introduced academies.
The prime minister was a brilliant communicator for his age — or “manipulator” as he later admitted in his memoirs, A Journey. When he talked about the people’s princess, on the death of the Princess of Wales, his pitch was perfect.
Abroad he was seen to embody a new optimism in Britain. When he went to the aid of the Kosovans, I watched as the people of that war-torn country shouted “Toneee, Toneee!” He completed the peace treaty in Northern Ireland by managing to appeal to Gerry Adams, John Hume and David Trimble.
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The sun shone over most of his reign. He didn’t fix the roof but we all enjoyed some of the warmth. Immigration was beginning to get out of control but Gordon Brown kept giving the British more tax credits and benefits — and introduced the minimum wage — so few worried. Even though we soon knew that Tony was a bit phoney, he won three elections with his brilliant propaganda machine, and young Tories MPs were desperate to emulate “the master”.
Tom Bower’s new book Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power is excoriating from beginning to end but even when he explains how Mr Blair committed to war in Iraq before telling the cabinet or parliament, I didn’t feel real anger. I can almost understand his motives: he felt he had successfully intervened in the Balkans, he was desperate to stay close to America after 9/11 and he believed that Saddam Hussein was evil.
“While salaries were frozen he went on to make himself filthy rich
It is only since he left office that “the master” has seemed morally reprehensible and an embarrassment to the country. It is not just his inability to admit (“until my dying day”) that he was wrong to invade Iraq, it’s his astonishing greed.
When Britain slid into a recession and things could only get worse, the former prime minister made it palpably clear he didn’t think we were all in this together. While salaries were frozen and banks went under, he began to make himself filthy rich with a £2.5 million a year contract with the US investment bank JP Morgan, a deal with Zurich Insurance to advise on climate change, a retainer with Bernard Arnault, of the luxury goods conglomerate, and lucrative fees for speeches to organisations including the International Sanitary Supply Association — manufacturers of lavatory cleaners.
He seems to have started with noble intentions, setting up his Faith Foundation, the Africa Governance Initiative and becoming Middle East peace envoy but Bower shows how he soon “blurred” the lines between his charity work and the commercial interests of his company, Tony Blair Associates.
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His peace envoy role meant he could command the entire top floor of the five-star American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem but the Middle East Quartet was soon considered “useless, useless, useless”, by the Palestinians and he has now left. Meanwhile as a “geopolitical and strategic consultant” he doesn’t seem to care whom he advises, from the unappealing dictator of Kazakhstan, whom he helped with a speech about the killing of 14 unarmed protesters, to the unedifying president of Azerbaijan.
“The sun shone over his reign and we all enjoyed the warmth
I interviewed him in his chilly new offices recently. He had a whiter smile, better suits and a permatan, but he seemed a lesser man rather than a statesman. The little things that niggled while he was in office — the freebies in Barbados, holidays with Silvio Berlusconi, obsession with buying houses — seemed to have become an obsession. He is now thought to own 36 properties, including South Pavilion in Buckinghamshire, his neo-Chequers, and holds parties for his wife featuring stars of Strictly Come Dancing.
As it happens, Blair’s wife, Cherie, also seems to want to be in on the act. In 2011, the barrister founded Omnia Strategy, to provide “strategic counsel to governments, corporates and private clients”. One is Abdulla Yameen, the president of the Maldives, who has jailed the leaders of three opposition parties along with 1,700 opposition activists and opponents.
After the good and the bad has come the ugly. It’s not pretty watching a former prime minister filling his coffers while being so sanctimonious. At a speech to philanthropists in China, who paid £1,500 a head, he told them, having arrived in a private jet, that societies and people should be measured not just by what they do for themselves but what they do for others. If only he would listen to his own advice.