Star comment: Tony, you really have no shame
If ever a politician should have accepted quiet retirement, it should have been Tony Blair.
And yet we are faced with the unedifying spectacle of this widely reviled former Prime Minister scrabbling for a fresh place in the limelight.
Much as we may disagree with such ‘yesterday’s men’ as John Major and, to a large extent, David Cameron, few Prime Ministers have brought such shame to the office as Anthony Charles Lynton Blair in the 20 years since he claimed: “Things can only get better.”
This country has been through a lot of pain since New Labour swept to power in its landslide electoral victory of 1997.
All the promise of those times fell apart in such a bitter and sleazy way that Tony Blair is now persona non grata across the political spectrum.
Blair, aided by the odious Peter Mandelson, led this country into a debt crisis fuelled by enormous Government borrowing and also into a disastrous war in Iraq that has continued its damaging ramifications to this day.
One of his most cynical acts was the politicisation of the civil service to a huge degree, in the full knowledge of the difficulty it would cause any incoming Conservative government as it found the whole machinery of the state apparatus weighed against its policies.
History is likely to be far kinder to his successor, and bitter rival, Gordon Brown for his efforts in preventing this country from being dragged into the disastrous euro currency project, whereas Blair, who always had his eye on becoming Britain’s first EU Commissioner, wanted to lead the country into a referendum on scrapping the pound.
It is some measure of the man, and of his seemingly wilful blindness to the opprobrium that now surrounds him, that he believes he can somehow revive his political career at this critical juncture.
He has the sheer arrogance to believe that he can, in some way, ‘shape the policy debate’. And, not surprisingly, he believes the UK will want to return to the European Union despite the decision of the British people in last year’s ground breaking referendum.
Because, of course, Tony Blair knows better. He knows better than the British people and he knows better than the politicians and ministers still trying to repair the damage done to this country and its economy by the ‘Blair years’.
Go away Tony. If you want to do something for your country, try developing a sense of shame.
