Shame on the Blair Blamers

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/matthew-dancona-shame-on-the-blair-blamers.html

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LONDON — Modern political culture is bipolar. It embraces the extremes of the celebrity world, adoration and vilification, with equal enthusiasm. And no contemporary figure has been affected by this crazy duality as pointedly as Tony Blair.

When he became Britain’s prime minister in 1997, Mr. Blair’s approval rating soared to 93 percent. Seventeen years later, he has become almost as divisive a figure as his original role model, Margaret Thatcher.

If he dines in London restaurants, he risks an attempted citizen’s arrest over his alleged “war crimes” in Iraq. In spite of three general election victories, he is unable to host a regular book promotion because of the public disorder that would almost certainly ensue. Former British ambassadors campaign for him to be removed from his role as the envoy of the Middle East “quartet,” a diplomatic initiative of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

Mr. Blair personifies two interrelated political trends. First, he was a conspicuous beneficiary of a new approach to politics in the 1990s, in which youth and vigor were valued more than experience and wisdom. When John F. Kennedy was elected America’s president in 1960 at age 43, he was the exception. Mr. Blair and Bill Clinton, in contrast, embodied a broad global trend away from middle-aged statesmen and toward the young family man (or woman). Winston Churchill was 65 the first time he became prime minister; Mr. Blair was 43.

Moreover, Mr. Blair was only 54 when he left Downing Street. In an age of younger leaders and longer life spans, this generation of statesmen has had to write its own third act.

In addition to his work in the Middle East, Mr. Blair has introduced initiatives on African development, the environment, sports and interfaith dialogue. But it is his business portfolio — speaking engagements, consultancy for JPMorgan Chase and advisory work for the insurance company Zurich International — that has attracted the most attention and hostility. The British do not like their politicians to be or to become wealthy.

There is no evidence that Mr. Blair has enriched himself improperly. Indeed, he has used the proceeds of his private-sector work to fund his campaigns and charitable bodies. Yet for a former Labour prime minister to become as wealthy as Mr. Blair, with a fortune estimated at 70 million pounds, or $100 million, offends a deep strain of asceticism in the British: Politicians are allowed to talk about aspiration but not to do much aspiring themselves.

This brings me to the second trend. Mr. Blair’s decade in office coincided with a decline in trust in Westminster’s political class. He was a master of what the political historian David Marquand calls “charismatic populism.” Mr. Blair’s government often seemed like a cult of personality, its actions flowing from a single, mighty source rather than from the cabinet team that he led or the Parliament that gave him his authority.

This quasi presidentialism has had momentous consequences. Like Mrs. Thatcher before him, Mr. Blair is now the magnetic north of political life. David Cameron, the present prime minister, once described himself as the “heir to Blair,” while Ed Miliband, his likely Labour rival at the next election, has defined himself in contrast to his party’s most electorally successful figure — an “anti-Blair,” if you will.

The distance Mr. Miliband seeks to put between himself and his predecessor and the collapse in Mr. Blair’s political share price reflect, above all, the traumatic experience of Iraq. It has become orthodox to argue that Mr. Blair careered off the rails in 2002 when he engaged in a reckless folie à deux with George W. Bush, an exercise in swivel-eyed Christian military adventurism.

This is, to say the least, a matter of opinion rather than fact. Disreputably, Mr. Blair’s opponents play fast and loose with the chronology of fundamentalist terrorism. The Iraq invasion may have been a pretext for the 7/7 bomb attacks on London in 2005, for example, but the notion that Mr. Blair was to blame for those atrocities is morally monstrous.

The failure to plan for Iraq’s future after Saddam Hussein was ousted was a terrible error, but again the notion that Mr. Blair is responsible for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reflects a lazy approach to culpability. Mr. Hussein was a busy sponsor of jihadist violence, but if the war had never happened and he and his criminal family were still clinging to power, are we so certain that a version of ISIS would not have arisen anyway?

Let us be honest: It is psychologically easier to blame our own leaders and “Western foreign policy.” In a recent essay posted on his website, Mr. Blair warned again of the peril represented by Islamic fundamentalist ideology, insisting that it is a clear and present danger demanding painful choices.

By asking whether we blame “the West” for the pathologies of the Middle East or, like him, dare see them as part of a global challenge to which the Western allies must respond robustly, Mr. Blair has added to the psychological load already weighing on Britain. In September, Scotland will be asked in a referendum if it wishes to leave the United Kingdom. And if Mr. Cameron gets his way, there will be a second referendum, in 2017, giving Britons the chance to leave the European Union.

This is the crux of the matter: Mr. Blair rose to political stardom by telling people what they wanted to hear. Now he has made himself symmetrically unpopular by doing precisely the opposite. His vilification says much more about us than it does about him.

Matthew d’Ancona is a political columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and The Evening Standard.