Labour’s Iraq liability

Neil Berry :
ASPIRING TO topple the United Kingdom’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, the leader of the British Labour Party, Ed Miliband, is immersed in preparations for his country’s 2015 General Election, now exactly 12 months away.
To win he will need all the help he can get, though he is unlikely to be soliciting the support of former Labour leader Tony Blair. For all that he triumphed in three general elections, Blair is a liability to Miliband, remembered as he is for committing British soldiers to a war in Iraq on a pretext that proved to be false.
Miliband’s problem is that the report of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war – which is understood to make grim reading for Blair – is ready to be published; indeed, it would already have appeared had not the ex-prime minister strenuously contested passages in it concerning conversations between him and former US president George W. Bush indicating that he committed the UK to invading Iraq before the matter was debated in the British parliament.
This week came news that notwithstanding Blair’s objections, David Cameron is pressing hard for the report to be released as it stands. The fact is that Cameron too needs all the help he can get if he is to win a second term of office and is naturally mindful that fresh controversy over Blair and the Iraq war would be no small PR headache for the present Labour leader.
Miliband can be no more anxious for the report to be published than Tony Blair. Yet how can he credibly distance himself from Blair and the Labour Party’s ignominious role in plunging Iraq into chaos unless he also supports the speedy publication of a document designed to establish, once and for all, the truth about why Britain took part in the Iraq war?
Great numbers of British people believe that Tony Blair ought to be tried for war crimes; it might in fact serve the Labour Party’s cause if Miliband backed full disclosure of Chilcot’s verdict. Perhaps full disclosure would benefit Blair himself, rescuing him from the futile battle he is fighting to preserve a reputation for integrity he has long since irretrievably lost.
Certainly, Blair cuts an increasingly pathetic figure. Endlessly issuing apocalyptic warnings about the threat to the West posed by militants, he conducts himself with all the desperation of a real life version of Cassandra, the figure in Greek mythology who was gifted with foresight but cursed never to be believed.
It is not just the perception that he was deceitful that makes Blair especially toxic for the Labour Party. It is also the widespread view that he has blood on his hands: the blood of British soldiers and of myriad Iraqis who would still be alive but for the reckless Anglo-American invasion of their country that he helped to orchestrate. That Blair has since served as, of all things, the West’s Middle East ‘peace envoy’ has only deepened the repugnance with which many regard him.
Blair is much given to asserting the need to ‘move on’ but seems doomed to occupy a prominent place not merely in British but in global demonology. It is a particular source of public outrage that he has not merely escaped punishment for his misconduct but amassed a vast fortune. Not that Blair has escaped punishment: there can be few famous people who have paid a higher psychological price for their wealth and status. His haggard, hunted face is an image of private torment.
Blair may never be prosecuted in the way many wish. But this is a moment in Britain when past transgressions have been catching up with seemingly unassailable powerful figures who acted as if they were above the law. Nobody ever imagined that the cocksure, mega-rich London publicist, Max Clifford, would end up being gaoled, at the age of 71, for historic sex offenses, as he was the other day. Sixty-one this week and increasingly beleaguered, Tony Blair may have pondered more than most what it would be like to be in Clifford’s shoes, facing the prospect of spending one’s autumn years behind bars.
(Neil Berry is a London-based writer)