Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is planning to rejoin UK politics. Reports that Mr Blair will set up an institute to influence Brexit and re-energise the centre-left have already been greeted with joy – by his opponents. The Conservative former minister Owen Paterson declared it to be “glorious news”.
“He is one of those discredited establishment figures who repels many people,” he said. “For this he must win the international prize for lack of self-awareness this year.”
Mr Blair was reported to have said the current premier, Theresa May, is “a lightweight”, and that the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is “a nutter”. A spokesperson for Mr Blair has since denied both claims, which were printed in a British Sunday newspaper.
Mr Blair is the prime minister who deceived Britain into the US-led invasion of Iraq. His reputation at home was damaged still further by the Chilcot Report in July, as Mr Blair appeared to acknowledge in his emotional press conference after its release.
And if Mr Corbyn is now running the Labour Party, that is because under Mr Blair’s leadership the party was so hollowed out of identifiably left-wing ideology, and association with him became so toxic, that only a candidate who rejected everything he stood for could represent the passion and purity the membership longed for.
Harold Wilson once remarked that “the Labour Party is either a moral crusade or it is nothing”. Having become, in the eyes of members, vacuous in pursuit of a power it still could not obtain, it has certainly once more become a moral endeavour, although whether that leads to success currently appears doubtful.
Mr Blair cannot be unaware of the levels of opprobrium directed at him in Britain. His re-engagement with Westminster politics is, then, either further evidence of his vast reserves of self-belief, or, more charitably, a truly brave move for a cause and a country he believes in.
If it is the latter, even those who have long opposed him should pause, remember and reappraise, and consider what the country may be spurning if the reaction to Mr Blair’s return is uniformly negative.
For he was a supremely talented politician. It was no accident he became a star as a youthful shadow home secretary under John Smith in the mid-1990s, outshining and overtaking Gordon Brown, who was previously assumed to be the senior member of their partnership.
Under his leadership, Labour won three elections in a row (albeit with only 35 per cent of the vote in 2005). There were achievements of which he can rightly be proud, particularly the Northern Ireland peace agreement and the ending of the conflict in Kosovo, where many young boys were subsequently named “Tonibler” in his honour.
Focusing only on Iraq and on other grievous mistakes – who would have thought it would be a Labour government that would undermine the welfare state by introducing university tuition fees? – obscures the bigger, more nuanced, canvas.
And although I, being a Eurosceptic convinced that the European Union was incapable of reform, was personally quite happy with the Brexit referendum result, it was still the case that the debate was badly skewed by the fact that not one major figure was audibly making a defiantly Europhile case to remain. Mr Blair appeared to conclude at the time, probably correctly, that regular interventions by him would not help the “in” side. But few would have been as qualified to do so.
He wanted Britain to join the Eurozone – only Gordon Brown’s near-unpassable “five tests” saved the UK from that fate, and he seriously considered quitting as PM in 2005 to stand for the presidency of the EU. Now Britain stands at a juncture of uncertainty about how, and in what form, Brexit will take place. That is entirely as it should be. The vote was about the principle of leaving or staying in the EU, and the subsequent nature of Britain’s relationship with the continent could not and should not have been part of the question.
However, that debate is currently mired in accusations, scaremongering and recriminations. This is not useful, and foreign secretary Boris Johnson is right that those he calls the “gloomadon-poppers” should pipe down. Instead, the men and women who have positive visions for Britain’s future and how it relates to the EU should be making their cases to the electorate. That includes the suggestion that once the terms of Brexit have been finalised, there should be a second referendum on the deal – which both Mr Blair and, initially, Mr Johnson, proposed.
All is yet up for grabs, and a serious and constructive discussion about how the UK and the EU will interact must take place. Tony Blair has much to contribute to that. If he could use his influence in the undefined period before terms are fixed irrevocably, who knows what could happen? If he could, against all odds, persuade EU leaders that Britain’s departure could lead to the union’s unravelling and that they should show a real commitment to reform, who knows how Europe will look in the future?
Euroscepticism has many shades. If the EU demonstrated that it was willing to give up its greedy accretion of powers, repatriate primacy to nation states, and become truly democratic and accountable, there are many Brexiteers who would vote to stay.
So hold off castigating Tony Blair for his anticipated re-entry into British politics. There may be one final service to his people he has to offer. And while he is a non-penitent who many feel should be in a penitentiary, it could be taken as an act of contrition by a prime minister who once showed such promise. He put some of it into practice, too, no matter how hard he then fell.
Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia
