Tony Blair: From lapdog to trustee

Eric Hobsbawm called him “Thatcher in trousers.” With the invasion of Iraq, he became better known as “Bush’s lapdog” or “poodle.”

The moniker isn’t mine: a 2002 poll for Channel 4 News revealed that nearly half of the British public saw the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair as George Bush’s “lapdog.” So much so that the famous British singer George Michael, in the music video for his song “Shoot the Dog,” satirized the now-disgraced prime minister as Bush’s dog: Blair was shown playing “fetch” and being rewarded with a belly rub from Bush.

Perhaps Nelson Mandela, with a more “subtle” view, called Blair the “US Secretary of State.” The “special relationship” connecting both sides of the Atlantic was being lambasted in the old, toothless empire [a reference to the declining British Empire] as a one-sided affair.

***

However, this branding of the transatlantic special relationship as “lapdoggery” was not new.

In 1983, a Labour MP called Margaret Thatcher “Reagan’s poodle” following the US invasion of Grenada. Similar insults include claims that the United Kingdom is a “US satellite state” or “America’s 51st state.”

These narratives about Britain’s subservience continued into Blair’s early years. A significant example of this was the newspaper article by future Mayor of London Ken Livingstone titled “Uncle Sam’s Patsy.”

It seems Hobsbawm’s description, so to speak, had hit the nail on the head. The historian was criticizing Blair as the domestic successor to the conservative Iron Lady’s neoliberalism, but when it came to aligning with American policies and geopolitical interests, we were also facing a Thatcherism that the Labour Party had eagerly embraced.

***

He is praised as the man who solved the problems in Kosovo and Ireland. The “solution” in Kosovo was the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. As prime minister, Blair was one of the strongest supporters of the NATO invasion of Kosovo in 1999. In his famous “Chicago speech,” he declared that the policy of “appeasing” the “evil dictator” Slobodan Milošević was over and that the time for intervention had come. In this speech, a tremendous reflection of “liberal interventionism” and the American neocon mindset, the praise of globalization and the bogeyman of Milošević-Saddam were constantly invoked. NATO had to intervene in Kosovo to secure its credibility; national sovereignty now had to be viewed in a new light.

Last June in Pristina, in his 25th-anniversary speech to the Kosovo assembly—which Serbia does not recognize—he claimed to have no regrets about the bombing and invasion. Had it not been for the Iraq fiasco, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see him carried on shoulders as the savior of Kosovo: parents emerged in the region who named their children “Tonibler”!

It was suggested that he wanted to transform the Labour Party tradition, often accused of being “weak” on foreign policy, and become more hawkish. Indeed, even before the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, he would eagerly support Bill Clinton’s Operation Desert Fox in Iraq in December 1998.

Moreover, if we are to believe his biographer Anthony Seldon and Jonathan Powell, who was interviewed for the book, Blair’s religiosity played a significant role behind his “messianic” and “moral” stance: it is claimed that the Prime Minister’s baptism in the Anglican Church while studying law at Oxford in 1972 “affected his entire life” and that his conversion to Catholicism after leaving office was widely “predicted.”

Speaking of Jonathan Powell… when you say “conflict resolution,” his name is written alongside Blair’s as the former-and-current civil servant. Indeed, Powell, known as the man who brokered the Good Friday Agreement, not only managed the British state’s Syria file but also played a decisive role on the issue of Gaza and Palestine. The task of writing a separate, detailed profile of Powell still awaits, but it’s worth noting in passing: last August, The New York Times wrote that an 8-point Palestine plan prepared by Powell was being “circulated” among London’s allies. A day after Powell put the plan into circulation, 22 Arab countries signed a declaration reflecting the plan’s main objectives at a United Nations conference jointly organized by Macron and the Saudis. The declaration, coincidentally, included for the first time the Arab League’s demand for Hamas to disarm and relinquish its power in Gaza. The same theme was also dominant in the Trump declaration that would place Blair at the head of a “mandate” administration in Gaza as a trustee. It seemed the two pals, after all the years and roads traveled, had once again decided to implement Anglo-American plans, this time under different circumstances.

***

He was one of those who spread the lie about weapons of mass destruction in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. According to an inquiry held in his country years later, Tony Blair had “misused” intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities before the 2003 war but had not deliberately misled Parliament:

The Prime Minister had “exaggerated” the evidence for WMDs, but he and others had believed it.

The Chilcot report, published in 2016, revealed that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not pose “an imminent threat” at the time of the 2003 invasion and that the war was waged based on “flawed” intelligence. The Blair cabinet’s decision to invade was made under “far from satisfactory” circumstances.

The effects of the WMD lie should not be underestimated. Blair’s powers of persuasion in the weeks before the invasion led to a partial sense of unity around the Union Jack. Support for the war rose from 38% to 53% on the day of the invasion and climbed to 66% when US troops entered Baghdad.

Allegedly, on April 28, 2003, just a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, John Scarlett, went to the office of Tony Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, and asked in a panic: “How difficult would our position be if it emerges that we can’t find evidence of Saddam’s WMD program?” Campbell replied, “Very, very, very difficult.”

***

If he had a “legacy,” the Iraq invasion consumed it. Within this legacy that left nothing behind was also the rampant neoliberalism disguised as the “Third Way.” There were those who argued that the Labour Party’s Third Way pursued a domestic policy that did not deviate an inch from Thatcherism. Privatizations, market adoration, attacks on the acquired rights of the working class, financial deregulation… all of these continued during the Blair era. The financialization and deindustrialization that had rapidly advanced in Britain during the Thatcher period were continued in exactly the same way under the Labour government in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Blair was the bearer of a mission to erase the 20th century in post-Cold War Britain. The “new” capitalism of the Third Way made one long for the old. Alongside Blair, Bill Clinton across the ocean and Gerhard Schröder across the Channel would end their careers as the prodigal sons of the new social democracy.

***

Clinton would busy himself with “charity” work, while Schröder would line his pockets with the fire of cheap Russian gas until he fell from grace after the Ukraine war.

The role that fell to Blair, as if to mock mere mortals like us, was to be appointed as the special envoy for the Middle East Quartet, where he would display his vast knowledge in the field of diplomacy by returning to the scene of the crime. The group, consisting of the United Nations, the EU, the US, and Russia, was a product of the search for a solution to the “Palestinian-Israeli issue.”

I don’t know if Donald Trump and Jared Kushner were aware of Blair’s grandiose schemes at the time. But if they were, they must have been impressed. The “Valley of Peace” initiative, developed in 2008, aimed to improve cooperation and increase employment opportunities between Palestine and Israel by creating new economic zones on the Israel-Jordan border. At the time, The Jerusalem Post wrote that the German, Japanese, and Turkish governments had begun to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the project.

Four locations in the West Bank were selected to support this initiative. Japan’s deputy ambassador to Israel told former Israeli President Shimon Peres that a site on the outskirts of Jericho had been chosen for the construction of an agro-industrial park. According to a memo obtained by the Post, Japanese planners were holding talks with Israeli security officials to coordinate the movement of goods and workers.

***

It makes one want to say there is nothing new under the sun. Blair, who left his post at the Quartet in 2015, would get into the think tank business and mobilize for “peace.”

The “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” (TBI) viewed Iran as a threat while engaging with both sides for a Middle East where Palestine and Israel could live “side by side.”

So where was this “non-profit organization” funded from? In 2018, TBI admitted for the first time that it had received payment from Saudi Arabia. Besides Riyadh, its funders included the US State Department, the Canadian government, some African governments, and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, established by a Ukrainian billionaire. TBI claimed to operate with a sublime sense of mission: “to help make globalization work for the many, not the few.”

The Saudi donation came from an entity called Media Investment Limited (MIL), a subsidiary of the Saudi Research & Marketing Group (SRMG) registered in Guernsey. The chairman of SRMG was Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed al Farhan, who is still the minister of culture. According to The Telegraph, the money that went from MIL to TBI amounted to £9 million as of 2018.

According to a Financial Times report from the same period, Blair spent 80% of his time at TBI. At the COP29 summit held in Azerbaijan last year, TBI played a significant role: 12 people in the Azerbaijani delegation were providing consultancy services as paid employees of the Blair institute. Blair also met with Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology, Mukhtar Babayev, in Baku “to discuss climate action.”

But of course, it’s unthinkable for the former prime minister to do just one thing: he also held many lucrative jobs, including the chairmanship of the JPMorgan International Council and the advisory board of the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline. The Financial Times wrote that Blair earned “irregular income” from high-paying speaking engagements with his vast knowledge.

***

It seems it was also in his destiny to return to Palestine, nearly 80 years after the British Empire left the region, as its informal representative and an American trustee. He will now lead the “Peace Board,” the fancy name chosen by Trump for the mandate and protectorate, for disarming the Palestinian resistance, and for opening the region to the plunder of capital.

Blair stated that he would be pleased to serve as the Gaza trustee with the approval and at the discretion of President Trump. In his statement, he showered praise on the Trump plan, presumably also getting his own back for the failure of his “Valley of Peace” initiative. According to him, if the 20-point declaration—which could actually be called the Kushner-Blair plan—is accepted, it will end the war, allow immediate aid into Gaza, and offer the Palestinian people the chance for a “brighter and better future,” while also ensuring Israel’s “absolute and permanent security” and the release of all hostages.

Here it was, the “bold and wise plan” put forth by Trump, which offered “us the best chance” to end two years of war, misery, and suffering.

Finally, he thanked President Trump for his “leadership, determination, and dedication.”

Backed by the firepower of Anglo-American imperialism and Zionism, the “smart city” fantasies of Silicon Valley, and the prayers of collaborationist regimes in the region, Blair, who had paused his Middle East career with his tail between his legs, was thus resuming it from where he left off as a colonial trustee.