From CF - For whom I no longer write.

“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again…”

It must be said that Tony Blair’s interview with the Australian press contained no admission of a “mistake”. Even if his succession weren’t already the subject of acres of newsprint this would be a deeply shocking event. In fact his offhand reply, that it was an “unusual thing” for him to do, was classic Blair.

The media frenzy after Parkinson’s gentle goading on Iraq caused many to miss a real insight into the Prime Minister’s view of his actions. “You realise that judgement is made by other people…and if you believe in God, it’s made by God,” he said then. Examined unhysterically this statement is not as mad as the liberal media made out. Tony Blair thrives on defiance, he came to prominence fighting old Labour on the “Open Shop”. We’re at our best when we’re at our boldest, remember. What he was saying was, quite simply, that if he acted without complete conviction, his job as a decision-maker would be impossible

While the intelligence that took us to war may have been suspect, that issue is now irrelevant to him. Since you can never know everything, he might say, all that is left to do is to forge ahead and hope that history will be reconciled to your actions.

What Blair’s fatalistic approach does, and quite effectively, is to rule out the possibility of ever being wrong. If, as a moderniser, you believe in a world that tends toward the good, you can naturally hope that your mistakes will be healed with time. Even to the extent that they no longer appear to be mistakes.

No-one knows when exactly the word “legacy” started being bandied around in connection to Blair. One senses that it can’t have originated very far from Blair himself. Nice for him perhaps, but what other Prime Minister has ever governed with only one eye on the present?