Taki's Mag

Politicians, especially those who climbed to the top, should disappear when they leave office. Deprived of spokesmen and advisors, they are bound to reveal character flaws they concealed while selling themselves to the electorate and their financial backers. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were probably fortunate to die in office rather than spend their dotage regaling the public with their triumphs or, worse, their second thoughts.

A few years after the Conservative Party jettisoned Margaret Thatcher for John Major, a friend of mine gave her a party at his North London house. My face that evening bore the bruises and scars of a thorough mugging in the street near my Notting Hill home. Lady Thatcher kindly asked what had happened, and our host explained that three men had jumped and beaten me a few nights before. He added that the culprits were black. Suddenly animated, she told me that she and her husband Dennis just had a terrible experience. With the passage of years, I am forced to paraphrase her: “Dennis and I just came out of a reception at the Café Royale. And do you know what? As we went to our car, there were people outside demonstrating against me. And do you know, most of them were black?” I was not certain this constituted a bond between us. I paraphrase her next words: “Do you know what I think? I think people like that should lose their benefits. Yes! In fact, I want to raise this with Peter Lilley.” Lilley, serving at the time as Secretary of State for Social Security, slid away to another corner of the room before she could offer him advice that would undoubtedly end his career. (I am happy to say Lilley is still a Member of Parliament.)

Those who love Lady Thatcher will not abandon her over my story, and those who loathe her will not be surprised. It serves only to reinforce my contention that former leaders should confine themselves to retirement pursuits such as fishing, as Alec Douglas-Home did. If they must speak at all, they should limit themselves to statements about the weather.

Tony Blair retained his unbounded hubris and hypocrisy after leaving Downing Street. In an astounding interview with London’s Prospect magazine, he confesses that he has learned much about the Middle East since leaving office. This is a man who sent his country’s bravest and best to die in the Middle East. He told Prospect, “One of the most shocking things is how much more I know about this now than I did when I was dealing with it.” It is difficult to decide which is more shocking: that he knew so little when he was making policy or that he admits his ignorance.

Blair’s recent memoir A Journey is, as the girls say down at the mall, all about Tony. Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the grandstanding at the UN and before Parliament, his tampering with the economy and his enactment of some of modern British history’s most repressive, liberty-hostile laws—all serve to enhance his journey through life. Advice for aspiring leaders screams from every page, interrupting brief passages of narrative about what he calls his achievements.

During Blair’s reign, government policy enriched bankers and hedge-fund traders while weakening the real economy. Although Blair was at the head of the government, somehow everything is Gordon Brown’s fault. But if Brown was as bad as Blair says he was, it was his responsibility to fire him.

Tony emerges from his “journey” as untarnished as he is unaware. Just as he blames Gordon Brown for the British economy’s collapse, he finds scapegoats for the disastrous aftermath of 2003’s Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Blame does not lie with the invasion, the false claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, the gratuitous plundering of the Iraqi treasury, or the reintroduction of torture by the US, British, and new Iraqi armies. Blame, as with the economy, is to be found elsewhere.

Despite all the self-serving (and largely unsolicited) palaver in his autobiography, Blair has remained sphinx-like on the current chaos in Libya. Someone speaking for Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saef al-Islam, told London’s Daily Mail that young Gaddafi, an old friend of Blair’s chum Peter Mandelson, was seeking Blair’s mediation between his father’s regime and its opponents. Why has the Gaddafis’ “good friend” said nothing in response to this humanitarian appeal? It is not as if Blair is wholly ignorant of matters Libyan. He welcomed Libya back into the community of nations when it abandoned its nonexistent weapons program. He is consultant to J. P. Morgan, which has its own financial interests in Libya. And the Gaddafis say he is an advisor to the Libyan Investment Company. Surely, there is a role here for an honest broker. Why the silence, Mr. Blair?