Eddie Barnes: Blair isn't salving a guilty conscience: he doesn't have one

Published on Tuesday 17 August 2010 13:42

TONY Blair may not enjoy the comparison, but he is fast becoming the Princess Diana of our times. This is not due to any particular likeness they share but the strange reflection that the pair shine back upon us. The princess achieved it in death, when the country went temporarily potty for a few weeks. Tony Blair is achieving it now.

The latest case involves the decision to hand all the proceeds of his forthcoming memoirs, The Journey, to the Royal British Legion. Far from the decision being praised, the general reaction has been one of suspicious outrage.

The central accusations are as follows: Mr Blair is trying to salve his guilty conscience over the Iraq war; the money he is offering is blood money; this act is nothing more than PR stunt from the arch spinner-in-chief aimed at rescuing his reputation.

First of all, that guilty conscience. From reading his comments and of those close to him, it seems clear Mr Blair doesn't have one.

He told the Chilcott Inquiry he had no regrets about the decision. He told Fern Britton at the end of last year he would still have invaded Iraq even if they knew no weapons of mass destruction had been found.

What he does have, he says, is a sense of "responsibility". Hence, it seems, the offer of money this week to help the troops he admires. Even assuming Mr Blair did have a guilty conscience, giving money away to help injured troops seems like a good way of assuaging it. But he doesn't.

Secondly, the issue of blood money. As I understand the term, this is money which a guilty party pays to the victim of his crime in order to buy freedom and absolution. A deal is therefore implicit.

Well, quite clearly, Mr Blair hasn't got one. Those relatives who are furious about his decision to go to war, are still furious about it, and no amount of money he offers will change that. I am sure Mr Blair knew that before handing any money out.

Which takes us to the third accusation: that this is all a bit of PR. Judging from yesterday's headlines, it has to be said that if Mr Blair is an arch-spinner with nothing but his own image in mind, he is a particularly poor one.

One anonymous PR executive is quoted as claiming this was "the best PR stunt of the year". I am not surprised he wanted to remain anonymous. Mr Blair's publishers will doubtless be pleased about yesterday's coverage, but Mr Blair would surely have known he was always going to get a drubbing over this announcement. It was as damning as it was predictable.

How could everyone get their accusations all so wrong? At root, it is down to hatred which Mr Blair engenders in some sections of the country and in most sections of the media over Iraq. Mr Blair forged a remarkably personal relationship with voters as prime minister; he was not successful for nothing.But the flip-side of that relationship was that people felt betrayed when all he said was not as it seemed.

If my son or daughter had been killed in Iraq, I suspect I would feel this too. For everyone else, their Blairophobia risks making them look foolish; exposing a slightly sad neediness to see Mr Blair admit that he was in the wrong. He won't because he doesn't believe he is.

As for this week's offer from Mr Blair, a private citizen is giving a large sum of money to a very good cause. End of story.