Tony Blair attacked over 'self-pity and self-promotion'

Published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 12:29

Tony Blair's long awaited memoirs attracted criticism this morning from union leaders and animal rights activists. They spoke out just hours after the book was released throughout the country, accusing the former prime minister of ignoring inequality and a government commissioned report on fox hunting.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said: "This book is the predictable wallowing in self-pity and self-promotion of a Labour leader who squandered a golden opportunity to tackle the inequalities in our society.

"Blair could have taken the side of millions of working people against the greed and corruption of the bankers and speculators, instead he sided with the rich and his legacy will always be of a war-monger whose instincts are to follow the trail of cash."

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Tony Woodley, joint leader of the Unite union, said: "No matter what Tony Blair says in his book, Britain lost faith in New Labour. The Iraq war is a stain on this nation, and New Labour pandered to the casino capitalists in the city.

"His memoirs show that it is time to move on and I hope Labour and Britain will do so with Ed Miliband, the candidate who offers a break from the past."

The League Against Cruel Sports said Mr Blair's "change of heart" on hunting ignored findings of his own government's inquiry.

The former premier has admitted to shifting his views on the ban after a conversation with a hunt's mistress whilst on holiday in Tuscany, leading the charity to accuse him of undermining his own government and "ignoring" the findings of the inquiry.

Barrister John Cooper QC, chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports, described the admission as "remarkable", adding: "It is alarming in the extreme that the prime minister should respond to the proper passage of an Act through parliament by not encouraging its enforcement. He is sailing perilously close to perverting the course of justice."

Douglas Batchelor, the league's chief executive, added: "Thankfully the police ignored any instruction to ignore the law, and there's an average of one conviction every fortnight.

"People hunting illegally are being brought to justice, and one of the biggest successes of this Act is that it makes criminals of those hunters who break the law. The sad thing is that Blair's admission that he tried to sabotage the legislation will further denigrate the public's view of politicians.

"Quite what the bloodsports lobby, which spent years printing car stickers saying 'Bollocks to Blair', will make of this remains to be seen."

Some of Mr Blair's former colleagues, however, have been less critical.

Former Labour Cabinet minister John Reid told ITV News: "Relationships among leading politicians when they're working together are extremely complex. There are big beasts at that level.

"No-one can express the details of the intimacy of the relationship better than the two parties involved - that's Gordon and Tony.

"However, actually what this book is about is politics. It is the simple proposition that New Labour not only has a record to be proud of but, as long as it stayed New Labour, that is related not only to the disadvantaged but to the achievers, to the broad swathe of working people who wanted a better life for themself and their families they would succeed, but if they moved away from that they would lose.

"And it is on that basis that he had the differences with Gordon towards the end of the Labour term so there's 10 years of New Labour he would contend and three years where we lost our way."

David Blunkett, who was also in the cabinet during Mr Blair's reign, said that it was unlikely that Gordon Brown would read the book.

Mr Blunkett told Sky News that the two men were a "phenomenal force for good" at their peak, but added that "warfare" between the pair and their supporters had been "very destructive".

Labour MP Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), a former aide to Mr Brown, said that Blair's comments that his then chancellor lacked emotional intelligence were "slightly unkind and unfair".

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "I worked very closely with Gordon, I saw him with my own children and with my wife, and he could be enormously emotional and friendly and engaging in a quite natural way.

"I always thought he struggled to do that in front of a camera. I think Tony Blair was a much better actor than Gordon Brown and maybe in this modern media age that counts for something.

"I think that is an unfair characterisation of Gordon Brown. Tony Blair is more generous in other parts of the book."