“Best just to shake your head”

I bring you good news from behind the Times pay wall. This, from Matthew Parris:

On Monday I withdrew from the Blair commentary industry. Asked if I would offer a report from that morning’s session of the Leveson Inquiry, I had to choose between doing so and attending an old friend’s funeral in Derby. I took the less depressing option.

Asked that evening if I would join a Blair discussion on Newsnight I weighed this against joining a pianist friend for some show tunes and a few glasses of rosé at a club in Mayfair — and again heard myself declining the Blair option. This was getting easier!

Lazy? No, I’m just getting bored repeating myself. In the end you’ve either spotted that Tony Blair’s a wrong ’un, or you haven’t. Once you’ve discounted someone’s good character you look at them in an entirely different way. You stop trying to respond, rebut, understand.

But you can no more prove to a believer that you’re right than they can prove to you that you’re wrong. Best, really, just to shake your head and cultivate your garden.

Long may the garden of Parris, who long ago disqualified himself from this branch of commentary by questioning Blair’s sanity in all apparent seriousness,* need cultivating.

Further reading here and here.

Thanks to Tess.

*It is not available on the internet any more, but he asked an early QTWTAIN in The Times on 29 March 2003: “Are we witnessing the madness of Tony Blair?”

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• BlairSupporter

  Parris is (sort of) right on that. You have either spotted or you haven’t. Really sharp observation ;0(

  Pity Parris is such a short-sighted spot, sorry … sort. A tunnel-visioned viewer in the world of feral beastliness.

  Pity Parris.

  Pity.

• BlairSupporter

  What? – “a pic of the rope burn on his neck?”

  You want to hang him EVEN if he accepted responsibility (which would be wrong of him) for every death in Iraq? Are you bl***y insane?

  Tony Blair said he “regrets deeply and profoundly the loss of life” during and after the 2003 Iraq war but that he could and would not apologise for the decision to remove Saddam.

  Why should he? The Iraqis WANTED the west to remove Saddam. For 13 years the UN (Useless Nations) passed umpteen resolutions to stop his threats, WMD development & usage and the 30-year murder of his own people.

  Why SHOULD Tony Blair apologise for this?

  He is NOT personally responsible for the deaths in Iraq anyway. Most were caused by Iraqis or near neighbours. Still are. And we have been out of Iraq for some time now.

  Get off his case.

  I really will have to be a nuisance & complain again to the Indy if such as you continue to call for the death of a former PM because YOU, Mr Omniscience/Omnipotent, don’t agree with a political decision regardless of what the Iraqis themselves wanted, thought or think.

  It really isn’t on. Simply disgraceful.

• greggf

  “This is now Blair’s Britain: a trite phrase, I know, but the world 
  did change.”

  The world did not change, it evolved. 
  In Britain Tony Blair was the one who was able to capitalize on John Smith’s leadership of the Labour party away from its previous dogmas. Although he couldn’t, or didn’t prevent a new set of “modern” dogmas developing.
  Causality is a strange thing because the common perception is often the reverse of the truth. In this case think of it this way; Blair “arrived” because Britain (and the world) evolved, he just rode the wave!