More Blair-Hating Wish-Fulfilment

The “war criminal” insult used to be confined to the wilder shores of anti-war conspiracy theories, but sadly it has followed “liar” into the mainstream, as the debate over Iraq becomes ever more detached from what actually happened nine years ago.

The blessed Desmond Tutu has a lot to answer for in opening the sluice gate on another flood of Blair rage from people who will never accept that some people thought that the use of force against Saddam Hussein was justified. (Tutu, Sean Longcroft points out, even supported the use of force against Robert Mugabe: I wonder whose army he expected would carry out that task, and under which legal authority.)

There is now just so much of this poisonous rewriting of history around that I cannot hope to rebut all of it. Yesterday Margo Macdonald, the independent Member of the Scottish Parliament who was expelled from the Scottish National Party, said she would propose a law so that Tony Blair could be prosecuted in Scotland over Iraq (from an unoriginal idea by Jim Sillars). Unfortunately, this overheated way of saying, “I still don’t agree with the war,” was treated by serious Scottish newspapers as a news story.

Although the Scotsman ended its report by, in effect, inserting the word “not” into its headline. It quoted a spokesman for Kenny MacAskill, the SNP Justice Secretary, as saying: “We understand that action to legislate would likely fall outwith competence of the Scottish Parliament.”

Never mind outwith the bounds of rationality.

Today, though, the Daily Mail went outwith the bounds of something else with a long daydream of Blair-hating wish-fulfilment by a fiction writer, who imagined, “in gripping and plausible detail” (including a prosecuting QC who “approached the witness box” in a British court), how Blair could be brought to trial for a decision with which some people didn’t agree.

We have dealt with this kind of puerile nonsense before, five years ago (the Channel 4 “Trial of Tony Blair”, pictured).

All of which has distracted me from dealing with a rather more important and reasonable case against Tony Blair, expressed in a new book by Kevin Marsh, who was the editor of the BBC Today programme who published one of the most serious libels in British politics. I shall return to him shortly.

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• Tatty_D

  Rentoul is farcically dedicated to the worship of Blair. Consistent & predicable.

• Pacificweather

  There there dear. Don’t get upset by that nasty Mr Tutu just because he speaks wise word of truth and light. You can continue to poisonously rewrite history and we won’t say a word.

  Be gentle with him readers. The poor man has become a fantasist just like the beloved Blair. Perhaps it is contagious.

• pobjoy

  To be consistent, one would have to put on trial all those government members, in the UK, USA, France and USSR who supplied materiel to Saddam when it was known that he was acting illegally in using them. That’s a lot of people.

• http://www.facebook.com/peter.baker.585 Peter Baker

  Oh, give me a break! The war was illegal, and he lied to britain. Yes, sadam was bad, well done, but that’s not the point. He went into an illegal war and got people killed! We could have toppled sadam with sanctions, or he could have just said he was bringing democracy, but he didn’t.
  I’m honestly sick of the arguemnt ‘’sadam was bad”. Yes, so was blair. Two wrong don’t make a right!

• slyfas

  This is classical Rentoulian: sees white and call it black!