The history man

The hardest chapter presumably was the one on why he decided to take his country into the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Iraq question often diminishes all of Blair’s spectacular achievements as a politician — in modernising his Labour Party,in reforming the state’s role so that it delivered services efficiently and enabled an all-round sense of well-being and let people make their own choices,in bringing peace to Northern Ireland,and in reacting to Britain’s declining power in a way it could “exercise power through alliances”. Along with a Clintonian demolition of the barrier between social progressiveness and private enterprise,he also valued the American’s ability to communicate (for Blair “emotional intelligence” is a vital commodity in the modern politician’s toolkit).

Yet,on Iraq,he dodges. He remains the leader making his case,not one looking back to produce a polished draft for history. In fact,he writes,“History,as ever,will be the final judge. At this point,I don’t seek agreement.” He seeks an open mind,and reruns familiar arguments,that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant,that on WMDs “if we knew then what we know now” he would still say his removal was important. He labours over the point that no one did “anticipate the role of al-Qaeda or Iran”. He accepts “the reality of what happened in removing” Saddam,he can’t “regret the decision to go to war”.

One can read the chapter line by line,one can read it again for the chronology of how he weighed in on his American allies to take the UN route on inspections and sanctions (though former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix gets a handsome blast of the withering Blair disapproval). But whichever way the open-minded reader may be inclined on the war,the Iraq pages are insufficient in revealing Blair’s own mind.

No matter at what point in three years of filling up hundreds of note pads (Blair’s count) he wrote about the war,the pace and energy of the narrative before and after are missing. The over-analysis that is oddly riveting elsewhere,with Blair splitting into subject and narrator,is missing. The restraint and anxiety are revealing. And we must wait for George W. Bush’s memoir later this year for a better insider’s story. Perhaps.

It’s not as if there is no spin elsewhere. But elsewhere Blair is secure in the belief that he was the progressive on the right side of history. There is,peculiarly,always foreboding —along with his relations with US presidents and the always resentful “Gordon”,the book is shot through with a long shudder at the thought of the media. So in 1997,as he watches the results of the historic general election pour in (even allowing himself a gasp at the possibility of the Tories being wiped out altogether),he braces himself,reflecting on what would happen “when the mood turned against me,as I knew it would”. His wife Cherie,“the intellectually gifted barrister” was “about to collide with the world of the tabloid paper”. Later the media gets familiar phrases: “the people at the BBC”,“Murdoch’s people”,“the beast”. It’s fun.

The book,excepting the Iraq bit,is also driven by a sense of destiny. His recollection of the battle for Labour in the mid-1990s sets the tone. John Smith was in charge of the party,Brown was the presumed heir. But Blair began suspecting he was the moderniser,the man up to the mission,and one morning he woke up Cherie to tell her: “If John dies,I will be leader,not Gordon. And somehow,I think this will happen,I just think it will.”

It did. You don’t mess with Tony Blair. You don’t even cross his path. Or you get devastated by anecdotal treatment in his entertaining memoir. Queen Elizabeth II receives him,after Diana’s funeral,in a drawing room “which was exactly as Queen Victoria had left it”. Jacques Chirac jokes about British food and what it says about the national character,and is mocked at the Gleneagles G8 summit by the Japanese prime minister greeting each course at dinner with enthusiasm about the meal on offer,“until I thought Jacques was going to take out his aide-de-camp’s gun and shoot him”.

Blair’s leadership style was constructed around communication,and he explains not just how he changed policy but also how he conveyed it to the people. He lays out the problem of modern politics,where politicians have ever less experience of non-political life. It’s not a book just about what he did,but why and how. Yet,the book is overwritten,especially recurring passages where he marvels at how he got through the difficult bits of his tenure. But then,as he warned the reader early on,this is not a historian writing. And separating Blair from the spin is still not easy.