Cost him my party membership, that did. Gutted he was. One of his flunkeys phoned me and told me so. I still didn't come back.

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'I was only obeying Rupert's orders'.

"Sharing a direction of travel" surely?

Actually, I think that Bush and increasing religious mania had more to do with it than Rupes.

The Mail are now moaning because Blair finished giving his evidence too early. He probably finished early because he answered the questions concisely rather than using Murdoch's tactics of selective amnesia and endless waffle. If the only faults they can find in his evidence is that he breezed through the questions then it's safe to assume he put in a good performance.

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It's the classic Nuremberg Defence. Not very effective mind you.

Blair had a good point about the misreporting of the EU budget negotiations last time. I'd never looked at the figures but assumed he's cut a rather bad cash deal in return for influence.

Wrong!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_ ... xpenditure

per capita, we don't even contribute 2/3 of what France does.

But read this in the Guardian and you'd think the French were getting all the freebies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... -eu-rebate

I have to say for all the hatred of Blair by many on the left he was about the only person who could have saved us from 33 years straight of Tory rule. Given the damage done in 33 months that's not to be sniffed at.

The problem with Iraq is that it's polarised opinion so much "Yes he's a war criminal", "No he's not", "Yes he is", "No he's not", "He killed millions of people", "You support Saddam" etc etc that we may never know the truth of it or indeed the reasoning behind any of it. The likelihood, speaking from where I'm sitting, is Blair was as much duped as everyone else by the Americans into going along with it, and was basically left as the fall-guy for it when it (inevitably, because the Americans can't organise this sort of thing properly) all went tits up. And there can be no doubt the world is a much better place without Saddam Hussein in it. I guess it comes down to a balance of which has killed more, the war in Iraq or how many Saddam would have killed (and could well still be killing) had he not been toppled.

The problem is it has forever tainted Blair, who actually did a lot of good. Ask the people of Kosovo if he's a war criminal, for example. And don't forget he was the man who introduced the minimum wage, arguably the greatest act of support for the lower end of the spectrum since the introduction of the Welfare State.

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Good points.

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+1

And don't forget Northern Ireland. Yes I know John Major started the groundwork and I know that sectarian murders and beatings continue, but it's fecking sight more peaceful now than in the preceding 40 years.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Other people weren't duped by the Americans re Iraq though. There was loads of dissent at the time, on the Labour benches not least. By no means all of those were starry eyed pacifists.

I don't think invading somewhere because of non-existent nuclear weapons can be regarded as anything but an utter disaster.

I think Blair and Campbell in particular were hard done by over the Gilligan allegations. As I understand it, the intelligence people didn't produce sober stuff that Blair dressed up, but were themselves carried away by the pro-war mood in the country.

And of course Blair had a couple of good wars under his belt and wanted to add another notch to his Peacemaker.

From memory.
550 out of 650 MPs across all parties voted for the war.
Who claimed there were nuclear weapons in Iraq?
Again from memory, the WMD were gas and chemical warheads.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Very true.

Problem is that in the age we live in, he was double fucked by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of it's to do with the media coverage, and the fact that we went into both with a sense of invincibility. While not wanting to denigrate or belittle the contributions of any of the people who have died in either theatre of war, the fact remains that not that many British soldiers have died. Comparatively.

Read that again. Shout it out loud. 30 years ago we lost 300ish in 6 weeks (plus more in Northern Ireland). If that happened in Afghanistan this year, you'd be looking for a new government.

Major got off light with Desert Storm, same as Blair with Bosnia.

Perceptions have changed. Coverage of the war has changed. Every death is a life story, not just a number. The soldier in the popular perception is no longer the boozy squaddie who got what he signed up for in some Belfast alley; but a grinning, fresh faced, clean limbed boy done good, hero of the neighbourhood, more often than not with a blonde and busty girlfriend/wife left behind with kid in tow. And as I said months ago, there's another attitude out there - that in some way it's unfair that the enemy are shooting back. Thus every death becomes a tragedy, every casualty a hero.

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The phrase "WMD" was deliberately vague to make people think in terms of nuclear weapons.

The other thing to remember is how much was spun by the media to suit their own agendas, the 45 minute claim being an example. The official documents always mentioned "British interests", meaning mainly British bases in the Middle East and Cyprus with weapons loaded onto SCUD missiles. What the media spun this as was that Baghdad could nuke London in a little over half-an-hour, which was never true and likely would never have been.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)