" Tony Blair: Iraq war isn't why people don't like me "

Saturday 28th May 2016

It would be a "very dangerous experiment" for the UK to give Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn power, Tony Blair has told the BBC's This Week's World.

The former Labour prime minister said the centre ground needed to work out how to recover and get "its mojo back".

He also said he had "real humility" about the decisions he took on Iraq.

Mr Blair said the dislike many felt for him was less to do with the Iraq War and more to do with him winning three general elections for Labour.

"There are people who disagree with me for reasons that they say are to do with, say, Iraq, but actually are to do with the fact I won three elections for the Labour Party and they didn't like it," he said.

Mr Blair has been a vocal critic of Mr Corbyn in the past, warning before the left-wing MP's leadership election victory that the party risked "annihilation" if he won.

In an interview with the BBC's This Week's World, Mr Blair - Labour leader from 1994 to 2007, and PM for 10 of those years - dismissed the idea that Mr Corbyn's election as party leader was a direct rejection of him and his policies.

"No," he said, "I think it's a result of the way the world works these days. But it's a big challenge for the centre... It would be a very dangerous experiment for a major western country to get gripped by this type of populist policy-making, left or right."

He added: "I do think the centre ground needs to work out how it recovers... gets its mojo back and gets the initiative back in the political debate, because... these guys aren't providing answers, not on the economy, not on foreign policy."

Sir John Chilcot's long-awaited report into how UK forces came to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath, is to be published on 6 July.

Ahead of its publication, Mr Blair told This Week's World: "I have a real humility about the decisions that I took and the issues around them.

"I was trying to deal with this in the aftermath of 9/11 and it was very tough - it was very difficult."

The former PM, who set up a foundation which works to promote greater understanding between the world's religions and to challenge extremism and prejudice, said the West was not to blame for the situation in the Middle East.

And he warned of bigger terrorist attacks on Europe in future.

"You've got to open your eyes to the problem. If we don't do that we're going to store up an even bigger problem for ourselves, and we face the problem in Europe, I'm afraid, of even bigger terror attacks.

"I think we need to be in no doubt at all about the people we're dealing with here. If they could kill larger numbers of people that's what they would do," he said.

The threat, he said, was "different... from anything we have faced before" and he said it required a "different type of policy response and... a different rhythm of thinking", as it would be a "generation fight, it's not a fight that's going to be resolved in one year, two years, or even 10".

Mr Blair also called for action to redress the widespread problem of indoctrination of Muslim children in extremist ideologies across the Middle East.

He said there needed to be a global commitment, where countries promoted cultural tolerance and rooted out cultural prejudice within their education systems.

"If you end up polluting the mind of your people as they're growing up within your country, in today's world where the boundaries come down where there is much more migration and integration, then that is not just for your country - it's a problem for all of us."

I'm not sure how much credence any of us should pay to arguments from a man who willingly followed George W Bush into what current US Secretary of State John Kerry apparently describes in private as "the worst foreign policy decision in history."

The minutiae from the devastating fall out from that decision, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, has been pawed over a million times on here and elsewhere. 'Iraq' is quite rightly seen as Blair's legacy and the reason why he has received a level of vilification practically unheralded for a former UK prime minister. Major, Brown, Callaghan, Heath et al may not go down in the annals of history as particularly great or inspiring leaders but compared to the roundly despised Tony Blair their time after departing number ten has been a relative cakewalk. Even Thatcher, although roundly loathed by the left, has millions of admirers on the right who will vigorously defend her record in government. Blair, bar a rapidly dimishing band of loyalists in the media, parliament and at constituency level has no such bank of devoted acolytes. He really is politically toxic.

Against this backdrop, his comments on Jeremy Corbyn, a man with plenty still to prove, are likely only to harden grass roots Labour members attitudes towards their former leader and entrench their support for the member for Islington North.

As someone with no party political affiliations, my own views on Blair's criticism of Corbyn are that they are motivated by a lack of understanding, on his part, that the orthodox politics and accepted political 'rules' that were in place in the UK and the west generally when he was prime minister no longer hold true. Major media institutions still have plenty of power but would more populist politicians (and parties) like Sanders, Corbyn, Syriza, Podemos etc have gained such leverage twenty years ago without the rise of social networking sites with such a global reach? Likewise, industrial scale tax evaders and avoiders are now publicly vilified on such sites, the direct correlation between a reckless banking system and its long term effect on ordinary people and our public services through austerity are also much clearer on people's radars. Established certainties of a decade or so ago are no longer looking quite so certain. Ordinary voters have twigged that western neoliberalism and hawkish foreign policies can have very painful economic and security consequences.

Is Corbyn a man with enough agility to take advantage of the situation in which much of the population is beginning to experience the scales falling from their eyes? I'm not too sure. I am sure though that an increasingly detached from reality Tony Blair has yet to even grasp that the 'game has changed.'

Tony Blair grade 'a' c*nt

Tony Blair grade 'a' c*nt

I wish he was still leader instead of corbryn. 10 more years of torries ahead.

Tony Blair grade 'a' c*nt

I wish he was still leader instead of corbryn. 10 more years of torries ahead.

we`ve had 37 years of Tory rule ... there was no difference between Blair`s labour and the f**kers. VOTE CORBYN