Good political and business leaders are indeed a rare breed. When a good leader crops up, others try to understand their formula of success and model their behaviour on their strategies.
Good leaders believe, often too much, in their persuasive gifts and charisma. They promise their followers ‘I will be with you whatever’.
Tony Blair was one such leader. His political success on the home front was contagious. Many centrist and left leaning political leaders saw him as a moderniser, a person who understood the aspirations of middle class people and who could deliver change in people’s lives. His biographies dwell on peace in Northern Ireland after the Easter Agreement of 1997, devolution of Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act, a minimum wage and a decade of decent funding for the NHS. These achievements are still bearing fruit, but Blair will be judged by future generations for one disastrous strategy: the war in Iraq.
The publication of the Chilcot Report commissioned by Blair’s successor Gordon Brown showed how the British Parliament was not told the whole truth and was fed big lies to support the motion to go to war with the US against Iraq. Blair’s apparent strength – the ability to understand what people want – was all but inexistent in this case.
I remember the fiery Robin Cook resigning from Blair’s Cabinet as he could not stomach the arguments brought by the prime minister to justify the war on Iraq. Cook, like many others, did not believe that Saddam Hussein was capable of using the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that Blair and Bush were constantly bragging about.
While Bush was always portrayed as being a belligerent leader, Blair must have had some deep-seated conviction that by befriending the American President he could gain some global political advantage. Some argue that what Blair really wanted was to get the US to back more meaningfully the Israeli-Palestinian process. This, of course, never happened and showed that the UK had nothing to gain from going to war with Iraq.
If I were the parent of one of the soldiers killed uselessly in Iraq I would not be impressed by Teflon Tony’s crocodile tears
No wonder so many British people are still so angry at this big mistake of Blair. By refusing to listen to 139 of his Labour MPs who voted against military action in March 2003 and who had been militating against war for months, Blair inflicted a sore wound on British society that will not heal for a very long time. At least 130,000 Iraqi troops were killed, more than a million lost their homes, displaced and dispossessed after the 2003 invasion. Thousands of British parents still mourn sons and daughters killed in this useless war.
Chilcot had some scathing remarks about Blair’s behaviour after the Iraq invasion. Blair’s plans for the aftermath of the invasion were ‘wholly inadequate’. It is precisely this phenomenon that ordinary people must guard against when listening devotedly to their leaders’ promises. Will politicians’ promises actually be delivered, and if they will, at what cost?
When political leaders give more importance to protecting their own interests and those of the close circle around them, forgetting the multitude of other people who in a democracy have a right to be heard, they start the process of their own unmaking. Initially Blair’s New Labour concept captured the imagination of political analysts and many in the general public.
He made the Labour Party electable after years of electoral insignificance under leaders like Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
By banishing everything that Old Labour stood for, like suspicion of the US’s almost dogmatic belief to wage war, he sowed the future decline of the British Labour Party. That future is today.
The present Labour Party’s leadership lacks the self-confidence and vision that it needs to attract the majority of UK voters to support it.
Battles on the fringes of all political parties are almost inevitable. There will always be some who will want their party to move a little bit to the right or the left of the political spectrum. But one faction that at any time may have the majority of followers will not remain so if it despises the other factions within the same party. This is a mistake that Blair made and other social democratic leaders today seem to be repeating.
Blair sounded very emotional when he commented on the finding of the Chilcot report. If I were the parent of one of the soldiers killed uselessly in Iraq I would not be impressed by Teflon Tony’s crocodile tears.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com