'Blair’s defenders – who you are more likely to find in the media than in the general population – are deeply irritated by any pushback to his finely honed spin. They believe Blair’s leftwing critics are possessed by an irrational collective madness. Because he won elections, his detractors should really just express blind gratitude.
This is not a line of argument Blair’s remaining supporters would apply to, say, Ken Livingstone. Iraq, for Blair’s champions, is no big deal, a topic worthy of a yawn … why can’t we just move on from it? Hundreds of thousands of dead (179 British soldiers among them), millions injured and displaced, the rise of the horror of Islamic State: these are all apparently insufficient grounds to have something of a grudge against Tony Blair.
That he spent the last few years amassing millions of pounds in the service of dictators – such as Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, who Blair offered PR advice after his tyrant client regime massacred striking workers – is worthy of nothing but an eye-roll. After all, Blair won a landslide victory in 1997, so there is nothing else to say.
In another world, being paid millions to work for dictators who kill their opponents, let alone orchestrating an invasion that has produced blood and chaos on an industrial scale, would be sufficient grounds to retire from public life.'
From Owen Jones' article.
