The Blair Legacy
ANDREW ROBERTS, HISTORIAN AND BIOGRAPHER | 10.05.2007 16:56
Before 11 September 2001, Tony Blair was set to go down in history as a second-division prime minister, one of those who stayed in power for a long time but without having any appreciable effect on the story of his times.
Blair was a good war leader
He followed the opinions of focus groups and opinion polls, carefully judging every option with the sole criterion of getting New Labour re-elected.
If anything, he was something of a mild wrecker: over devolution, the House of Lords, hunting, and the Lord Chancellorship, he seemed happy to rip up ancient British arrangements without giving much thought as to what would be likely to replace them.
Then came 9/11. Suddenly, everything changed.
'Shoulder to shoulder'
No fewer than 67 Britons died on that day, and Blair showed a side of his personality that had been impossible to discern before: Churchillian leadership.
With his announcement that Britain would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States, and backing that up with sending large numbers of British troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq, he carved a place for himself in the first rank of British premiers since 1900.
Was Blair, like Churchill, in the first rank of prime ministers?
Blair was watching television in Brighton when the third plane hit the Pentagon at 2.43pm (British time), and then put in a short appearance at the Trade Union conference there.
Visibly shaken, he told the delegates: "There have been the most terrible, shocking events in the United States of America in the last hours.
"I am afraid we can only imagine the terror and carnage there and the many, many innocent people who have lost their lives. This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today."
Later he recalled, in an interview on Boston television: "Sometimes things happen in politics, an event so cataclysmic that, in a curious way, all the doubt is removed.
"From the outset, I really felt very certain as to what had to be said and done."
Blair proved himself an exemplary war leader
This was underlined soon afterwards in his powerful address to the Labour Party conference the next month, in which Blair said of the American people: "We were with you at the first. We will stay with you till the last."
In this he was as good as his word.
Blair had fought wars before, of course. Kosovo and Sierra Leone had seen British troops deployed by him, both successfully and with minimum casualties.
The post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were to be of an altogether different - and larger - order, although the casualties were also amazingly light.
Blair proved himself an exemplary war leader.
WMD danger
Under the sincere impression that Saddam Hussein of Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - a view shared by the intelligence services of every major country in the world, as well as by the United Nations' own weapons inspectors - he appreciated the importance of overthrowing the Baathist regime as soon as the Taleban regime was deposed in Afghanistan.
The dangers of WMDs possibly falling into the hands of anti-Western terrorists groups could only be obviated by a full-scale US-led invasion by the Coalition of the Willing, and none proved more willing than Blair.
(The fact that it later transpired that Saddam had most probably destroyed his WMD was entirely immaterial; Blair believed Saddam had had them at the time, not least because he had used them extensively on his own people in the late 1980s.)
Prime ministers...are judged by the One Big Thing that happens during their premierships.
In Britain a vicious and disgraceful campaign began, attempting, on the flimsiest of evidence taken wildly out of context, to accuse Blair of deliberately lying in order to take the country to war.
Its smears and slurs will not stand the test of historical analysis.
The defeat of the enormous Iraqi army in only three weeks in March 2003; the establishment of democracy in Iraq, with a 70% turnout in nationwide elections on 15 December 2005; the stalwart defence of Iraq against an unexpectedly long and violent terrorist insurgency; the loss of only tiny numbers of British troops by any historical or operational standards: all will be credited to Tony Blair by posterity.
Similarly the burning out of Al Qaeda and the Taleban from the most important areas of Afghanistan is another of his fine achievements.
Prime ministers are not judged by posterity on issues to do with transport, health, education, or even - most of them - on economic indicators.
They are judged by the One Big Thing that happens during their premierships.
That is why Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, Anthony Eden's Suez Crisis, Edward Heath's Three-Day Week, and John Major's ERM debacle have left them branded as failures.
Equally, Winston Churchill's Blitz orations, Margaret Thatcher's saving of British capitalism and Tony Blair's vigorous prosecution of the War against Terror will leave them noted by history as highly successful prime ministers.
He followed the opinions of focus groups and opinion polls, carefully judging every option with the sole criterion of getting New Labour re-elected.
If anything, he was something of a mild wrecker: over devolution, the House of Lords, hunting, and the Lord Chancellorship, he seemed happy to rip up ancient British arrangements without giving much thought as to what would be likely to replace them.
Then came 9/11. Suddenly, everything changed.
'Shoulder to shoulder'
No fewer than 67 Britons died on that day, and Blair showed a side of his personality that had been impossible to discern before: Churchillian leadership.
With his announcement that Britain would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States, and backing that up with sending large numbers of British troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq, he carved a place for himself in the first rank of British premiers since 1900.
Was Blair, like Churchill, in the first rank of prime ministers?
Blair was watching television in Brighton when the third plane hit the Pentagon at 2.43pm (British time), and then put in a short appearance at the Trade Union conference there.
Visibly shaken, he told the delegates: "There have been the most terrible, shocking events in the United States of America in the last hours.
"I am afraid we can only imagine the terror and carnage there and the many, many innocent people who have lost their lives. This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today."
Later he recalled, in an interview on Boston television: "Sometimes things happen in politics, an event so cataclysmic that, in a curious way, all the doubt is removed.
"From the outset, I really felt very certain as to what had to be said and done."
Blair proved himself an exemplary war leader
This was underlined soon afterwards in his powerful address to the Labour Party conference the next month, in which Blair said of the American people: "We were with you at the first. We will stay with you till the last."
In this he was as good as his word.
Blair had fought wars before, of course. Kosovo and Sierra Leone had seen British troops deployed by him, both successfully and with minimum casualties.
The post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were to be of an altogether different - and larger - order, although the casualties were also amazingly light.
Blair proved himself an exemplary war leader.
WMD danger
Under the sincere impression that Saddam Hussein of Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - a view shared by the intelligence services of every major country in the world, as well as by the United Nations' own weapons inspectors - he appreciated the importance of overthrowing the Baathist regime as soon as the Taleban regime was deposed in Afghanistan.
The dangers of WMDs possibly falling into the hands of anti-Western terrorists groups could only be obviated by a full-scale US-led invasion by the Coalition of the Willing, and none proved more willing than Blair.
(The fact that it later transpired that Saddam had most probably destroyed his WMD was entirely immaterial; Blair believed Saddam had had them at the time, not least because he had used them extensively on his own people in the late 1980s.)
Prime ministers...are judged by the One Big Thing that happens during their premierships.
In Britain a vicious and disgraceful campaign began, attempting, on the flimsiest of evidence taken wildly out of context, to accuse Blair of deliberately lying in order to take the country to war.
Its smears and slurs will not stand the test of historical analysis.
The defeat of the enormous Iraqi army in only three weeks in March 2003; the establishment of democracy in Iraq, with a 70% turnout in nationwide elections on 15 December 2005; the stalwart defence of Iraq against an unexpectedly long and violent terrorist insurgency; the loss of only tiny numbers of British troops by any historical or operational standards: all will be credited to Tony Blair by posterity.
Similarly the burning out of Al Qaeda and the Taleban from the most important areas of Afghanistan is another of his fine achievements.
Prime ministers are not judged by posterity on issues to do with transport, health, education, or even - most of them - on economic indicators.
They are judged by the One Big Thing that happens during their premierships.
That is why Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, Anthony Eden's Suez Crisis, Edward Heath's Three-Day Week, and John Major's ERM debacle have left them branded as failures.
Equally, Winston Churchill's Blitz orations, Margaret Thatcher's saving of British capitalism and Tony Blair's vigorous prosecution of the War against Terror will leave them noted by history as highly successful prime ministers.
ANDREW ROBERTS, HISTORIAN AND BIOGRAPHER