I ask this with all sincerity, but what do we think happened to Tony Blair?

As a northern nationalist, there will always be a nostalgic view of the former prime minister. Like a former boyfriend from school who was lovely for a short period and then got consistently worse as he grew up.

His rise and the rise of new Labour, the Good Friday Agreement, the Bloody Sunday inquiry, his track record on gay rights, devolution in Scotland etc. He has plenty to be proud of and many here would credit him for saving the north from another 30 years of war. It would be worth pointing out that removing the British Army sooner would’ve saved many more lives, but I suppose when it comes to British leaders, we have to take whatever win that comes.

Poor Tony really had a game of two halves when it came to leading. It looked so promising until he tasted blood in the water and followed George Bush into a pointless war that created more enemies than it killed. That’s the thing about the Brits, for all the pointless wars they get into, not one single prime minister has ever paused and thought: “Maybe we should sit this one out, we’re not very good at it.”

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Most Prime Ministers (thankfully) retire into obscurity, I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard David Cameron or Gordon Brown’s thoughts on anything, and it’s wonderful.

For some reason, we’re always subjected to Tony Blair’s opinions or reporting on whatever scheme he’s up to.

This week, he wrote an opinion piece in a right-wing, American outlet claiming the “left”, (he doesn’t explain who the “left” is) is in an “unholy alliance with islamists in our own societies whose ideology leads inexorably to antisemitism.”

Blair wrote: “You can make a legitimate criticism of Israel’s tactics in the conduct of the war. Many Jews around the world make exactly those critiques.

“You should not diminish the charge of genocide – whatever your views of Israel’s actions – by a barb particularly aimed at Jewish memories of the Holocaust, which was a genocide.

“But you cannot engage in such criticism legitimately if you do not also condemn the terrorism of October 7. You cannot pretend that Israel does not face a substantial terrorist threat from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and other groups that do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.”

First of all, it is not “the left” who have charged Israel with genocide, but the UN, the world’s leading association of genocide scholars and dozens of human rights groups.

Tony Blair is not stupid and he is not blind. He says he believes in “Israel’s right to exist” and seems genuinely concerned about the Israeli people. Meanwhile, has absolutely no regard for the Arab people in an Israeli-made apartheid state and is pretty open about it. He laments, as we all should, the arson attack on ambulances in London that belonged to a Jewish charity, without any mention that there is not one single hospital left in Gaza, that babies were left to die in ICUs and IVF clinics were bombed.

I suppose, when you’ve been responsible for raining down bombs on one set of Muslims, another set facing the same fate isn’t going to upset you either. The timing of the piece is also interesting, as his former party, currently in government, are about as popular as stomach flu. Labour are being outflanked on the left by the Green Party. I assume this is “the left” Tony Blair is referring to, casting out the age old barb of antisemitism at those who oppose apartheid murder of children. It doesn’t hit the same however, when the leader of the Green Party in Zach Polanski is himself a practicing Jew and I imagine this is where Tony Blair’s desperation is coming from.

The hypocrisy is never ending when you also learn that Tony Blair sits on Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, a hair-brained scheme which claims to have the aim of ending war in Gaza. Palestine is not a member, but Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who faces an arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza – is. I know I should be more cynical, but I am still shocked at the audacity of these British leaders, who rain terror down on people and complain about the consequences. At least Cameron and Brown have the decency to spare us from their opinions now they’ve moved on to civilian life.

The fact is, Tony Blair needs us to be afraid of “Islamists” because that was the same nonsense he spouted when he bombed Muslim people too. Tony Blair still believes he was right to go to war with Iraq, despite all evidence that it was a pointless endeavour that killed thousands, cost a fortune, created paramilitaries and ruined any potential stability for the region for decades.

Maybe the reason he’s so dedicated to keeping Benjamin Netanyahu out of the Hague, is that he knows he should probably be in there too.

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