Bliar? Memory and a former premier

Would you have your peace process
negotiated by this man?

This morning the text of Tony Blair's prime ministerial memoir, A Journey, was released for general consumption. If you're interested, The Guardian have had a man reading it all day. A live blog of that can be found here: 


The release of the memoir is (among the) lead story on the BBC, Independent, Sun, Telegraph, ITN and Sky News websites, alongside the Guardian. The main stories are his semi-endorsement of the Coalition's economic policy and his finally disclosing his side of the 'TB-GB' relationship. 


To be fair these two are interesting. Blair appears to be distancing himself from the Labour Party as it wonders whether or not to continue with the 'New Labour' project (are there echoes of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister from 1894-5, here?). On a personal level the tone what I've seen so far is amiable - at one point he writes of how nervous PMQs made him feel, saying that he would prefer going through 'that scene in Marathon Man where the evil Nazi doctor played by Laurence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth'


However, can I point you towards Radio 4's Book of the Week? 


Chris Mullin is a former Labour MP and government minister. This week Radio 4 have been broadcasting an abridged version of the the third volume of his diaries (entitled Decline and Fall). It details the transition period between the Blair and Brown premierships, and Mullin's view of that time from his position as a relatively senior Labour backbencher. Blair appears as 'The Man'. He moves among the high political stratosphere, from carefully-planned event to carefully-planned event. 


Mullin's view may be somewhat skewered, so here's a more sympathetic account from the Labour MP Tom Harris: '...there are still many, many Labour Party members who remember Blair as an election-winning genius who, in office, was popular for an awful lot longer than he was unpopular. For those who want us to return to government sooner rather than later, Blair’s book will be a reminder that opposition doesn’t have to be permanent, and that great things can be accomplished by a Labour government, but only if we have a leader capable of appealing to voters beyond our own party’s core'. 


That may be true, but in the end it still outlines the major problem that many have with Blair. Who is the real Tony Blair? He is undoubtedly one, if not the, finest political operators of his generation, a man who led Labour through its first full second, into its first third, terms of office. When one spends one's days projecting a carefully thought out image to the world though, eventually the world begins to lose track of who the original man was. We have a situation approaching that outlined by Jean Baudrillard in his 'The Gulf War did not take place'. Was what we comprehended of Tony Blair a man, a series of images, or a combination of both?

Someone, I forget who, once commented that 'Politicians never lie, because the first people they always convince of anything are themselves'. To an extent that holds true for all people; I would humbly submit that none of us remembers our own pasts completely. Interlaced with any honesty there is the human tendency to romanticise our own histories to make ourselves appear 'better'. With all national leaders though, this tendency assumes the dimensions of a job requirement. Tony Blair is a fascinating man and a deeply influential Prime Minister. It will be up to other people to decide to what extent this memoir reflects truth though. We are still to close to him to see the truth for the image.