Some news stories leave you feeling tired even before you've woken up. Well, not the news stories themselves, but the way they'll be received: these people will say this, others will say that, and a few will split the difference with a not necessarily or a how's your father. So it was with yesterday's announcement that Tony Blair will be donating everything he earns from his memoirs to the Royal British Legion. You just knew at once that Blair's motives would be suspected, with a concern for his own reputation being made primary; that the act would be said not to suffice in face of his 'lies' and his 'crimes'; that others would say that his motives were genuine rather than cynical, but still this wouldn't do his Iraq-wrecked reputation any good; and so forth. Better to turn over and go back to sleep.
How easy some people find it to know the mind of another. It's a shame, therefore, that this piece by Philip Collins is behind the Times paywall. Collins gives the appearance of having access to the thoughts of the former prime minister first-hand, and if he does, then what he writes here makes much of the comment I've alluded to above irrelevant:
Tony Blair accepted long ago that there was no clever form of words and there was no brilliant argument that would change anyone's mind on the Iraq war. He thinks that only time can change the perspective through which those events are viewed. Certainly he has no expectation that his book will change many minds, still less that the destination of the proceeds will do so.
That is why the decision to give the proceeds of his memoir to the Royal British Legion has nothing to do with a supposed attempt to rehabilitate his reputation with the British people. Already people who know nothing have taken to the airwaves to proclaim that this is what he is trying to do. They are doing nothing more than repeating their own low view of the former Prime Minister. They offer no guide at all to what he actually thinks.
... he continues to believe that the intervention in Iraq was a just cause and he thus has nothing to apologise for.
Now, I for my own part don't know for sure that Collins really knows the mind of Tony Blair better than those for whom Blair is now a figure of hatred or contempt. Still, there's some reason, given his relationship to the man as his former speechwriter, for thinking that he might. But who amongst the accusers cares a toss? The Times itself, incidentally, in its front-page report about this, contradicts Collins's view, making Blair's 'desire to repair his reputation' central to his act of apparent generosity. So it blows.
