When the US president, on the eve of the invasion, offered him the chance to withdraw from the coalition, the British prime minister replied: “I’m staying, even if it costs me my government.” I remember George W Bush saying, when I interviewed him at the White House after the invasion, that Mr Blair told him he was prepared to lose power rather than back down on his commitment to tackling Saddam.
RESCIND TONY KNIGHTHOOD GETS HUNDREDS THOUSANDS FULL
Having abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban last summer, does anyone seriously believe that Joe Biden and Boris Johnson have the mettle to stand up to modern-day tyrants like the Russian President Vladimir Putin or the ayatollahs in Tehran?īy deciding to ally himself with the Bush administration’s campaign to remove Saddam, Mr Blair knew full well that he was putting his political reputation on the line, not least because of the fierce resistance he encountered from his own backbenches. The misrepresentation of intelligence relating to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and the lamentable lack of post-conflict planning, are two of the more obvious areas where Mr Blair, together with acolytes like Alastair Campbell, hardly covered themselves in glory.īut on the fundamental issue of whether to commit Britain to supporting the US-led campaign to overthrow Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, Mr Blair displayed moral courage of a very high order, a quality one suspects today’s generation of conflict-averse politicians would struggle to emulate. Mr Blair’s handling of the Iraq brief was by no means faultless, as the numerous inquiries into the Iraq affair have demonstrated. But they should not include his decision to support the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. ‘And I think it’s a kick in the teeth for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a kick in the teeth for all the people who protested against the war in Iraq and who have been proved right.There are many sound reasons why people might question the award of a knighthood to Tony Blair, from his botched reform of the House of Lords to the curse of devolution. We have Iraq in a terrible state now, nearly 20 years after the invasion. ‘We have eight million people on the edge of starvation in Afghanistan now. She told LBC radio: ‘I think it’s pretty incredible given that this year, we’ve seen the collapse of Afghanistan, which Tony Blair’s first major war in the war on terror. Lindsay German, a founding member of the Stop The War Coalition, said she found it ‘pretty incredible’ that Mr Blair would be knighted within months of the Taliban retaking Afghanistan. ‘One million Iraqis dead, three million disposed, a trail of blood to 7/7. The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War found British intelligence into Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction was ‘flawed’.įilmmaker John Pilger tweeted: ‘The contempt in which Britain’s elite holds the public has never been more eloquently expressed than in the decision to award Tony Blair the highest order of knighthood. Journalist Richard Medhurst wrote on Twitter that Mr Blair was a ‘war criminal’ who ‘lied about WMDs’. Hazel Hunt, whose son Richard died at the age of 21 in Afghanistan, said she was ‘contemplating sending the Elizabeth Cross back as my sign of protest’. However, Carol Valentine, whose son was killed while clearing landmines in Afghanistan in 2009, described the honour as the ‘ultimate insult’. ‘I would say if you’ve been prime minister of this country, I do believe the country should recognise the service they’ve given.’ They should all be offered that knighthood when they finish as prime minister.’ He said: ‘Whatever people might think, it is one of the toughest jobs in the world and I think it is respectful, and it is the right thing to do, whether it is to Tony Blair or to David Cameron. Veterans and their families expressed their displeasure after the former Labour prime minister was included in the Queen’s new year honours list.īut Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he believed all former prime ministers should be knighted.
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