Jonathan Freedland - Pinch yourself: today Tony Blair will go out with his head held high
It is a badge of shame for the parliamentary Labour party and the cabinet (and indeed his successor), who between them could have driven Blair from office, that they did not do so earlier. But it also reflects a moral failure by Blair that he leaves today believing himself to be a star, going out on a high.
Posted on June 27th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I don’t know why Freedland draws these comparisons with Begin, Johnson and Eden. They all led their countries into a disastrous war and subsequently came to believe they’d done the wrong thing - no wonder they each left under a cloud. Blair did the right thing - or else he believes he did the right thing, or he believes that he did believe he was doing the right thing, I’m not sure.
The conclusion’s pretty much the same, anyway. Iraq: right decision. It might have turned out to have been the wrong decision now, but it was the right decision then. And it might have been the wrong decision then, but it looked like the right decision. And, yes, it might have looked like the wrong decision to you, but I took the tough decision to ignore you and do it anyway. Which makes it a brave decision, and it’s right to make brave decisions even if they turn out to be wrong, so it was right to make that wrong decision.
Iraq: right decision.