Tony Blair: slow motion vindication
Who knows, this might be the point where Tony Blair’s still seemingly good reputation amongst many finally starts to unravel and he’s finally judged by wider opinion. God knows its about the only consolation you can take from the wide and long trail of dead and shattered bodies he left behind him…
The documents – released to The Sunday Telegraph after a two-and-a-half year Freedom of Information battle – reveal that Mr Blair personally intervened to secure Formula One’s exemption from the tobacco advertising ban just hours after meeting Bernie Ecclestone, the motorsport’s billionaire boss.
The Government has always maintained that the meeting with Mr Ecclestone, a major new Labour donor at the time, did not influence the final decision to offer the exemption.
However the previously secret papers show that Mr Blair did order ministers to find ways to implement the “derogation” for Formula One after the meeting.[...]
As the affair deepened with the revelation that Mr Ecclestone had donated £1 million to the Labour Party just months before the tobacco advertising climbdown Mr Blair faced calls to resign.
The Prime Minister appeared on the BBC’s On The Record Programme to defend the exemption and to insist he was “a pretty straight sort of guy.”
Hopefully this is the first of a steady drip of dirty water that will utterly soak his reputation. Like I said, it’s a small compensation – a slow motion vindication of what those of us with eyes to see have said all along. That and watching the faces of those who worked so hard continually telling us for ten years to give Blair the benefit of the doubt, him included.
(Via Blairwatch)
Posted on October 12th, 2008 at 9:13am under Blair