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Benedict Brogan

Benedict Brogan is the Daily Telegraph's Deputy Editor. His blog brings you news, gossip, analysis and occasional insight into politics, and more. You can find his weekly columns here and you can email him at benedict.brogan@telegraph.co.uk. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

Tony Blair, jet-set 'social engineer'

 

One of the best reads of the day has to be John Arlidge’s account in the Sunday Times of life on the road with Tony Blair, which provides some fascinating insights into his nomadic first class existence. The former Prime Minister spends three out of four weeks outside the UK (talk about being non-domiciled), touring the world in pursuit of his multiple interests and making lots of money in the process.

Mr Tony must still feels the scars on his back from trying to reform public services back home, which must be why he appears to have lost faith in government. He says: “I’m a social engineer now. I can engineer social change on my own terms, outside of a big government buraucracy.” There’s more like that in the piece, which suggests someone who is beginning to think that democracy just gets in the way. Talk about power corrupting.

But it’s the details that are revealing, like the fact that on one trip he was ferried between the Middle East and Rwanda on the Rwandan president’s private jet. Also worth noting what he has to say about the British media: “I’ve got a problem with the UK media. They don’t approach me in an objective way. Their first question is how to belittle what I’m doing, knock it down, write something bad about it. It’s not right. It’s not journalism. They don’t get me and they’ve got a score to settle with me. But they are not going to settle it.”

But my favourite extract is this one: “Everywhere he goes in Africa, he is lauded as some kind of saviour and he appears to enjoy it. After meeting him in Kigali, Anastase Murekezi, Rwanda’s minister of public service and labour, goes on television to describe the encounter as “a blessing from God”. In each African village Blair goes to, there are young children called Tony Blair. Spend time with him and you get an awkward sense that he sees himself as a bit of a 21st-century missionary saving souls — economically if not spiritually.” Gordon Brown, eat your heart out.

 
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  • It is time this charlatan was held to account. If there were any justice he would be behind bars, not jetting all around the world enriching himself.

    Brian Tomkinson on Dec 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
  • @ Brian Tomkinson

    His wife of course would have to join him in jail. Only fair, as you know!

    Fort Sumter on Dec 20th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
  • The light is on but there is no-one in.
    It’s his mad staring and empty eyes that give the ‘rolling stone wannabe’ away.
    This ‘Man’ is a quite appalling example of the species.
    He should be arraigned and banged up in the Hague, then brought before the court, at a war crimes trial.

    Instead he jets around the world and exudes false bonhomie and expounds on all his wife’s ’socialist control’ hypotheses/BS.
    Rubbing shoulders with unsavoury types (like with like), when will he visit Mugabe? – they will get on famously, seeing eye to eye on many things.

    He still is unaware/oblivious of just how reviled he is in this country, that is the sum of the man (Billy Bliar).

    Justinxs on Dec 20th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
  • Well, the Messianic Delusion isn’t new, is it?
    Heck, all those Emperor-gods were at it millenia ago, from Egypt to Babylon.
    Even Margaret Thatcher had her St Francis of Assisi moment on entering 10 Downing Street.
    Tony Blair, Barack Obama, even Nelson Mandela, all of them bathe in the admiration of those who desire to have a worldly Saviour who will give them food in their belly, national security and, of course, the aura of the personal touch…. Dostoevksi was spot on in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ and of course all of them are just trial runs for the ultimate deception to come: oh the charisma of the Man of Perdition who will seduce very nearly all of us with his Planet Saving solutions!

    Meanwhile, in some anonymous shepherd’s cave in Bethlehem….

    jacquesarden on Dec 20th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
  • In reality, it is “Tony Blair, jet set ’social pariah’”…He clearly doesn’t read the papers.

    Laurence England on Dec 20th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
  • ‘In each African village Blair goes to, there are young children called Tony Blair’.
    I’ve heard of ‘The Boys From Brazil’ but ‘The Boys From Sedgefield’ now that’s really scary.

    One Eyed Bogey Muncher on Dec 20th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
  • “In each African village Blair goes to, there are young children called Tony Blair. Spend time with him and you get an awkward sense that he sees himself as a bit of a 21st-century missionary”

    Dr.Blair I presume. Not.

    enasharples on Dec 20th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
  • “…the UK media. They don’t approach me in an objective way. Their first question is how to belittle what I’m doing, knock it down, write something bad about it. It’s not right. It’s not journalism. They don’t get me and they’ve got a score to settle with me. But they are not going to settle it.”

    Hmmm – I wonder when this started. Could it have started with Blair and his chums Mandy and Campbell? Do we recall how they used the Meeja to trash Maggie, to belittle, knock and traduce “the forces of conservatism”?

    The Meeja (including the DT) gave him and his corrupt gang far too much leeway – even now the BBC still loves him.

    Forget the Meeja – ask the people. The people would see him hanged.

    barryobarma on Dec 20th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
  • barryobarma on Dec 20th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
    Forget the Meeja – ask the people. The people would see him hanged.

    The people voted him into power three times. Put against Cameron now he might even get a fourth endorsment. I think you are judging by the opinions expressed here and that could be dodgy.
    John Duckham
    http://johnduckham.tk

    Duckham on Dec 20th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
  • Whilst I would agree that there are some people who will vote for an orangutan so long as it has a red rosette, I believe that IF there are enough of them to put these idiots back again there will be civil war, in England at least.

    They have gambled big time, but I think they have underestimated the depth of feeling among those of us who care about freedom and honesty.

    owdal80 on Dec 20th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
  • DOG: THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY
    .
    Dog had this wonderful vision: Tony B. Liar breaking out in a cold sweat and leaping through someone else’s [freebie] bedroon window at 3am, nightshirt a flutter and cap skew-whiff, when the 3 ghosts appeared.
    .
    They never slept in the same bed on consecutive nights, you know. Mussolini, Idi Amin, Bin Laden….

    Same Old Dog on Dec 20th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
  • Just wait and see how many are named ‘Gordon Brown’ in Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe in 15 years time.

    t150662 on Dec 21st, 2009 at 12:24 am
  • Ducky:
    Let him stand.
    Trial.

    barryobarma on Dec 21st, 2009 at 1:21 am
  • Why does Duckham keep posting links here to his pointless website???

    oblong on Dec 21st, 2009 at 1:43 am
  • oblong – that is a question that has been addressed many times, but never satisfactorily explained by the author. It seems a vehicle for the advancement of that stone-age religion of peace and understanding, islam.

    I have tried to think of something to express the depth of my revulsion for the grinning, money-grubbing, expense-shredding, war-mongering Messianic charlatan BLiar, and then I think of his helpmeet, and I confess the merest tinge of sympathy for the odious scumbag creeps in unbidden.

    45govt on Dec 21st, 2009 at 10:09 am
  • There’s more like that in the piece, which suggests someone who is beginning to think that democracy just gets in the way. Talk about power corrupting.

    If this dreadful man ever had any genuine respect for democracy, he kept it well hidden. Government via his chums and flat-mates from his sofa, a barely concealed contempt for Parliament, the systematic use of lies as an instrument of government policy, the repeated imposition of Mandleson upon us, fascistic speeches to his party’s conferences (to what else does “the many, not the few” refer?), and so on and on and on.

    Our ancestors knew how to deal with people like Blair; we are too squeamish, more’s the pity.

    HNMcC on Dec 21st, 2009 at 11:03 am
  • ‘tinge of sympathy creeps in’
    That doesn’t sound like your usual self, 45! Are you mellowing with age, or is ‘the season of goodwill’ getting to you?
    Or are you unwell?

    Dr Stephen Morris on Dec 21st, 2009 at 11:06 am
  • Doc – thanks for your concern, none of the above, but it is just the sheer toe-curling horror of the thought of having to live with slot-gob that momentairly breached my defences. Almost immediately I realised that it couldn’t happen to a nicer victim.

    My compliments of the season to you Sir!

    45govt on Dec 21st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
  • 45 – glad to hear it…..my sentiments wrt Bliar exactly.
    You can just imagine it, can’t you? Living in a village in difficult conditions in Africa. Life is not much fun…just when you think things can’t get any worse, up rolls ‘hey, I’m a pretty straight kinda guy’ – how depressing would that be?!
    Have a good one!

    Dr Stephen Morris on Dec 21st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
  • Alas, the link to “life on the road” doesn’t work.

    The Irish Neanderthal on Dec 21st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
  • Leave him to his fantasies. At least he’s relatively harmless like this.

    And since our SuperGord must know that the most he can look forward to is an obscure peerage, the news must drive him apopleptic every morning. That has to be a good thing.

    Y Rhyfelwr Dewr on Dec 21st, 2009 at 6:32 pm

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