Getting Blair

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In his farewell speech an hour ago Tony Blair said that this country “gets” the "essential" interdependent character of today’s world, he boasted that the British are “comfortable” with globalisation and the country is “at home in its own own skin”. In these short reactions he exposed his originality (no previous Labour leader could have thought or felt like this) and his delusions. Globalisation is essentially discomforting even when it is positive and to be welcomed, as it transforms the meaning of ‘home’. To suggest otherwise is callous. Inter-connectedness is complicated and needs rules, it is not something you “get” or fail to “get”. When I heard Blair say this I thought of his ex-foreign policy advisor Sir Patrick Wall talking to Michael Cockerell in his TV films on Blair. He recounted how they were meeting with other European leaders just before the Iraq war. President Chirac told Blair that he had fought in Algeria and that invading Iraq was a mistake Blair would regret. As they left the meeting Blair rolled his eyes and said that Jacques didn’t “get it”. Three years later they were watching Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers in the Pentagon... Far from Chirac not "getting" what modern leaders needed to do, it was Blair who failed to learn from the living past and showed no curiosity about it. A terrible failure for a leader. Much has improved in Britain since 1997. But if the Scottish and Welsh votes show anything, it is that we are not at home in our current skin, not to speak of how few of us feel comfortable with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness being our leaders in Northern Ireland. Blair's talk of "getting" things turns what should be judgements which can be challenged into instincts and feelings.