Tony Blair

I've listened to two interviews of Tony Blair on the occasion of the publication of his book, A Journey. One of them was conducted by Andrew Marr and the other by the superb Owen Bennett-Jones of BBC World Service's Newshour and The Interview. He was subjected to the sort of tough questioning which would have been quite unthinkable twenty-five or thirty years, and acquitted himself fairly well without really convincing this listener. But before we rush to condemn Mr Blair for what looks like his disastrous policy over Iraq, we should perhaps remember two things.

• Many of those now most disgusted by the invasion of Iraq were in fact all in favour of it at the time. I should know for I was one of them! It's relatively easy for private citizens to forget or deny that they once held views that turned out to be wrong or misguided, or to sheepishly apologise for them over the passage of time. A prime minister or president does not have that option. He can only deny that he was wrong!
• When we criticise Tony Blair or George Bush, or, going back a little, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, we are in the comfortable position of attacking what happened. We are not required to prove what would have happened if another decision had been taken, another policy pursued.

I am not saying that we have no right to criticise Tony Blair. On the contrary, those who demonstrated against the Iraq War from the outset have every right to do so, and in the most vehement terms too. But those who, like me, were all for the invasion at the time, should not now pretend that they were against it all along.