Out of belief
Tony Blair: the triumph of sincerity
May 11, 2007 22 comments
So farewell then, Tony Blair, who is not actually leaving for another month and a half, but delivered his resignation speech yesterday anyway.
Sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down.
After ten years.
It is difficult to know how to make this speech today.
Can you turn the autocue a bit to the right…? Ah, that’s better.
Britain is not a follower. It is a leader.
And, in time, you realise putting the country first doesn’t mean doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom or the prevailing consensus or the latest snapshot of opinion.
“Democracy” is for Iraqis.
It means doing what you genuinely believe to be right. Your duty is to act according to your conviction.
Not to listen to those pedants in the Foreign Office.
All of that can get contorted so that people think you act according to some messianic zeal.
The idiots! If only they had my faith!
Doubt, hesitation, reflection, consideration and re-consideration, these are all the good companions of proper decision-making. But the ultimate obligation is to decide.
Never mind the actual decisions – feel the deciding!
Sometimes, like tuition fees or trying to break up old monolithic public services, they are deeply controversial, hellish hard to do, but you can see you are moving with the grain of change round the word.
Everyone else is doing this shit, so we might as well too. (I hope you’ve already forgotten the bit about “Britain is not a follower”. I didn’t really mean that.)
Sometimes, like with Europe, where I believe Britain should keep its position strong, you know you are fighting opinion, but you are content with doing so.
Fighting opinion or “moving with the grain of change” – who cares? I made decisions!
I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally. I did so out of belief.
Not out of weighing the pros and cons of any particular course of action.
So Afghanistan and then Iraq – the latter, bitterly controversial.
See? Belief – so Iraq. It’s easy!
Removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taleban, was over with relative ease.
Apart from all the people who got killed, but who remembers them? Honestly.
But the blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. For many, it simply isn’t and can’t be worth it. For me, I think we must see it through. They, the terrorists, who threaten us here and round the world, will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief. And we can’t fail it.
Test me on my belief! Go on! This is not messianic zeal!
But I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.
Should I actually put my hand on my heart for this bit? Nah, you’re right, that would be cheesy. I’ll keep gripping the lectern and bobbing my head ruefully.
I may have been wrong. That is your call.
I wasn’t wrong.
But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.
Dig this: I believed.
I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. Good luck.
You’re gonna need it.
[…] Unspeak takes the PM’s resignation speech to task. […]
You remember the last in the cinematic Lord of the Rings trilogy, where there were about five end scenes and you kept thinking that each end scene would be the last? And then it just kept going on and on?
This is insufferable.
And will someone please explain to him that it does not matter whether he thought or believed that he did the right thing – the population of Iraq are not his therapist or confessor. The thoughts that went through his head at the time he decided to visit mass death and unbelievable misery on them are irrelevant.
Enough already.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night? It ended in some drama, with Michael Howard accusing Chymerical Ali (is this my coinage, btw?) of personal responsibility for lies and bullying which had served to debase politics in Britain. Howard referred to a written source which documented Campbell’s behaviour, and commented that Campbell hadn’t sued for libel. Campbell retorted that he had no intention of reading the screed in question, but I’d rather like to: did anyone catch the author’s name? Something like David Raven.
They, the terrorists, who threaten us here and round the world, will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief. And we can’t fail it.
Jeez, what’s with fuhrer-speak, is this typical? I didn’t realize that.
Translation of Tony’s speech: I don’t believe in accountability.
Dave, it was Peter Oborne; I would guess it was either The Rise of Political Lying or Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class.
[…] Never mind the actual decisions – feel the deciding! Friday May 11 2007 at 5:04 pm Steven Poole gives us the thinking behind Blair’s resignation speech. Filed under chicken nuggets, blair, UK Politics See also Me, Myself and I, Somebody had to say it to his face… and A letter from Hazel permalink • trackback • print this • leave a comment […]
I feel almost sad that Blair, a man of not inconsiderable legal training, resorts to defending his government’s record on the ethically specious grounds that his decisions must have been right merely because he “believed” in them: the US neocons must have really pulled the wool over his eyes; perhaps he should go cry on Colin Powell’s shoulder…
I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally. I did so out of belief
That’s Portugal, isn’t it?
But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country. I’m sure he did, just as Saddam thought invading Kuwait was the right for his country, or Eden thought Suez was the right thing to do, or those responsible for the prosecution and conduct of the First Afghan War thought they doing a good job under difficult circumstances.
Hell’s teeth, Lords Raglan and Lucan thought they were charging down the right valley at Balaclava.
That’s Portugal, isn’t it?
Exactly what I was thinking. Was the US any sort of ally to Britain before 1917?
Applause!
Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has the Newsnight video. It’s an interesting feeling, to be rooting for Michael Howard.
actually, now I think about it stand shoulder to shoulder seems quite presumptuous – as though the relationship were equal, which is also relevant to a little discussion going on at crooked timber right now:
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/.....t-as-thee/
England signed a treaty with Portugal in 1473, I believe, 19 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Presumably we’ll be right there supporting Portugal when it launches a re-invasion of Sao Tome (it does have oil, you know).
Of course if you stand shoulder to shoulder with Cristiano Ronaldo he will magically fall over as though he’s been elbowed in the face.
Was the US any sort of ally to Britain before 1917?
And, really, has it been any sort of ally since?
I keep thinking about Eddie Izzard’s routine: 1941, the British, exhausted, reduced to flinging soft ice creams at the advancing Germans, turn as the Americans gallop onto the scene:
‘Where the fuck have you been?’
‘Eating breakfast! What’s going on here?’
[…] His resignation speech has been excellently analysed by Steven Poole of Unspeak — whose eponymous book had her laughing, albeit somewhat bitterly, no end, since she — as a life-long Labour supporter (born in 1915) agreed with almost all of it — but I feel I have to note this nonsense from our dear leader’s departure: In government, you have to give the answer – not an answer, the answer. And, in time, you realise putting the country first doesn’t mean doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom or the prevailing consensus or the latest snapshot of opinion. It means doing what you genuinely believe to be right. […]
[…] I thought he must mean Portugal, and I’m pleased to have my recollection of O level history confirmed by ‘Guano’ that England signed a treaty with Portugal in 1473, I believe, 19 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue […]
I knew I’d seen something about this in Subrahmanyam’s the Portuguese in Asia – the alliance actually goes back to the Treaty of Windsor, of 1386. An unnamed wikipedia author calls it “the oldest alliance in the world which is still in force” and claims it can be dated to 1296, though (s)he gives no evidence for such a claim. Who knows.
Of course, there has been the occasional barney between the two states over shipping and gold – I think they might constitute an actual break, around the 1630s-40s – but that was when the Spanish were in control and might not count. Also, it’s a good 140 years before there was any such entity as a United States of America. I don’t think Britain has ever been sucked into colonial quagmires featuring spiralling despair and chaos by its Iberian ally, either, IIRC.
Hmmm. A little villa in Oporto sounds nice…
My favourite bit was when he called the UK ‘the greatest country on Earth’ – surely the political equivalent of Justin Timberlake shouting ‘I love you Milton Keynes’
I was wrong actually. The treaty between England and Portugal was signed in 1373, not 1473. The 600th anniversary of the treaty was celebrated by a visit to Portugal by the Duke of Edinburgh and then a visit to London by Marcelo Caetano in July 1973 and, as older readers may remember, there was the usual blather in UK newspapers about “our oldest ally”. Of course Portugal at the time was a dictatorship and fighting some nasty wars in its African colonies, though everyone was too polite to mention this. All that came to an end less than a year later.
The most famous treaty with Portugal was the Methuen Treaty of 1703, which re-opened commercial relations between England and Portugal. This implies that relations had been cut off at some stage. Even so, this was a long time before there was a USA.
The most pathetic aspect of Blair’s resignation is the strong likelihood that some near-future successor will be so embarassingly worse that we will all become nostalgic for Blair.
I know. You don’t believe such a day can come. Try watching footage of Bill Clinton during his presidency and you’ll see what I mean.