A freelance journalist given house room by The Guardian tried to "arrest" Tony Blair today, as the former prime minister arrived in Brussels to speak to Euro-MPs about his work as Middle East envoyadding that
Blair was harangued as he arrived for the hearing by journalist David Cronin who accused him of being a "war criminal".
The Brussels-based reporter tried to make a citizen's arrest on Blair but was bundled away by security guards.
What we do know is that Mr Blair carries responsibility for those needless casualties just as surely as, in America, he claims credit for having taken us to war and just as surely collects dollars by the million for having done so.
Don't we know it all, already? As entertainment, the Chilcot inquiry is pretty good, in a rarified way. It marches on with its familiar cast. The strutters strut, the lawyer-types drip lawyerese, Tony Blair remains better at "doing sincerity" than anyone except Tom Hanks
is expected today to confess that he made significant mistakes in both the build up to the Iraq war and its aftermath
Tony Blair is in debt to his New Labour friends for their efforts to get him off the hook
Mandelson — on Blair’s behalf — set down specific conditions for the Iraq war inquiry. The deal, I am told, was explicit. Not only would the hearings be fully in private, but the committee would, as with Hutton, be manageable. Brown was instructed to ensure that the members of the inquiry would, in the words of one official, ‘not stir the horses’. Brown readily acquiesced. He was not in a position to do anything else. It was a done deal, even before James Purnell sent alarm bells through Downing Street with his resignation on the night of 4 June.
believes Gordon Brown's political future is doomed because of 'the darkness in his heart' and his 'lies' - and feels Mr Brown has no one to blame but himself.
privately he shares the view held by Labour rebels that Mr Brown will lead the Party to a disastrous defeat at the next Election.
a values-based foreign policy, backed up by a willingness to intervene militarily,
Mahathir Mohamad, the former Malaysian prime minister, showed that in Blair's work of bolstering moderate Islam there has been a lot done, a lot still to do. "About 2,000 peace activists applauded" as George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, the former Australian prime minister, were branded "fascist war criminals" at a conference in Malaysia.
Tony Blair has emerged as the leading candidate to become the first permanent president of the European Unionafter Gordon has given
his grudging blessing to the plan
will have to swallow hard to sit down in meetings once again with Blair. But he accepts that there needs to be someone from the UK in the new global architecture. There is no opposition to the plan. Things have moved on, people have moved on."
it was best, in my view, not to shout that too loudly from the rooftopsbut
Out of office, seeking to make a contribution to important public and policy debates in a different way, I feel no such restraints. Indeed, as the years of my premiership passed, one fact struck me with increasing force: that failure to understand the power of religion meant failure to understand the modern world.
Religious faith and how it develops could be of the same significance to the 21st century as political ideology was to the 20th.
that the day after his dismissal the prime minister told him, ruefully, that he had planned to make him foreign secretary so that he could be "a credible opponent to Gordon as the leader of the party".
First off he's wearing his political hat as Quartet envoy to Palestine and will meet his old friend George Mitchell, the former Northern Ireland peace broker newly appointed as Obama's Middle East envoy.
Then on Thursday, an opportunity for our ex-Prime Minister to do God in a big way.
Mr Blair has been invited to lead the US National Prayer Breakfast.
A spectacular event in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. Barack Obama is also attending the breakfast and will speak to Mr Blair.
he says and the reason?
I sense the politicians and pundits are premature in predicting so confidently the outcome of the next election.
he remains too Blair-like as a public figure. Blair had qualities, but his era has been and gone. I sense no clamour for a return. Yet the similarities are so evident that the emulation must be conscious – stylistically and politically.
Tony Blair is arrested at Heathrow Airport as he returns from yet another foreign speaking engagement (receipts since leaving office: £12m). He is flown to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes for his part in the illegal, unprovoked attack on a defenceless country, Iraq, justified by proven lies, and for the subsequent physical, social and cultural destruction of that country, causing the death of up to a million people.
Dick Cheney shoots himself in the foot hunting squirrels following a prayer breakfast in Hope, Florida.
Californian college students, many of them Democrats supportive of Mr. Obama — unconsciously perceived him as less American even than the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Tories are poised to achieve their first parliamentary by-election gain since the heyday of Margaret Thatcher, dealing a hammer blow to Gordon Brown's hopes of survival.
That is the remarkable finding of the first opinion poll conducted in the Labour stronghold of Crewe, where a by-election to be held in 11 days' time could seal the Prime Minister's fate.
The ICM survey for The Mail on Sunday puts the Tories on 43 per cent with Labour trailing on 39 – a dramatic ten per cent swing in the Cheshire constituency since the last General Election.
Gordon Brown has suffered a devastating collapse in his public standing, according to a new survey published in The Observer today which will put his leadership under intensified pressure.
As the Prime Minister begins his fightback with new proposals entitling mothers to more flexible working hours, the research shows that only one in five voters thinks he is doing a good job. He is rated worse than David Cameron on every key leadership quality, including competence, decisiveness, fairness, likeability, trustworthiness and strength.
he urged Tony Blair to sack Gordon Brown at the height of their frequent rows – but the former prime minister was “scared” of his chancellor.
He says he also urged Brown to resign and fight Blair from the back benches, but Brown, then chancellor, shrank from such a bold gamble.
accuses the prime minister of being “distant and uncaring” and manipulating the tax system for “tactical advantage”.and says
The electoral clock is ticking for Gordon Brown. The next few months will be make-or-break time.” Byers criticises Brown for abolishing the 10p income tax band which has hit 5.3m low-paid workers and urges him to carry out a “fundamental rethink” of taxation policy, leaving “no area off limits
Mr Blair was prepared to step down in 2005 but was not sure Mr Brown would implement public service reforms.
When my friend Tony Blair stepped down as U.K. Prime Minister last year, I advised him to take some time off with his family and make a list of the issues he felt passionately about and that he could continue to pursue. It was the least he had earned after a decade of modernizing his country's economy, making the U.K. one of the few nations to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions more than required to meet their Kyoto target and leading the G-8 to historic commitments to support Africa and fight global poverty.
Tony listened to my advice graciously but ignored it completely by immediately accepting a new job as Middle East envoy for the Quartet. I have always admired Tony's willingness to wade into troubled waters. Ten years ago, he did a masterly job in helping to end 30 years of sectarian violence and broker a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Now he is demonstrating the dedication and intensity to promoting economic opportunity in the Middle East, learning from his Irish experience that showing the concrete benefits of peace can play a crucial role in making a just and lasting peace possible.
Tony, 54, also knows that even the benefits of an enduring peace in the Middle East and the dramatic reductions in terrorism it would bring could be wiped away if we don't save the planet from the worst consequences of global warming. So he has taken on another big challenge: shaping a new global agreement to cut carbon emissions. Because my foundation is involved with projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in more than 40 large cities on six continents, I know how important and difficult Tony's work is, and I look forward to the visionary leadership he will bring to it.
As his friend, I hope Tony finds fulfillment in advancing the public good as a private citizen. As a member of our interdependent global community, I thank him for not taking a day off when we need him the most.
Tony Blair believes Gordon Brown "could never beat" Tory leader David Cameron in a General Election and is "disappointed" by Labour's slide under his successor.says the paper adding that
Levy tells how Blair ended up believing that Brown was a "liar" who tried to use the scandal as a weapon to unseat him.
Nobody should underestimate either the closeness of the relationship between Lord Levy and Tony Blair - or the bitterness that still exists between the peer and Gordon Brown.
Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell have both been giving advice to the campaign working for London mayor Ken Livingstone's re-election, the Guardian can reveal.
The former prime minister and his media strategist had been among Livingstone's most trenchant critics in the past, and he had derided them for being the architects of the New Labour project. However, with the race against the Tory candidate Boris Johnson on a knife-edge, Livingstone's team has sought their expertise, and also the advice of Philip Gould, New Labour's pollster and focus group adviser.
The Labour MP Karen Buck, called on the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to investigate after it emerged that Mr Johnson did not register shares in Finland Station, for more than 18 months. Aides to the Tory candidate for London mayor said he had not declared his 33 per cent shareholding because of an "oversight" and they had now ensured the shareholding was registered
"ensnared" ministers over the bid to host the 2012 Olympics in an effort to get money for East End redevelopment.
He said he was not interested in "three weeks of sport" but wanted to get "the billions of pounds" from government.
