Blair gets practical
However much Tony Blair yearns to save the planet, it is very doubtful whether Western electorates would tolerate having their habits (travel, for instance) or their affluence (economic growth) dented by the need to maintain - if it were possible - the climate they inherited from their grandparents.

In his 2005 Davos speech Tony Blair seemed to recognise that democratic leaders have a very limited ability to go further than their electorates will go. This understanding was compounded in 2007 by a clear sense that he wasn't a natural fan of carbon restraint when he gave Sky News an astonishingly relaxed interview on his family's flying habits. [Link]But if he did care, would not courage and leadership consist in persuading the reluctant voter to fall in line behind his vision? Failing that, might he not do his democracy a great service by saying that, while he personally now accepted that "Something Ought To Be Done", the electorate was too ignorant, stupid, or selfish to take this particular message on board?

In short, if one is to be messianic, oughtn't one to embrace the role of preacher and teacher, and thereafter (when wisdom has fallen on deaf ears) the role of martyr? It seems fair to argue that, on global warming, Tony Blair has fancied the messianic role, but only for as long as it has not required any hint of martyrdom.

Saving the World 3: Just Wars

Put away the snake-oil
We've looked at two very large areas of policy - global poverty and climate change - in which Tony Blair was a snake-oil Messiah. He was making false promises and did nothing serious to deliver them. In his militarism, we can see the most important element of Mr Blair's Messiah Politics. But in this area, there is much less sign of snake oil.

We have witnessed Mr Blair's passion for vast and grandiose, virtuous and even godly, policies. We have found that he likes to be seen as the transformative individual. But we have also seen him pursue policies that are popular with "virtuous" people of a certain sort. With his just wars, though, and especially in the case of Iraq, he has done something that is unpopular with precisely the people the rest of his Messiah Politics appeal to. It is also, of course, something that is loathed by many Muslims.

I say, there is little snake oil here. But we have noted that he could not resist rhetorical excesses when discussing the value of might put at the service of right, especially when he deployed what even Peter Riddell, that most measured of commentators, called "messianic language". [[10]] That was in the wake of the 9/11 outrages, and Blair told the Labour party conference there was a fight for freedom "from the deserts of North Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountains of Afghanistan: they are our cause". He seemed to imply that the points in between the obvious trouble spots were also in his action plan.

Messiah Politics hits its stride
Had he lost contact with Planet Earth? Had his successes, especially in the former Yugoslavia (nuanced as they were), and Sierra Leone, unhinged him? Or had he re-written the canons of foreign policy ethics for a new age?

Especially in the Iraq war, Tony Blair delivered the fullest product of his Messiah Politics. The UK joined the US venture because Blair wanted to, and was able to make it happen. He had nothing like enough national support for the war to be called popular. He had accustomed ordinary people, Westminster and Whitehall to conducting foreign affairs pretty much as he liked since too few Members of Parliament and even fewer officials in the relevant ministries would put themselves on the line for their private or professional convictions.

As he took us into the Iraq war Mr Blair deceived Parliament and the electorate by omission, if not by commission, especially as to Weapons of Mass Destruction. The stern but kindly Riddell supposes that Blair believed what he said. So, one might suggest, there was a double deception: first of himself and then of anyone else he dealt with. Blair seems to have made up his mind at least by the summer of 2002 that the US would probably go to war in Iraq, and that the UK should be alongside them. [[11]]