Blair - a bloody reckoning is in sight

Blood on his hands
Cover story
John Kampfner
Monday 7th August 2006 New Statesman

"Blair, at his rhetorical best in front of friends in California, appears in no mood for self-doubt. "I have many opponents on the subject," he told Rupert Murdoch's elite gathering at Pebble Beach on 30 July. "But I have complete inner confidence in the analysis of the struggle we face." Either he is delusional, or he has no choice but to say what he says. One close aide recalls that when the Prime Minister was preparing a foreign-policy speech in his Sedgefield constituency in 2004, a year after the invasion of Iraq, he considered a mea culpa of sorts, but changed his mind, asking his team: "Do we want headlines of 'Blair: I was wrong' or 'Blair: I was right'?"
......


"At least over Iraq someone resigned. This time, ministers do nothing. Their private complaints have no moral or political value, because they will not stop Blair. Under cabinet rules of collective responsibility, they are endorsing the Israeli assault."

Read it - somebody on the left with a voice articulates the despair of the public - then watch the mad man face the Press on the morrow.

My betting money is on John Reid, the man who said they wouldn't fire a shot in Afghanistan.