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What has followed since then has been ex post facto justification

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What has followed since then has been ex post facto justification for what was a prearranged course of events. Mr Blair clearly made a political decision to support the US invasion of Iraq when it was taken in September 2001 or whenever it was (for some authorities put it earlier). Does anyone think that, if Saddam Hussein really had possessed the fearsome arsenal which Mr Blair claimed he had at his disposal, the UK and the US would have invaded Iraq with quite such abandon? In similar circumstances, they would not have touched North Korea; nor, presumably, would they today. Yet this appears to be the sole (or, if not the sole, the predominant) criterion by which Mr Blair wishes to be judged today.I believe this is the way he wants to be judged, but not his account of what has gone before.

Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln cannot be judged by their eloquence or by their effect on their followers. Still less can they be judged by their sincerity, by their belief at the time that what they were doing was right No more can a British politician be judged in this way We do not choose our leaders for their sincerity. After some discussion, they came down in favour of Mr Blair.In the subsequent period, he has not let them down. He has several times performed that most difficult feat for a Commons speaker: he has changed people's minds. To what extent should the observer take into account that he has changed them in what the observer thinks is the wrong direction; or that the politician has based his case on false premises, fallacious reasoning or both; or that he does not really believe what he is saying at all? They are among the most difficult questions of political writing.Clearly, you cannot treat a Nuremberg Rally on exactly the same terms as the Gettysberg Address.

They deserved a major political figure, or someone who could plausibly be presented as such The other judges agreed. Originally the judges wanted to give the gong to Sir (as he then wasn't) Gerald Kaufman. One of them piped up and said that, great though his admiration for Sir Gerald was, and admirable parliamentarian as he might be, the sponsors, then Zurich Financial Services, deserved, so to speak, a bigger bang for their bucks. Undoubtedly he has reserved his finest performances for the House of Commons.When, two years ago, he was chosen as The Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year, there were puzzled grumbles in some of the papers.

He had never, they said, shown much interest in the House, which was true enough. In fact he never went near the place if he could help it, which was also correct. The gossip-writers came up with all kinds of fanciful explanations of why such an apparently perverse award had been made by a Tory publication.What happened was simple enough. Grasp that, as the late Malcolm Muggeridge used to be fond of remarking, and you grasp all.Mr Blair has had his moments with Mr John Humphrys ("I'm a pretty straight sort of guy") and with Sir David Frost as well, though fewer, if any at all, with Mr Jeremy Paxman or Mr Jon Snow.

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