There are serious questions to ask about conflicts of interests between his public role as Special Envoy to the Middle East and his private business activities, as well as how much he has benefited financially from relationships he cultivated and decisions he made while in office – in particular the Iraq adventure.
When he left office Tony Blair felt a sense of bitterness, which went much wider than his famously antagonistic relationship with Gordon Brown. It was the Labour Party, and not just Brown, that forced him into resignation, and his view about the party he led, never very complimentary, became tinged with resentment.
He was, as Charles Moore notes, a relatively young man for a former prime minister. Just as he had been the youngest PM since Lord Liverpool in 1812, he was now the youngest former PM, still full of energy and ambition. There were several courses he could have chosen. He could easily have had a career in international politics, which would probably have brought him the Presidency of the European Council (which, as we have seen, in the event he failed to get) if he had devoted himself to it and placed a lower priority on making money.2
He could have thrown himself into his work as Middle East peace envoy, in which case he might now have more to show for it, and he would have avoided the increasingly strident accusations that he does not work hard enough at the job, that he has not taken the time to brief himself properly, and that he seems to see it mainly as a way to meet oil-rich folk in the region.
He could have devoted himself to his charity work, or to campaigning on matters about which he feels strongly, such as climate change and religious faith. He could have devoted himself to business, and he would have done very well indeed, making himself quietly very wealthy, away from the public gaze. Few people would have complained, and he would not have had to tolerate the constant carping criticism that he appears to find so irksome.
It seems that, in effect, he chose to do a little of all of these, but all of them overshadowed and controlled by a determination to become seriously rich. And that is what has been so toxic for his reputation in Britain. He was for a long time able to comfort himself that his reputation in the USA, which matters much more to him than his reputation in Britain, was still strong, but that is now in serious danger, and not just from the breach with Rupert Murdoch. The speech he gave in 2014 saying that what is happening in Iraq has nothing to do with him has also damaged his reputation there, we hear from Washington sources.
One Blair loyalist and former staffer, who does not want to be named – he would be permanently exiled from the court if it was known he had said this to us – told the authors privately that he was surprised at the huge amounts of money his old master appears to be amassing. ‘He says he gives money to his charities, but I don’t think he gives enough to his charities,’ he said, so we asked, ‘How much is he giving to his charities?’ ‘I’ve no idea,’ said our informant hastily. Blair’s spokeswoman Rachel Grant told writer Ken Silverstein, ‘In the past few years Mr Blair has given significant amounts of his income to the charities.’ But just what are ‘significant amounts’?
We do have some idea how he funds his charities. He treats some of them at least in the way that the mega-rich often treat charities, by trying to incentivise them to raise money elsewhere. Thus, he gives the Tony Blair Sports Foundation matching funds.
When hard times come, it is the charities, not the business, that suffer. While income appears to be stagnant and starting to drop off at his charities, his own earnings go from strength to strength.
It is important to remember that, despite all this, not everything Blair does is worthless. Some of the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and the Africa Governance Initiative is excellent. The work combating malaria and the interventions in the Ebola crisis are just two examples of Tony Blair’s organisations, backed by his wealth and that of his contacts, indisputably doing good in the world.
THE GQ AND SAVE THE CHILDREN AWARDS
All of that is why Tony Blair’s reputation has plummeted – and why attempts to revive it often end up making things worse. In 2014, in quick succession, he was first named GQ magazine’s Philanthropist of the Year, and then went to New York to accept the Global Legacy Award from Save the Children.
The first was greeted mainly by cynical laughter: there was a feeling that GQ and Tony Blair were made for each other. The TV presenter and former footballer Gary Lineker tweeted, ‘Apparently, Tony Blair has won GQ’s philanthropist of the year award. Finally these awards have grasped irony!’ Even Blair himself seemed to join in the mirth – or perhaps he was being serious when he accepted the award with the words, ‘I feel the pulse of progress beating a little harder.’ Did he remember that on the day of the Good Friday agreement he had said, ‘This is no time for soundbites, but I feel the hand of history on my shoulder’?
But the second was more serious, and led to a speedy backlash. Critics were swift to point out that Justin Forsyth, formerly a special adviser to Blair, is the head of Save the Children UK, and Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, is on the board. Did they have anything to do with the decision to give Blair the charity’s Global Legacy Award?3
The award was made on 14 November, and within a week the charity realised it had blundered into a PR disaster, as this internal email, which was leaked to the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, shows:
Colleagues in the Middle East, SCUK [Save the Children UK] and at SCI [Save the Children International] have started to receive a high volume of complaints and negative reactions regarding the award given by SC US to Tony Blair, who is a hugely controversial and divisive figure in many parts of the world.
The reactive line below was developed by SCUK, but this will also need to highlight how this award is not a recognition of other aspects of Blair’s controversial foreign policy, nor of his role as Peace Envoy with the Quartet, and focuses purely on this achievement in terms of international development.4
The ‘reactive line below’ said that the award was only about ‘Tony Blair’s leadership on International Development’ as PM. He established the Department for International Development and hosted two G8 summits, in 1998 in Birmingham and in 2005 in Gleneagles, which STC considered to be key events in the battle against world poverty. ‘The UK’s achievement of 0.7% of GNI to international aid in 2014 is the culmination of work started under his leadership,’ it added, though both his successors, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, might claim their share of the credit for meeting the target in rather more challenging economic circumstances than Blair faced.
The email also revealed that the charity was getting hostile questions from all over the world, and asked for some answers.
‘We have also been asked to provide answers to the questions below … A reactive on Blair’s role in Iraq would not go amiss, either,’ the email continued.
One of the questions, mostly asked by supporters in the UK, was, ‘Is Save the Children a pro-Israeli organisation?’ Another was, ‘How much money did you raise for this Gala?’
There were also some questions specifically from supporters in the occupied Palestinian territories:
‘As a non-governmental, non-partisan charity working in the oPt [occupied Palestinian territories] since 1973, how do you see the role of the Quartet and Mr Blair as a mediator for the peace negotiations in the region?’
‘Following the offensive on Gaza and the settler violence against Palestinians in East Jerusalem as well as other areas of the West Bank, and in light of the failure of the Quartet to stop these violations against civilians in Palestine, how do you justify awarding the chairman of the Quartet?’
‘You as Save the Children are considering yourself the voice of Palestinian children, do you think that the Quartet has played its role to protect and stop violations to children’s rights in the oPt?’
Meanwhile Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children International, was writing to the charity’s staff worldwide a letter that showed something near panic at the top, and th
at was also leaked to Sherwood at the Guardian:
I wanted to write to you directly about the concerns over the recent award given to Tony Blair by Save the Children US at their annual gala dinner in NY. In the scheme of all the critical work we are doing for children around the world some of you might ask why I am focusing on this issue, but it has touched a nerve close to our sense of identity and as such I think it’s important that we have a shared understanding of how this happened, what we are doing about it, and how we will come out of this together …
We are all frustrated and disappointed about the situation we are in, but I think we can understand how this happened: In our current structure, members make their own decisions about their marketing and fundraising as long as these are in line with our brand and other agreed guidelines. If there is a sensitive question then they consult, and this does increasingly happen. In this case, SC US simply did not anticipate anything sensitive – in the USA Tony Blair is widely seen very positively for his contribution to international aid … I first heard about this when it became public and was immediately in touch with Justin [head of STC UK] and Carolyn [head of STC US], who agreed with me that there should have been a better process of consultation and risk assessment and that we must learn from this …
Now, this is very odd. That STC US did not understand the negative reaction to be expected from other countries is believable. But Blair’s former adviser Justin Forsyth, head of STC UK, was asked to convey the invitation to Blair before it became public. If the Americans did not realise the likely reaction, he must have done. Why did he not warn his American colleagues? Was he keen for his old boss to have an honour that might restore Blair’s reputation? Or did he warn them, and see his warning ignored?
The email continues:
Urgently, right now, a team is trying hard to contain the situation and stop things escalating further, detracting from our wider work for children … Importantly, we must safeguard and rebuild the trust and commitment to our shared values that we have worked so hard on over the last few years. This will take time and effort …
While I can’t pretend I’m not very concerned about this situation, I’m confident that we can pull together to come out of it in a better place. There is so much that is amazing about what we are doing together for children … Let’s use this experience, painful as it is, to inform our next strategy …
The next day, Whitbread was handed a letter from 500 STC staff, which said, ‘We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision.’ The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, tweeted, ‘As this man defends any dictator who’ll pay him, @SaveChildren inexplicably gives him award.’
A petition to the charity to withdraw the award mustered more than 125,000 signatures.5 Save the Children’s Director of Policy and Advocacy Brendan Cox later responded to the petition:
‘As you know, this was a decision made by Save the Children US and although we (STC UK) were made aware of the decision, and we passed on the invite to his office at their request, we weren’t part of the decision making process. In retrospect we should have foreseen the controversy this might generate.
For a number of reasons this is not a decision Save UK would have taken…’6
The response from Blair’s office screams of an organisation that feels it’s under siege. It accused the Guardian of bias, saying that it ‘conveniently disregards the facts that support the award as well as quotes from African presidents, the head of USAID and indeed anything which would give a more balanced view than the one presented.’
Julie Crowley of Blair’s communications team wrote to the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood,
Your piece is a complete distortion of the truth, it is not impartial, balanced or fair, and is simply an exercise in muck-raking. You chose to ignore the support received by Tony Blair for his work in Africa, given by those who should matter most and know best, the people who have witnessed the impact made by the AGI in delivering better lives for their people, let alone the legacy from his time in office.
And it beggars belief that you quote George Galloway, who is not only biased but is making a film about the killing of Tony Blair, how is he best placed to make any sort of judgement on Tony Blair’s work in Africa.
You did not make any attempt at all to provide a balanced picture and simply sought to smear and denigrate. I am frankly appalled.
Harriet Sherwood’s piece seemed to us to be moderate, careful and accurate (you can judge for yourself: it’s at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/28/save-the-children-tony-blair-award-row). She didn’t use the quotes Ms Crowley supplied from President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone about what a good chap Blair is, which were neither interesting nor relevant to her story. And when George Galloway, in the title of his film, uses the word ‘killing’ he makes it perfectly clear that he’s talking of a financial killing. His producer has also told us that she has made this distinction clear to Blair’s office.
A similarly over-the-top letter went from Blair’s head of communications Rachel Grant to the New Republic after a piece by American investigative journalist Ken Silverstein.8 Our notes are in square brackets.
Dear Sir,
It’s with huge disappointment that I read Ken Silverstein’s unbalanced and vindictive article. [We thought it was well researched and thoughtful. Judge for yourself – it’s at
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/
magazine/107248/buckraking-around-the-world-tony-blair.]
It is one thing to disagree with Mr Blair’s views but it is something entirely different to not reflect our side of the argument simply because the facts don’t fit the story.
I spent a considerable amount of time explaining Mr Blair’s work, the work of his charities and the fact that much of his work is done pro-bono – none of this has been reflected in the article. This is poor by any standard of journalism and unacceptable for a publication like the New Republic. [If Silverstein’s conversations with Blair’s spokespeople were like ours, they answered the questions they thought he should have asked, rather than the questions he did ask.]
So to set the record straight again:
Around two thirds of Mr Blair’s time is spent doing pro-bono work. [We have asked for this figure and not been given it. In fact, Blair goes to so many places wearing more than one hat that the figure cannot be worked out. For example, his meeting with the Emir of Kuwait described in Chapter 4 no doubt counts towards the two-thirds, because he was supposedly there as Middle East envoy. But the product was a contract for Tony Blair Associates.]
His commercial interests fund his philanthropic work. [We’ve asked for figures on this, which of course we’ve not been given. The Blair charities are largely funded by Blair’s mega-rich friends – the likes of Haim Saban, Rupert Murdoch and Victor Pinchuk. No doubt Blair gives them some money too, but we do not know how much.]
The work in Kazakhstan is entirely in line with the international community’s agenda for change, and many Western governments as well as international organizations, including the EU, OSCE and World Bank also work with Kazakhstan on this agenda. [It’s one thing for governments to deal with a brutal dictator because he’s there, he’s the government, and he’s containable. It’s quite another for a company to take the man’s money to go out into the world and burnish his image.]
The signs of progress in Kazakhstan, again which are not cited but which I gave to Mr Silverstein, are facts such as GDP reaching double digit growth in the last 20 years; Kazakhstan’s renouncing of its nuclear weapons (something President Obama praised in his press conference recently with President Nazarbayev), it is a majority Muslim country of religious tolerance, and one of the few to have built a synagogue in recent years and that it has played a key role in suppor
ting the allied effort in Afghanistan. [Silverstein was writing – properly, in our view, not about the economic growth of Kazakhstan, or its attitude to religion or nuclear weapons, but about human rights in the country.]
There is not space to list everything that is wrong in this article but you should not take that as any indication of its accuracy.
Yours faithfully
Rachel Grant
Director of Communications
The Office of Tony Blair
The last sentence of Grant’s letter is a Blair classic, and is echoed in another exchange we have seen. The Liberal Conspiracy blog said, ‘Blair currently receives £63,468 as part of his pension package following his exit from office, on top of an allowance of £84,000 a year. In case he felt this was an insufficient amount to live from, the variety of positions he has taken on led to an estimation that he had earned £80 million since leaving office in 2007.’
Blair’s office replied, ‘It’s always best to check the facts before running a story. Firstly, the figures you quote on Mr Blair’s earnings are completely wrong.’ It did not say what the correct figures were.
There really is, among Blair and the Blairites, a feeling that they are under siege. Folk like Charles Clarke and journalist John Rentoul, still Blair’s main cheerleader in national newspapers, feel genuinely affronted that anyone should be asking unwelcome questions about his activities.
His staff, even down to the humblest intern, have to sign ferocious confidentiality agreements – we have had several pained conversations with people who wanted to talk to us but had just re-read their agreements, which suggest all sorts of appalling consequences if they give us any information at all.
Blair Inc--The Man Behind the Mask Page 39
