Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey would have made its author a very rich man. Or should that be an even richer man. The advance was £4.6 million. There’ll be a lucrative serialisation in a Sunday newspaper. It will be translated into many languages, and sell around the world. Already 14 territories have secured translation rights. There is little doubt that with an early release as a paperback Blair’s book will hit the non-fiction best-seller lists and stay there for many weeks. It will probably rival Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father as a best-seller by a politician which cuts through to the mass market.
All of which makes his decision to donate every penny to the Royal British Legion both remarkable and laudable. For most leading politicians – Prescott, Mandelson, Thatcher, Clinton, Wilson, etc – a memoir is partly the chance to set the record straight, but mostly the chance to make a wad of cash for the retirement fund. Blair has shown that he is a cut above your average politician. He wants his book to tell a story, not make a mint.
There are plenty of people who will say it’s just ‘blood money’, motivated by guilt for sending British troops to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. The professional, irreconcilable Blair-haters are always swift to ascribe motives to Blair’s every move. It must be quite a responsibility to possess the ability to read Blair’s mind so accurately all the time. They will never accept, unlike the British Legion, that this is simply a fantastically generous donation to a good cause. The grubby motives they will ascribe, and ill-grace with which they will react to the donation, say more about them than Blair.
Blair has always made his respect and admiration for the British armed services abundantly clear. Any constituency MP knows what a worthy organisation the British Legion is, and the positive role of its local branches and clubs. Unlike Thatcher’s donation to the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, Blair’s donation, which will go to the Battle Back Challenge Centre, is without strings. There will be no ‘Blair Wing’, even though it is entirely possible that Blair’s book sales will raise every penny of the centre’s £12m fundraising target.
I have no idea whether Blair’s book will be any good. It has been hand-written over many months, and read by very few people. It will be a useful antidote to Peter Mandelson’s breathless tale of slamming doors and billet-doux which reads more like a homo-erotic Mills & Boon than a serious political book. Regardless of literary merit, it will add to our sum of knowledge about a remarkable period of Labour’s history, when winning landslides was made to look effortless, and making the political weather seemed like a breeze.
Whatever the quality of the writing, for Blair’s book to make such a significant contribution to the lives of wounded servicemen and women, from Britain’s current and future conflicts, is a testament to the quality of its author.
Paul Richards is a columnist for Progress and LabourList.
Tags: A Journey, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair
“He wants his book to tell a story, not make a mint.”
Should read: “he can afford to make this empty gesture because he’s already trousered millions off the back of his political career, having dumped his constituency faster than a burning coal when he gave up the leadership. This donation also means he can claim a whacking great corporate tax break on his earnings”
When will we realise Blair was the reason we lost 5 million voters to other parties and none, the reason there was a max exodus from the Party membership and the reason (Iraq and Afghanistan) that we will very likely never be trusted again?
Blair took us into an illegal war. He should be prosecuted for war crimes and the proceeds of this grubby self congratulatory tome given to the families of the the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans killed by his wars.
Using the British Legion as emotional blackmail to get his ego massaged just a bit more (did I mention the massive corporate tax break to boot) is disgusting, but little more than to be expected from the Blair money making enterprise.
Thank goodness I have read a balanced review of Tony Blair’s generosity. I am sick and tired of having Tony Blair villified in the press. I do not recall Margaret Thatcher receiving the same criticism when she earned millions on the lecture circuit. Yes – I do believe that it is down to money and the press resents any past Labour PM earning huge sums. How dare they!!! Rather than welcome that a former premier is in demand, admired, pays UK taxes etc etc, they seek to demolish his character. They give credence to the anti war brigade who do not represent the people of this country. They forget to mention that the majority of the country were for the invasion of Iraq and that Cabinet and Parliament were involved. They omit to mention that our military is a voluntary force and that many families believe that their children died representing their country and pursuing a career that they loved. They forget that Tony Blair still has loyal support in the country too. The media do us all a disservice by such biased reporting and it is why many of us no longer purchase newspapers.
Thank you Mr Richards. It is time that you and I took on the Blair bashing media!!!!
A reader writes: (http://ht.ly/2qOSW)
LabourUncut – but not uncensored #BlairFail
Tom Watson (@Tom_Watson), guest editing LabourUncut, tweeted this morning that a piece about Blair’s donation of his book profits to the British Legion had been published.
The sycophantic piece appears here: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2010/08/17/blairs-gesture-is-testament-to-the-quality-of-its-author-says-paul-richards/
As you will note there is only one comment published, glorying in Blair’s generosity and completely ignoring the illegality of at least one of the wars Blair took us into that resulted in the maiming his “magnanimous” donation is aimed at repairing and smearing the population by claiming a majority were in favour of the war – when the exact opposite was true.
So, in the interests of balance I reproduce the entirety of my comment, submitted at 08:35 but still, mysteriously, awaiting moderation:
” “He wants his book to tell a story, not make a mint.”
Should read: “he can afford to make this empty gesture because he’s already trousered millions off the back of his political career, having dumped his constituency faster than a burning coal when he gave up the leadership. This donation also means he can claim a whacking great corporate tax break on his earnings”
When will we realise Blair was the reason we lost 5 million voters to other parties and none, the reason there was a max exodus from the Party membership and the reason (Iraq and Afghanistan) that we will very likely never be trusted again?
Blair took us into an illegal war. He should be prosecuted for war crimes and the proceeds of this grubby self congratulatory tome given to the families of the the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans killed by his wars.” ”
Seems LabourUncut don’t like their rosey view of Blair to be challenged, or for that matter the truth about the illegality of Iraq or the corporate tax wheeze the donation allows to be more broadly discussed, which is, in itself shameful.
More shameful I suppose is that I forgot to mention that Blair lied through his teeth to get the Parliamentary vote he needed to proceed…
The sooner the Labour party get’s shot of this Blairite fanaticism the better, we can’t hope to win an election again without having a proper debate on Blair’s legacy, the damage it has done and how we overcome it.