I’ve finally worked out what Tony Blair still exists for: providing comfort to future war criminals that it’s still possible, as a former war criminal, to be accepted in polite society.
Blair has never been indicted as a war criminal. Of course he hasn’t. But he played a pivotal role in enabling the assault on Iraq in March 2003, lying time after time, about “high level intelligence” confirming the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. George Bush would probably have invaded Iraq anyway, but Blair shares direct accountability for the chaos that ensued over the next decade — including the death of at least 500,000 Iraqi citizens.
As Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009, I reported directly to Tony Blair for seven years. For the first three years, it was extremely rewarding. He seriously understood the significance of the climate crisis, and was interested enough in sustainable development more broadly to make it possible for the Commission to develop effective working relationships (through the Cabinet Office) with at least eight government departments. Direct access was frequent and taken seriously.
It all changed in 2003. ‘The hand of history’ was back on his shoulder, and he was playing then for higher stakes. Though he went on to win another election in 2005, millions of Labour voters had lost trust in him. His passive/aggressive defence of that fateful decision to promote the war became almost humiliating.
For the Commission, it was therefore something of a relief when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, even though he would never have appointed me as Chair back in 2000. That only happened because Blair was under huge pressure at that time about his tendency to appoint a succession of ‘Tony’s Cronies’! As a member of the Green Party, highly critical of a lot that Labour stood for at that time, there was no way I could be tarred with that brush. (Others were available, of course!).
I’ve been thinking a lot about those years ever since I heard that Blair had accepted Trump’s invitation to join the Executive Committee of his Board of Peace. Of course he did. Rubbing shoulders with dictators, billionaires and fellow war criminals has become the norm for him since he set up the Tony Blair Institute back in 2016.
I find it hard to explain the depth of repugnance I feel about this. The Board of Peace is itself an utter abhorrence, an overt attempt by Trump to subvert the United Nations, while directing billions of dollars into his own coffers rather than into the restoration of Gaza — whatever that might mean. It is a vanity project like no other.
How anyone, with even the remotest residue of self-respect, could lend credibility to such an institutional monstrosity (a brazen ‘power grab’, undermining the rule of law’, as Mary Robinson puts it) beggars belief.
Despite everything else, I’d always hung on to the belief that Blair was still some sort of climate champion — irreparably diminished and tarnished, to be sure, but still ‘keeping the faith’ on that score, in the way that I personally witnessed more than 20 years ago. But I must now accept that I was deluded even in that small part of Blair’s legacy.
In May last year, the Tony Blair Institute brought out a high-profile report, “The Climate Paradox’, imperiously telling Ed Miliband and Kier Starmer that they’d got it all wrong — and that any strategy seeking to limit the use of fossil fuels and push forward with any urgent decarbonisation strategy was ‘doomed to fail’. In his Foreword , Blair himself suggested giving up on renewables, storage and energy efficiency, and to go even harder on nuclear, Carbon Capture and Storage, and new technologies like (God help us!) Direct Air Capture!
This report was incomprehensibly ill-judged, dishonest — and so helpful to the backlash amongst climate-deniers and delayers enjoying the last thrash of their dinosaurs’ tails.
So incomprehensible — until you check out the links between the Tony Blair Institute, Saudi Arabia and a handful of other utterly corrupt petrostates. The Tony Blair Institute today lacks all credibility, simply pimping itself out (with Tony Blair as Pimp-in-Chief) to the highest bidder.
All of which guarantees future climate breakdown, conflagration and endless war.
Once a war criminal, always a war criminal.
30.1.2026
