FIRST, it was The Journey — then, supposedly for fear of seeming messianic, the definite article became indefinite. There again, just to prove that Tony Blair perhaps thinks of himself as being that bit closer to the Almighty than most of us, last week brought news that A Journey will be available in a super-expensive edition — £150, if you're interested — said to be suggestive of a religious text.
Should you want either a bog-standard or biblical edition signed by the man-god himself, you should be at the London Piccadilly branch of Waterstone's bookshop on Sept 8, but please bear in mind the already legendary restrictions: no bags, no mobiles, no photos, no personal dedications — and no guarantee that, even if you buy your book and get your special wristband, you will get to meet him.
And now this: with assurances from his PR people that the money was always destined for a good cause, sudden news that “all proceeds” from the book will be going to a Royal British Legion facility for injured soldiers.
Though Blair answered the Chilcot inquiry's question about any Iraq-related regrets in the negative, the move surely points up a much more complicated set of feelings — or, if you want to be truly cynical, a shallow calculation about how the public might start to view him in a more sympathetic light. Whichever, it is some token of how damaged Blair is that any supportive responses have been all but drowned out by something else entirely: massed marvelling at his post-Downing Street existence.
So, in no particular order: five homes, including the Blairs' £3.7m pad in London's Connaught Square, expanded when an adjacent £800,000 mews property was “knocked through”; two other high-end London pads occupied by sons Nicky and Euan Blair; and that £5.75m home county seat.
High-paying roles with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services. Six-figure fees for after-dinner engagements and millions received in return for “global strategic assistance”, under the auspices of something called Tony Blair Associates. Tied up in those terrifying complex financial arrangements: wealth already estimated to be as much as £60m.
Whether his fabulous existence brings him endless joy or Midas-like emptiness is an interesting question. But a more important point is that in this case, the personal is inevitably political, because Blair's lifestyle also serves to undermine his own government's record. Each time he crash-lands in the headlines New Labour is once again a byword for excess, the blurring of public office and private privilege.
—The Guardian, London
