One might wonder whether Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. We never asked the question about Tony Blair. When he lived in Downing Street, he engaged Britain in five wars in six years. Most of them for dubious reasons and with calamitous results: Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq again.
The latter earned him a nickname: George W. Bush’s poodle. This warlike fury drained the British army, which is still struggling to recover, but above all it cost the Prime Minister his reputation.
Former heads of state envy his reconversion: his fortune is estimated at $60 million
Forgotten New Labor, the rallying of Labor to the market economy, the ten years of cascading reforms, the three successive and unprecedented victories in the general elections, the miraculous com’ and the acrobatic trajectory: we only remember his barking against the imaginary arsenal of Saddam Hussein. There is the Good Friday Agreement, which allowed the disarmament of the IRA and the establishment of peace in Northern Ireland. But the dialogue had been established during the time of his conservative predecessor and completed by two Irish people awarded the Nobel Prize. The only talent recognized in Tony Blair was that of a lawyer who facilitates a negotiation at the end. In any case, who doesn’t sabotage it.
A reconversion
Likewise, the eight years he spent as Quartet emissary for the Middle East after leaving the London scene count for nothing. Tony Blair has settled down at the American Colony, the Jerusalem palace. From the terrace of his suite, he had a view of the political impasse. He never succeeded in relaunching the Israeli-Palestinian settlement plan (the famous “road map”) imagined by the Americans and endorsed by the Europeans, the Russians and the UN. They say he didn’t even try. He buried him as soon as Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power.
Instead, he devoted himself to the economic development of the West Bank, abandoning Gaza to Hamas. The contacts he then established with Arab leaders proved fruitful. For fifteen years, he has been traveling the Middle East. He knows the palaces, the caves and the complacent bankers. The small circle of former heads of state envies his reconversion. His fortune is estimated at $60 million. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which he founded in 2016, claims to advise the leaders of 45 countries. His book published at the beginning of the year, Your leadership (Fayard), is a guide for this clientele, “a gold mine for all those interested (…) hasux qualities that make a good leader. » Gold mine, the right word.
Gaza, a laboratory
This mix of genres between public affairs and business predisposed the former Prime Minister to join the inner circle formed around Donald Trump by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his emissary Steve Witkoff, also enriched by politics. The Trump plan for the Middle East intends to make Gaza the laboratory of a new way of governing. Tony Blair will be the proconsul responsible for the reconstruction and management of the territory. Another Briton, a century after Lord Balfour! The business is promising. Who cares about the angry people who point out that he has no legitimacy among the Palestinians. The Gazans will have borne everything. If he succeeds in making Gaza, if not a Riviera, at least a livable construction site, Tony Blair will deserve the Nobel Prize. Otherwise, no one will be able to deny him the International Grand Prix for Resilience, the Oscar for the second chance, the solid gold medal of the political undead.
