Sun columnist offers his ‘bucket load of wotsit’ to Tony Blair, as former PM announces return to politics
Blair has nobody but himself to blame for Brexit and for the contempt in which he is held by the British public
WHEN he was Prime Minister facing yet another unpopular demand from Brussels, Tony Blair liked to tell media pals: “I’d rather nail my balls to a Eurostar.”
In further clues to a possibly masochistic streak, he would quote an obscure 14th-century monk who emasculated himself to avoid sexual temptation.
Now in yet another burst of self-flagellation, he admits he is despised by the British people but ready to face a “bucket of wotsit” to fight for his beloved European Union.
So here goes . . .
Tony Blair is indeed a hated figure. Even former admirers detest the money-grabbing self-enrichment which has marked his years since Downing Street.
And yes, many voters would love the chance to pour a bucketload over his sanctimonious head.
But Mr Blair has nobody but himself to blame for Brexit and for the contempt in which he and, more worryingly, the entire political class is held by the great British public.
He deceived the nation over the illusory threat that led us into the Iraq war.
He opened the floodgates to uncontrolled mass immigration.
And he branded as a “racist” anyone who disagreed with a policy for which Britain is still paying today.
Blair was a political superstar who blew it all by convincing himself that his version of the truth was right, whatever the evidence to the contrary.
He skimmed over unpalatable facts and, sitting around a sofa with trusted allies, bypassed the normal checks and balances that might have steered us from danger.
Winning the second of his three general elections gave him a David Icke-style messiah complex which led him down the road of “humanitarian intervention” and into the most catastrophic war in modern times.
At this point, I confess I backed the war in Iraq — right up to the moment a top spook admitted to me there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Asked when the intelligence services would deliver the now-infamous second dossier justifying military action, he replied: “I hope they are not in a hurry.”
Two weeks later the dossier was rushed out, bolstered by a 13-year-old PhD thesis downloaded from the internet, suggesting Saddam could hit western targets at 45 minutes’ notice.
That dossier was the final proof that Tony Blair was a charismatic charlatan with little respect for disobliging facts. Yet this slick opportunist is still hailed as “the master” by senior Tories like David Cameron and George Osborne. That says something about them both.
Blair so besmirched the image of politicians that few people now believe a word from Westminster. This toxic distrust was made worse by Mr Osborne’s reckless abuse of the facts in his scurrilous Project Fear.
Only since Theresa May became PM has Downing Street begun to rebuild public trust.
It is thanks to Tony Blair’s ducking and diving that Britain voted out on June 23.
It was Blair who promised a referendum on the EU constitution and then reneged, leaving David Cameron holding the hot potato.
It was Blair who misled the nation — to put it politely — by claiming only 15,000 migrants would come to the UK each year after he opened the borders in 2004 to new EU states.
And it was Blair who disgracefully allowed senior Labour figures to brand critics as “racist”.
Only after four million migrants had settled here did Labour concede this was a slur. It didn’t stop them playing the race card, though.
Tony Blair still refuses to admit he was wrong. Only last month, in a weasel-words response, he singled out hard-working Poles to justify mass immigration.
“I don’t regret it because the Polish community and other communities from Eastern Europe do good work in our country,” he said. “I’m happy with them, but I understand there’s a very marked sensitivity around that.”
There is also “sensitivity”, to say the least, about his crass drive to impose multiculturalism. Under the guise of tolerance, his government encouraged migrants to set up their own enclaves and ghettoes.
His policy has been denounced by race relations leaders like Trevor Phillips and is now discredited across Europe where terrorism is now rampant.
Multiculturalism turned inner-city suburbs into breeding grounds for young Islamic fanatics with murder on their minds.
Today, to Blair’s dismay, Britain seized the chance of a referendum to reject his Third Way brand of compromise and deception and voted to regain the control he handed to Brussels.
Blair’s hands are already dirty. He has nothing to offer Brexit Britain.
He should accept the richly-deserved bucketload, retreat to one of his mansions — and take Peter Mandelson with him.