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Tony Blair said – of being openly religious in the British political system – that “people do think you’re a nutter“. So it’s no wonder he stayed religiously reticent while in office. When so many people already think you’re a twat, it’s not really going to help if they think you’re a nutter too.
Perhaps the most important decision of Tony Blair’s premiership, when you consider the impact it has had on so many lives across the world, never mind the political impact at home, was his decision to pursue intervention in Iraq. Of that he said: “I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people, and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.”
In Bush and Blair you have two Christian world leaders who held private meetings during which it seems the decision was made for us to invade a Muslim country under the banner of a ‘War on Terrorism’ the former liked to refer to as a “crusade“. If our former Prime Minister had worn his religion on his sleeve while in office then more people might have seen enough warning signs to want to stop him. Instead we’re 90,000 Iraqi deaths into a conflict which has bolstered terrorists the world over, while Tony Blair assuages his guilt by attempting to bring people of faith together.
Now he says that he thinks “people, in one sense, are a little comforted if they think the person leading them has some sense of spiritual value.” I’m not sure anyone is comforted by the decision to embark on an illegal war being a spiritually informed one. He goes on to suggest that he “could have been a little more adventurous on this without bringing the house down.” Well that’s the problem, isn’t it. He was adventurous, and he did bring the house down. He helped bring Iraq to its knees with heavy-handed militarism and strategic incompetence, and he brought down any integrity the Houses of Parliament may have had when he dispensed lies and half truths to secure a vote on an illegal war. He was devoted to ensuring Britain’s participation in Bush’s crusade.
If Tony Blair had been more open about his religious faith, he would have demonstrated perfectly why it is that religion should play no part in politics, public or private.