Tony Blair is a man who can certainly stir up some emotion. There are tons of people who openly hate him and, presumably, a few left somewhere (America perhaps) that still love him.
I didn't choose A Journey because I love or hate him. I certainly don't fall into the former camp, I certainly have some major issues with the war in Iraq, but neither do I think he has turned into the spawn of Satan. No, I read his autobiography just because I was interested. Interested in his side of the story, interested in his reasons - or excuses - and interested in a peek behind the scenes of government.
I opted for an audio version of the book because I knew I wouldn't sacrifice enough 'proper' reading time for a book like this. Using up precious hours in my little reading room for Tony Blair... no! Listening to him explain himself while I painted the cellar... more likely.
The fact that I listened to him read the book will no doubt have coloured my judgment. The fact that it was all delivered in his familiar voice made it all sound a little bit more whiney I think, a little bit more like one big excuse.
It was interesting to hear his account of what happened, especially his side of the TB/GB saga in which he seemed to keep Gordon Brown hanging on some perpetual piece of string, just long enough to eventually hang himself with. In reality, however, the fact that the book is arranged thematically not chronologically meant that there was less insight into the day to day machinations of a political power house than I would have liked, or expected.
Instead, there was lots and lots about how well Tony Blair can make decisions. The terms 'analysis' and 'drilling down' have to be the most over-used expressions of the book. We are told early on how Blair's apprentice at the feet of Derry Irvine, while he trained to be a barrister, afforded him an ability to 'drill down' that was second to none. He seems to genuinely believe that he can see the truth where others can't - and not just about current issues. There is a passage dedicated to his views on Chamberlain and WWII where he basically says that Chamberlain got a hammering only because everyone was asking the wrong questions... something that Blair would never do.
There is something about this image of Blair as a meticulous, analytical mind far more focused on asking the 'right' questions than projecting the 'right' image that just doesn't wash. He tries to paint himself as the policy maker, Brown as the less developed political mind but I'm not sure he carries it off. I listened to this just after Peter Mandelson's The Third Man. Life at the Heart of New Labour and both Blair and Mandelson seem willing to rubbish Brown's reputation. So much so that you wonder why, if Brown was really such a belligerent bully, they didn't just 'deal with him' early on.
Blair ends by offering some advice to the Labour party. The fact that this consists of 'keep on doing what I was doing or perish' is rather predictable, rather disappointing. Just as the Tories couldn't see they needed to change when Blair won his landslide victory in 1997, one wonders whether Blair is just a little bit too stuck in his own spin.
All in all an interesting way to pass the time while painting, but not much more.
Ooh interesting. I really wanted someone to read this for me and tell me what it was like, as I feel very similarly about Blair. He's a conviction politician which is both an admirable and a dangerous thing to be - it meant his heart was in the right place, and so was his sieve ear and blind-spotted eye. I'll bet he is still convinced of his rightness over various ghastly issues, and that will always be what prevents him from becoming a legendary statesman, and keeps him yet one more deluded ex-PM. Thank you for reading the book so I don't have to!
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