Oddities from Blair

I was fascinated by the Tony Blair interview on Wednesday, and almost everything that could be said about it seems to me to have been said since. But two things struck me that have stuck with me for 24 hours, and seems to me to be worth saying here.

One was his bizarre account of the Iraq escapade. He claimed that the problem which caused all the trouble was that ‘outsiders’ fed the conflict and disorder after the invasion, as if somehow that had been wholly unpredictable.

This is a strange. Of course the outsiders would intervene, as he was warned that they would. That is what happens in war – the other side take advantage of your mistakes. It would be like Douglas Haig defending the appalling losses in the Battle of the Somme by blaming the Germans.

The other oddity about the coverage in the last few days is the way that Blair and Brown are squabbling about who had primary responsibility for making the Bank of England independent.

It was certainly a sensible reform, but hardly the jewel in the crown – especially as the Bank of England has since presided over the most appalling mistakes, greed and destructive bubbles by our monopolistic banks.

Robin (6) came in and watched the Iraq section and, asking who he was, immediately was drawn into the Blair charm - "listen to him, he's a good guy", he said.  Yet you are left feeling slightly chilled by him.  Was there anything there beyond a corrosive kind of pragmatism that learned nothing except from the most powerful in the world?