Jonn wrote this:

But… I don’t think Blair has ever seen the relationship in those terms. It’s much simpler – and much scarier – than that. He believes this stuff. He’s always pursued an activist foreign policy – remember Kosovo? – and he was pushing for something to be done about Saddam when Clinton was in charge. (Clinton, bless his little cotton socks, wasn’t that stupid.) He is, in a way, a neo-con.

So asking what Blair wanted in exchange for invading Iraq is a meaningless question. It’s like asking what Tom Cruise would want in exchange for accepting an Oscar.

Does that sound like Jonn is defending Blair’s attitudes and beliefs?

To repeat: Jonn believes (and so do I) that Blair does these things for no other reason than that he actually has drunk the Kool-aid himself. The oft-repeated allegation that Blair is a Petainist is nonsense. Pres. Arroyo of the Philippines, who is totally dependent for her career on the illustrado class, eventually discovered she could say no to the White House. Leaders such as Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium as well as Chirac & Schroeder were vocal in their opposition. Leaders such as Berlusconi (Italy), J.M. Aznar (Spain), M. Barroso (Port.), A.F. Rasmussen (Denmark), and J.P. Balkenende (NL), plus various Central European ones approved of the invasion. Finally, leaders like Kjell Bondevik of Norway and Costas Simitas of Greece were muted.

I think it’s actually very silly to insist that anything bad has to have been done by an American or else a non-American coerced by Yanks. In fact, I think it’s a form of right wing populism, rather closely analogous to “Bushism” out of power. If one has difficulty understanding analogies, then I can explain.

Then why has he done bugger all about it? Nine and a half years in power not long enough?

He believes in the merging of state and corporate power, aggressive war, detention without charge or trial, restrictions on free speech, restrictions on assembly, national identity registers, total surveillance. Oh yes, and he’s a traitor to boot.

Godwin’s Law in action!

Since then, thought — and especially recently — it has become clear that my initial assessment of him as a cipher with few to no opinions of his own, who would do anything to be popular, was accurate. I just made a mistake about his constituency. He doesn’t care about what voters think, except insofar as he has to in order to get elected, in order to carry out his real agenda. No, everything he does — absolutely everything — is based on how he wants to appear in the history books.

He wants to be the man who solved education, the man who solved crime, the man who started the process of bringing democracy to the middle east and the man who brought peace to Northern Ireland — no matter who he has to tread on, drown in paperwork, or simply sell down the river.

He feels the hand of history upon his shoulder? He’s been reaching out for that hand, seeing almost nothing else since he became leader of the party, and it’s that tunnel vision which has meant that he’s now seeing his Grand Plans to secure his lasting memory crumble against current, practical problems that simply didn’t register on his horizon-fixed view.

“Kendall, a British politics specialist – and thus, I’m guessing, an Anglophile -“

Yup. you’re guessing.