This makes more extraordinary still the fact that it took a full five-days before any figure on the Labour Party’s nominal “left” made any response. The Blairites were so nervous that Starmer was almost alone in mounting a defence of their ideological mentor. Insisting on ITV’s Good Morning Britain that the issue was not “thorny at all” and that Blair “deserves the honour”, he was forced to acknowledge “strong views on the Iraq war” while arguing pathetically that this did not “detract from the fact that Tony Blair was a very successful prime minister of this country”. But he squirmed like a worm on a hook while doing so. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who leads a thoroughly Blairite cabinet, came forward as expected to defend Blair’s knighthood. Many have noted that the grotesque honour was bestowed on Blair in the week that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marked 1,000 days entombed in Belmarsh Prison, fighting extradition to the US and a lifetime in jail for exposing the war crimes perpetrated in Afghanistan and Iraq.įamilies of soldiers killed or injured unnecessarily in these bloody military adventures expressed outrage and said they will return military medals if the knighthood goes ahead. The petition demanding that Blair's knighthood be rescinded Its introduction argues that Blair “should be held accountable for war crimes.” One million people, at the time of writing had signed the petition, “Tony Blair to have his ‘Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter’ rescinded”. The former Labour leader’s knighthood was greeted with a wave of anger and contempt. He left office in 2007 having vastly expanded the role of the private sector in essential public services, encouraged social inequality, trampled over democratic rights and finalised Labour’s transformation into a Tory Party mark two that earned him the praise of Thatcher and the undying hatred of the working class. Together with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, it marked an explosion of imperialist militarism, centred on the Middle East, and prepared the way for subsequent catastrophic interventions in Libya and Syria.īlair’s domestic record was no less reactionary. The fears expressed by working people were realised in a grotesquely unequal conflict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, countless maimings, the destruction of whole cities and the dismemberment of Iraqi society. Opposition to the war was massive, with upwards of one-and-a-half million people taking to the streets of London on February 15, 2003, as part of the world’s largest global protest mobilising over 11 million people. Protesters pack London's Whitehall during a march to Hyde Park, to demonstrate against a possible war against Iraq.
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