Tony Blair takes credit for masterminding the peace process in Northern Ireland. Indeed, for many it is the crowning point of his “foreign” policy. His compulsive activity and enthusiasm fired the parties into compromise. After that, his international policy was all downhill, culminating in the ill-thought-through Iraq war, for which we continue to pay the price.
That boundless energy, like an unguided missile, continues to drive the former British prime minister, who left office in 2007, into increasingly unfortunate business deals. The latest is a consultancy to the teetering state of Serbia, where he is funded by the United Arab Emirates.
The lure of consultancy for Blair seems no longer to make his mark on the world, but to fill his already overflowing coffers. The same energy is there as before, but now he is jetting between one client and another, whether it be Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Burma, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates and no doubt there are countless others. It was this abundance of contracts that ultimately required him to quit last week his job as Representative of the Middle Eastern Quartet. He was, in my view, simply conflicted out of doing anything helpful in the troubled region.
Blair would argue that his consultancies are aimed at assisting governments manage their affairs more efficiently. But, aside from some good work assisting governments in Africa to fight Ebola, it all looks rather nebulous and insubstantial.
What drives our man? Is it not the cash and the acclaim of emerging nation states who seek British star dust, for what it’s worth? Blair is up there with Clintons and Kissingers as a cash generator of impressive proportions. Some would add Bertie Ahern to that list of tawdry parlayers of contacts for cash. It is doubtful, though, whether he can come anywhere near Blair’s £100million pot of money, built up from his business ventures.
Gorged on consultancy and highly-paid speeches, Blair’s world is one that looks increasingly divorced from the world most of us occupy. One pinches oneself to believe he was once a Labour prime minister whom British people voted for in droves. He is increasingly history as he disappears off the world stage to pursue private interests.
As I discovered in researching my book, Blair Inc. The Man behind the Mask, Blair today lives the life of a prime minister without the power and legitimacy to support it. He has the arrogance to sweet-talk or lean on world leaders, the town and country houses that go with the job he once had, the retinue to administer his life. But he is living in the past not the present, a contemporary King Lear who still behaves like the king he once was. Unlike Lear, Blair keeps his cash close to his chest.
Perceived potential conflicts of interest have haunted the Blair project at every stage. So James Wolfensohn, Blair’s predecessor as Quartet Representative and a former President of the World Bank, told us that the Quartet job could be a very convenient calling card for someone looking to promote their business interests. “For Tony Blair to say, ‘I would like to talk to you about the [Middle East] peace process’ is a very different entry point, to saying ‘I would like to get an oil concession in the east of your country for a client’ or ‘I would like to become an adviser to your country’.”
The politician turned salesmen continues to prove adept at selling the consultancy services of Tony Blair Associates to a host of dubious or unpopular political leaders. His clients include the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, General Sisi of Egypt, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the Abu Dhabi state company Mubadala, the Democratic Republic of Congo and most recently the government of Serbia.
Nazarbayev is perhaps the most distasteful. Blair met the ex-communist henchman in 2000 when he was still prime minister and the two have stayed close ever since. Blair joined Nazarbayev as a cheerleader in 2011 on a deal worth £8 million a year. It is an all-embracing public relations job for the ruthless tyrant; one year Blair is fronting up a video panegyric for the President, the next he is writing words for a speech for in which Nazarbayev will explain to Cambridge students the following month why Kazakh police shot down 15 striking oil workers. Blair also opened doors for Cameron who wanted to visit Kazakhstan.
Blair is backed in these and other international assignments by his old team from Number 10, Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell. They are directors of Blair companies and on his gravy train. They were all too shy to speak to us when we approached them for a quote for the book.
Blair runs after high-paying jobs with alacrity, but those that he does pro-bono do not always seem so important. How else to explain the apparent snub to the President of Guinea. Blair was speaking at an investment conference for that desperately poor country, which is supported by the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative. When Blair descended from the platform after giving his “keynote address” he gave the President a cursory handshake and disappeared. Unless there was some other reason, the lesson is simple: New Blair is a prisoner of new money.
Blair has ploughed the profits from his consultancy and speaking activities into a multimillion-pound property empire, crowned by his residence at 29 Connaught Square, near Marble Arch in Central London, policed by two armed guards day and night, at taxpayers’ expense. This might be his Number 10 Downing Street. It is estimated to be worth £8.3 million.
Then there is South Pavilion, the country house in Buckinghamshire, in the English countryside. This is his Chequers. This massive pile is surrounded by a 6ft-high, 300ft-long modern steel boundary fence to shield Blair from his neighbours. He claims he needs it to protect his privacy, but they see it as a blight on the village of Wotton Underwood.
Other reaches of the property empire are London houses for the Blair’s four children and blocks of flats in Manchester and Stockport, owned by companies belonging to Cherie Blair and Euan Blair, the oldest son. In all, the Blair family is believed to have 36 properties as of today– 31 in Britain and five abroad – worth tens of millions.
Off-the-shelf companies called Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, it is claimed, are at the centre of the corporate spider’s web over which Blair presides. Blair’s fees, and indeed all his earnings are protected by complex tax structures, nothing illegal of course, but constructed by the top accountants KPMG and are inevitably complex and opaque.
The conclusion of the years of investigation that can be found in Blair Inc: The man behind the mask is that Blair has prostituted his legacy to the pursuit of Mammon. He has created a new world that is as remote as it is distasteful for those who care about the morality and standing of British politics. Political friends and foes alike are left cold with disgust.
Blair Inc. The Man Behind the Mask, written by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan, is published by John Blake Publishing, price £20. ISBN. 978-1-78418-370-7
Nick Kochan is an internationally-published political and financial writer. He also writes on organised crime, financial abuse and international affairs. His work may be seen at his website, kochan.co.uk
