Tony Blair should be heading to The Hague, instead on 13 June he will be heading to the castle at Windsor where he will be knighted by the Queen.
With blood on his hands, dressed in a velvet robe glistening with gold insignia and a plumed hat, Blair will take part in a procession to St. George’s Chapel as part of a grand, royal ceremony.
News of the award, announced in the New Year’s Honours, was met with disbelief. Polls showed the vast majority of the public were outraged, and over a million people signed a petition against the knighthood within just a few days.
Mother’s of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan wrote begging the Queen to rescind the knighthood. One father described hearing of the honour as the “cruellest blow”.
Hot on the heels of the revenge war on Afghanistan, Blair took us to war with Iraq in 2003. He deliberately lied to both the British public and parliament, desperate to support the US whatever the evidence, and ignoring the millions who took to the streets in protest.
Blair’s addiction to war began in 1999 when he persuaded President Clinton to bomb Serbia. Later that same year he annunciated his view on “humanitarian liberal intervention” in the now infamous Chicago speech. Echoes of this philosophy reverberate today.
Blair’s wars left devastation and destruction in their wake, a refugee crisis, and millions dead. To this day he is as unrepentant as he is sanctimonious, even after the Chilcot Inquiry and the traumatic retreat from Afghanistan.
It is clear that despite the disastrous legacy of Blair’s foreign policy few lessons have been learnt. Blair is to be knighted by the Queen with the highest honour the establishment can bestow, and Britain has yet another lying prime minister enthusiastically promoting war to remain in step with the US and keep himself in office.
So once again we find ourselves embroiled in a nasty foreign war, this time in Ukraine, with the Prime Minister fully supported by Keir Starmer’s Labour.
Join the Stop the War protest at the annual Garter Day procession in Windsor on 13 June, and let the world know there is only one court that Blair should be attending, and it’s not the royal one.