Matthew Norman: Blair let me down 
Was Blair the classic sociopath who believed his words were true, 
since they came from his mouth? 
Published: 11 May 2007 
The clue was there from the start, when he strolled along Downing 
Street with Cherie that blazing Friday bathing in beatific grins of 
worshippers we were invited to believe were members of the general 
public. 

Only, of course, they weren't. They were Labour Party workers and 
shadow ministerial aides. That this supposedly spontaneous outpouring 
of worship for the new Prime Minister proved to be a pre-planned media 
event seems a trivial deception by any standards, let alone those Mr 
Blair would later unleash. But it set the template for his style of 
government to perfection. The first British leader to grow up in the 
television age, the first to appreciate the importance of visual 
imagery in moulding opinion, his paramount concern was always 
manipulating the media to sustain himself in power. Above all, he 
understood that perception is far more potent than reality.

Or rather, he half understood. He got the bits about being able to 
fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of 
the time. It was the second half of Abraham Lincoln's aphorism he 
didn't grasp until it was too late. With the unnatural self-belief of 
the megalomaniac, he assumed that he could fool all of the people all 
of the time.

Long before Iraq, more clues came and went that the messianic would-be 
recreator of a young country was in fact a dangerous, charming rogue. 
In the wake of the Ecclestone business, a nation still metaphorically 
dancing over the humbling of Michael Portillo chose to suspend 
disbelief that he wasn't a pretty straight kinda guy after all.

Later, with his attempt to impose Frank Dobson's mayoralty on an 
unwilling London, the autocratic centralist instinct that would lead to 
Walter Wolfgang being frogmarched from a conference hall was presented 
in a gilded display case, but few chose to notice. Some fibs were 
mildly endearing, as when it was claimed on his behalf that he'd saved 
from drowning a Danish businessman mildly irked, it transpired, at 
being dragged from the Indian Ocean during a quiet swim for no apparent 
reason. Others (the whopper that the House of Lords had rejected the 
ban on fox hunting) were alarming, not so much for themselves as for 
the inevitability that they would be instantly exposed.

Was he recklessly blasé about lying, or the classic sociopath who 
believed his words must be the truth for the simple reason that they 
came from his mouth? Was he rascal or madman? Was he, perhaps more 
likely, both?

And yet however transparent the lie - knowing nothing about spending 
£500,000 on those two Bristol flats, for example; having no involvement 
in the failed attempt to wangle him a more important role at the Queen 
Mother's funeral - pliant newspapers continued to indulge him. Time 
after time when he had was caught at it, leader articles reassured 
readers that, while the incident was regrettable, the one thing in 
absolutely no doubt was the Prime Minister's personal integrity.

If his adroit use of human lightning rods (Cherie, Mandelson, 
Campbell, latterly Lord Levy) to take the heat for him formed one key 
plank of his survivalist technique, the other was his obeisance to 
Rupert Murdoch.

He'd done the Faustian pact before coming to office, bartering his 
political soul at one of those News International pow-wows. In power, 
he was delighted to cede British policy on Europe to an Australian-
American smuggled in through the No 10 back door on rare state visits 
to give orders on such trifling matters as the holding of a referendum 
on the EU constitution. He would even attend a Christmas party, late in 
his career, on the arm of the editor of The Sun.

With the slavering support of the Murdoch press, and with less 
partisan papers and an ever-nervous BBC lacking the insight or the 
stomach to tell it straight, who can really blame him for developing 
the invulnerability complex that was finally to destroy him? Naturally 
he thought he could get away with the familiar cocktail of lies, half 
truths and omissions for ever. And but for Iraq, he might well have 
done so.

The die was cast on 9/11. At the subsequent Labour Party conference, 
his sense of excitement was palpable as his advisers, their West Wing 
fantasies out of control, ran around squawking: "This is what we were 
born for!" Seduced by a congressional standing ovation, his appetite 
for adrenalin and admiration became barely satiable.

So it was that his trinity of psychological flaws - the pathological 
craving for attention exhibited since toddlerhood; the monomaniacal 
certainty in his own wisdom and moral rectitude that precluded him 
listening to dissenting voices; and that utterly amoral disregard for 
the facts - combined to entice him into Iraq, and annihilate whatever 
remained of his reputation for competence, judgment and humanity.

He will leave No 10 with one immense achievement, Northern Ireland, 
and a sleeping partner's minor share in the economic successes of 
Gordon Brown. And he leaves in his wake a trail of ruins - a 
politicised and degraded civil service, overstretched and demoralised 
armed forces, a cabinet as neutered and toothless as the House of 
Commons, an education system still churning out the illiterate and 
innumerate, a fiscally chaotic and mutinous NHS, a transport 
infrastructure barely worthy of a developing country, and the nagging, 
nebulous but compelling sense that Britain, while in some important 
ways more tolerant than 10 years ago, has in others become a greedier 
and more venal society than when he arrived.

That broiling Friday morning 10 years ago, with that massive 
parliamentary majority and unparalleled public goodwill, he had the 
most powerful starting hand dealt to any new prime minister in modern 
history. The one thing he didn't need to do was bluff. The murderous 
thing about Tony Blair's nature, and thus his leadership, is that he 
never knew how to do anything else. 

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