When historians of a future era look back on the Blair years, they will surely
turn to two defining, contrasting images: a Prime Minister jigging and
giggling with joy after securing the Olympic Games, and the same man, just a
few hours later, with a face of thunder, vowing to hunt down terrorists and
defend British civilisation.
For months Tony Blair has plotted and fretted over his legacy, only to have
his historical inheritance set in stone in one tumultuous 24-hour period.
In between the euphoria and the carnage, Blair flew back and forth to
Scotland; chaired the emergency Cobra Cabinet security meeting; opened,
interrupted, and closed the G8 summit; and uttered three separate, intensely
memorable statements on the terrorist outrage. Those words, and the
accompanying iconic images, will form his political epitaph, for better or
worse.
Blair is a master of rhetoric: he can deploy words to dissemble and demean,
but he can also use them to articulate the feelings, fears and hopes of his
listeners. He did this over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and he
did it even more dramatically on Thursday, offering a resonant response to
terrorism even before the scale of the devastation was known.
In his odd combination of Churchillian timbre and slangy idiom, Mr Blair
framed the attacks and the necessary response as a Manichean struggle
between civilisation and barbarity that would end in triumph over terror.
Roy Jenkins wrote of Winston Churchill’s oratory that it produced “a
euphoria of irrational belief in ultimate victory”. This was precisely the
effect achieved by Mr Blair with a few short sentences written on the back
of an envelope.
The impact was heightened by the entirely rational euphoria that preceded it.
Aides said that they had never seen Mr Blair’s trademark smile wider than
when he heard of Britain’s successful bid for the Olympics. On receiving the
news by telephone, he performed a small dance of victory on the lawn at
Gleneagles.
Here are the adjectives uttered by Mr Blair in his first, brief interview
after the news: fantastic, extraordinary, momentous, magnificent,
tremendous, amazing, brilliant, awesome, brilliant, and fantastic. This was
Mr Blair as wild enthusiast, celebrating an astonishing political coup with
a torrent of superlatives.
He bounded out of the hotel the next morning, a man all but airborne on his
own success: Jacques Chirac humiliated, the Olympics secured, hosting a
summit of the world’s wealthiest nations, with the glow of Live8 behind him.
All was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Then the first bomb
went off. Unlike George W. Bush, photographed with his face in a rictus of
shock as he learnt about 9/11, the cameras did not witness Mr Blair’s
personal pathos, his transition from delight to horror. The full extent of
the atrocity emerged slowly, and by the time he took to the podium any
surprise had already worn off, replaced by a grim defiance.
The first statement was terse, tense and to the point, but it also established
the themes that would recur through the coming hours. Twice he referred to
the barbarity of the terrorists. “Whatever they do, it is our determination
that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country
and in other civilised nations”: a way of life against a way of death. The
Prime Minister’s hands shook as he spoke, his face was drained of colour. No
doubt these were phrases that have been rehearsed often, in the dread
certainty that they would be deployed eventually, but he gave every
impression of spontaneity.
Returning to London from Scotland by helicopter, Blair had a chance to refine
his thoughts. The resulting speech, delivered from Downing Street, was far
more emotional and overtly patriotic, a speech more of sentiment than
substance, precisely fulfilling William Hazlitt’s definition of powerful
oratory: “Not to inform, but to rouse the mind.”
At times it was almost colloquial, delivered in the blunt language of the pub.
“I think we all know what they are trying to do: they are trying to use the
slaughter of innocent people to cow us and frighten us out of the things
that we are trying to do, trying to stop us going about our business as
normal, as we are entitled to do.”
But then came the echo of Churchill, the rise-and-fall cadence of the battle
hymn. “We shall prevail . . . When they seek to change our country or our
way of life by these methods, we will not be changed . . . When they try to
divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our
resolve will hold firm.”
The word oratory is associated with prayer, and Mr Blair’s summation at the
end of the summit was more an invocation of belief than a statement of
political resolve. The agreements made at Gleneagles, he said, marked “a
beginning, not an end. And none of it today will match the same ghastly
impact of terror. But it has a pride and a hope and humanity at its heart
that can lift the shadow of terrorism and light the way to a better future.”
Barbarity and civilisation; darkness and light; black and white. “We speak
today in the shadow of terrorism, but it will not obscure what we came here
to achieve,” he said. “The purpose of terrorism is . . . to put all
conventional politics in darkness.”
It seems hard to believe that only a few weeks ago some members of Mr Blair’s
party were calling for his resignation. Yesterday even the Daily Express
was commending his steely resolve. If this week’s attacks turn out to be the
start of a sustained campaign, then that could change quickly, for although
the shadow of Gordon Brown has temporarily receded again, that of the Iraq
war continues to loom darkly.
Yet this may be stated in black and white: when future generations are taught
about the political career of Tony Blair, the opening lesson will focus on a
single week in July. A week that started with a pop concert, saw a surprise
sporting success and a strange international summit, and ended in an act of
mass murder that changed Britain for ever.
