A viral petition to strip former Labour prime minister and Iraq War architect Tony Blair of his knighthood is closing in on one million signatures, and shows no signs of slowing down.
The 68-year-old’s decision to plunge the country into war in search of what turned out to be highly elusive “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in 2003 famously brought a million citizens onto the streets to oppose him in what was believed to be Britain’s biggest-ever political demonstration — although ‘people power’ proved to be no obstacle to him getting his way then and may prove equally fruitless now, given the establishment’s silence on the petition.
Blair, a youthful admirer of communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky — a key player in the Vladimir Lenin regime which assassinated his own country’s monarch, his wife, and young children — was made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter in the New Year Honours Lists, after a wait of almost 15 years following his departure from office.
Insiders had long suggested that the Queen, who unlike with most honours has a personal say in who is appointed to the Garter, had been resisting appointing Blair to the order, as most ex-prime ministers have been.
This has been attributed to the Labour grandee’s behaviour following the death of Princess Diana — said to have particularly infuriated the Queen’s late consort, Prince Philip — and indiscrete references to stays at the royals’ Scottish retreat at Balmoral in his memoirs, which he described as “freaky” and “surreal”.
Conservative commentators have speculated, however, that the Queen felt obliged to award the honour to Blair to maintain her official appearance of neutrality, and to ensure that other ex-prime ministers such as Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Theresa May can be honoured in future without creating the appearance of partiality.
It is perhaps telling that she did not make this decision until her husband’s passing.
Whatever the reasons for Blair’s elevation, it has been nothing if not controversial among the general public, with left-leaning, right-leaning, and politically neutral activists and ordinary citizens coming together to condemn the man and his legacy.
“It was not just Iraq. He pioneered the nanny controlling state; he opened the flood gates to immigration; he set in train devolution; he buckled to a broken IRA; he stuffed the [House of] Lords full of his cronies; he broke the nation’s finances,” commented Ben Habib, a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party, after news of the knighthood broke.
“He was a disaster,” he added.
Blair has continued to court controversy up to the present day, campaigning to reverse Brexit and pushing for the vaccination of nursery-age children and discrimination against the unvaccinated, who he branded “idiots”, for example.
As of the time of publication, the Change.org petition to strip his knighthood for causing “irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society” and alleged “war crimes” stood at 980,000 and rising.
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