Mehdi Hasan: Tony Blair

Tony Blair is back in Britain to promote the paperback edition of his 2010 memoir, A Journey. The permatanned ex-premier has been doing the rounds of the television and radio studios, offering his views on the Arab Spring as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury's guest-edit of the New Statesman.

He also offered this piece of advice to Ed Miliband, the current Labour leader. From the ... read more

One of the weirdest features of the Libya crisis has been the re-emergence of T Blair. I was both annoyed and amused to see our former premier -- described by Saif Gaddafi as a "close personal friend" of the Gaddafi family -- penning pieces for the Times and the Sun in recent days, supporting military action against his (former) friends.

Then there's David Cameron's hypocrisy -- as I note in my ... read more

As the protests escalate across Egypt, I have a simple question: on which side are the US and UK governments? The side of the protesters, fighting for their democratic rights and freedoms, or the side of the ageing, corrupt dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and his secret police? The US and UK governments, aided and abetted by the US and UK media, ... read more

I'm knackered and sleepy, hungry from all the Ramadan fasting and -- officially -- on vacation. But I couldn't go to bed without commenting on Tony Blair's new book, A Journey, extracts of which have been published online here.

Much of the instant attention from the chattering classes in the Westminster village has been on the Gordon Brown (GB) chapter, and on Martin Kettle's pre-publication interview ... read more

Gaby Hinsliff has an interesting, if provocative, piece on the Guardian's Comment Is Free. She thinks Labour has "taken the bait on Alan Milburn's coalition role" and mocks the "considered" response of the left ("Well, good riddance to Blairite rubbish, eh?"). Some highlights from her piece:

Right now, the left is too busy behaving like a teenage girl who dumps her loser boyfriend only to react ... read more

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff, has a rather interesting comment piece in today's Guardian, promoting his three-part documentary Talking to the Enemy, which kicks off on Radio 4 this week.

In the opening paragraph, he writes:

It has become fashionable for western leaders, including generals, to talk about talking to the Taliban. But no one seems to be able to quite bring themselves to ... read more

David Cameron is taking a battering in the newspapers and the blogosphere. In the midst of his first visit to the United States as prime minister, he told Sky's Adam Boulton:

I think it's important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner. We were the junior ... read more

The latest revelation from Peter Mandelson's memoir that has caught my eye concerns a comment made by the then PM, Tony Blair, when Mandelson dared to raise concerns, in the summer of 2002, about the prospect of invading Iraq and the reaction in the Muslim world. Blair's response?

For God's sake, have you been spending all your time with George Galloway?

Amazing. Is any more insight needed into what Mandelson refers to ... read more

Andrew Sparrow, on the Guardian's politics blog, highlights this particular extract (below) from Peter Mandelson's new memoir, The Third Man, which relates to a conversation Tony Blair had with the self-described Prince of Darkness in 2003.

Blair had done a "deal" with Gordon Brown over standing down before the 2005 election at a meeting with Brown and John Prescott, and here Mandelson relays the then prime ... read more

Looking at the front pages of the Guardian and the Times today, I can't help but think that two interrelated issues -- Iraq and Tony Blair -- will never depart from the British political scene. They simply won't go away.

The latest claim from Teflon Tony on the subject of the Iraq war, in an interview with the BBC's Fern Britton, is that he would have invaded Iraq and ... read more