'a bit of a banker'

When the Chilcot Enquiry came on the television last week, I was in the waiting area of an office complex. Blair was on, and the volume was off. Not being able to hear what he was saying, I found myself focussing on how he looked. His body language was assured and domineering, with the trademark broad shoulders, floodgate hands and zipping-up fingers. But most striking of all was his complexion. Gone was the slightly grey, rather haggard face that had graced our screens daily until it was replaced by the loose-hung Brown visage in 2007. In its place was a Blair with a tan. Not a sun-bed tan, or a makeup tan, or an artificial spray-tan. A genuine, skin-pigment tan. It made him look smug, and insincere, and tremendously rich. He looked like a bit of a banker.

In the run-up to the Chilcot Enquiry, Nick Robinson remarked that Mr Blair was being prepped by various ‘friends’ in tactics and the art of evasion. Was I the only one to wonder what old Spinning Tony could possibly have left to learn on these subjects? Nevertheless, a great deal of forethought had obviously gone into his appearance in the Chilcot dock. So how did his wardrobe assistant, or personal grooming adviser, or whoever, neglect to note that the man’s overt tan was the moral equivalent to a flashy Rolex on the wrist of an RBS Director? Surely they must have tan-remover for emergencies like these? Or some form of herbal grey-out? Couldn’t Cherie have leant him Carole Caplin?

The public are angry at Mr Blair. So angry, in fact, that his newly bronzed countenance has eclipsed the pasty mugs of scoundrel MPs as the focus of the nation’s wrath. And with good reason. Not only has Blair fudged, manipulated, squirmed and spun his way from here to Baghdad and back again, he has been quietly amassing a fortune on the after-dinner circuit (not to mention the book deals). None of us, of course, would give up the opportunity to earn money by talking guff. But then, we weren’t the ones who were responsible for sexing up the dossier and sending hundreds of our troops – not to mention the Iraqis – to their deaths.

The Blair team neglected to appreciate that their man needed to look wan, contrite, ashen, as if he were feeling some modicum of the pain in the hearts of the bereaved families sitting behind him. He needed to smile rarely, if at all; he had to demonstrate, in his body language as well as his words, that he was treating the enquiry with the gravity that befitted the thousands of innocent deaths. Instead we had the tan, the gleaming teeth, the swagger. What all this communicated, of course, in a way that Blair’s highly polished words never would, was a central, shocking truth. In a modern democratic country such as ours, one man is beyond the reach of the law. Blair is untouchable, and obviously he knows it.