Knight Commander of the Order of the Garter.

What possessed the Queen, in the midst of a pandemic and an imminent cost of living crisis for her people, to devote time to considering an honour for an ex-PM, long out of office?  Who has been lobbying her?  Why has this come out of the blue?

When confronted with a mystery, follow the money.  Who is  intended to gain by this?

BlaIr has never allowed himself to be forgotten. He has a season ticket to the BBC newsroom. Whatever the topic of the hour, he is in the wings, ready at any time to pick up the microphone and remind the world that he is the fount of all wisdom.  His pathetic twin, Gordon Brown, is much the same and so is his official media liar, Campbell.   Is Blair an expert on vaccination or the corona viruses?  No, He is nevertheless eager to dispense wisdom and the BBC is flaccid enough to broadcast it.

This is the man who took Britain into 5 wars in 6 years. Warmonger is too feeble a  label for criminality of this order.

Whoever is behind this Garter award must have judged that sufficient time has passed for the British public to have forgotten the report of the Chilcot Inquiry, which totally discredited Blair. Although Afghanistan is back in the news, perhaps it was judged that Blair’s responsibility for entangling Britain in this 20-year bloodbath has been forgotten.

Because Afghanistan has come to the fore, Iraq is pushed to the background, which is helpful to Blair and those who wish to rehabilitate him.

Let’s resurrect the main Chilcot findings about the Iraq war, although Blair would rather they were lost in the mists of time. He, of course, is pleased that the British people have very short political memories.

Chilcot concluded that

*invasion of Iraq was embarked on before peaceful options had been exhausted;

*Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam, insisting that Iraq had stocks of WMD and needed only 45 minutes to deploy them. (No WMD were ever found, but Blair has never retracted his claim);

* Blair insisted on relying on his own beliefs about WMD, held “in good faith” (Do you recall that much-repeated meaningless phrase?), rather than the more nuanced judgements of the intelligence services;

* Blair pledged unqualified backing for an invasion to George W Bush 8 months before the invasion took place and before the UN weapons inspectors had finished their work;

* Such decisions were made by Blair with a limited circle of cronies, in a sort of sofa government, rather than  by full Cabinet meetings. His Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, resigned over this slipshod abandonment of constitutional government.

* Foreign Office warnings of the likely sectarian bloodbath resulting from the disruption of Iraq’s political structures, were ignored. Again, Blair considered himself expert enough;

* military preparations were inadequate, leaving our forces seriously ill-equipped, resulting in scores of avoidable casualties (You cannot have forgotten all the stories of death-trap armoured vehicles and soldiers having to buy equipment for themselves;

*No tally was kept of the collateral damage, including the appalling toll of civilian casualties.

Having set the Middle East on fire, Blair joined Bush in invading Afghanistan, following 9/11. And what a great success that has turned out to be.

Later this year we expect to see this self-aggrandising grotesque parading in velvet, ermine and feathers to collect his garter. That is unless the current petition maintains sufficient momentum to stop the charade.

Blair should be arraigned, for war crimes, before the International Criminal Court.

Keir Starmer rushed to congratulate Blair, a man who has brought the Labour Party and the nation into disrepute.