Why Blair Liked Wars

It is amazing how many on the Right are still forgiving of Blair over his wars, seeing them as the only good things that he ever did and as somehow not of a piece with the rest of his record.

Blair liked wars because they cost taxpayers vast sums of money. You might argue that the taxpayers should simply have been able to keep that money. Or you might argue that it should have been spent on fighting want, ignorance, ill health, idleness and squalor. But either way, you cannot argue for spending it on wars instead, if at all avoidable.

Blair liked wars because they are morally and socially disruptive. Everything to do with the Swinging Sixties started during the War. Just ask anyone of that generation. My late father always made that point in the Eighties, when Margaret Thatcher was on about the Sixties: she was right, but it really all went back to the War, when there was an epidemic of venereal disease, when London's and other cities' parks were turned on VE Night into giant outdoor orgies worthy of (indeed, surpassing) anything to come in the summer of 1968, and so much else besides.

Blair liked wars because he believed in making the world anew to some academic blueprint, or in his case to its vulgarisation for consumption by the uncultured likes of him.

And Blair liked wars because they create new enemies and entrench or embitter old ones, thus creating future threats, which lead to further expensive, morally and socially disruptive, make-the-world-anew wars.

Sometimes a war is inescapable, such as when our territory is invaded. But we are neither fighting nor facing any such war today. Nor were we at any point in Tony Blair's Premiership. Indeed, we have not been since 1982.