Why do we take political memoirs at face value?

Lots of people are in a bit of a tizz this morning because of what Tony Blair has said in his autobiography. I don't understand why; after all why should we believe he is telling the unvarnished truth? Do Tony Blair's memoirs report what actually happened, what he would have liked to have happened (knowing what he knows now), what he wants to believe happened (Tony Blair being able to convince himself of most things), what he wants other people to believe happened or what he wants other people to believe he believed happened?

Just as with Alastair Campbell & Peter Mandelson's books, why should anyone believe a word that Tony Blair says? All three are proven liars, so why should their books be any more truthful?

Interestingly, will any journalists be asking Peter Mandelson why he lied to the British public when he assured us that rumours of massive arguments between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were just media tittle-tattle?


From the time that I heard of Tony Blair lying about his stowing away on a plane from Newcastle to the Bahamas when he was 14, tricky as there were no such flights at that time, I had no faith in this man. I was therefore made exceedingly angry by the way the media, especially the BBC, repeated his claims of being a pretty straight guy.

Also remember Tony Blair's involvement with Bernie Ecclestone, the Hindujas and of course 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. In the latter case, the security services told Tony Blair that intelligence about WMD was 'sporadic and patchy', 'little' and 'limited'; Tony Blair translated that to Parliament as 'extensive, detailed and authoritative'. Also remember Tony Blair writing to the Romanian government when Lakshmi Mittal was bidding to privatise the Romanian steel industry. Tony Blair wrote that 'I am particularly pleased it is a British company which is your partner.' At that time this British compnay was owned by an Indian citizen with holdings in the Dutch Antilles and of his 125,000 employees just 85 were in Britain. The fact that Laksjmi Mittal had donated £125,000 to the Labour Party is of course entirely coincidental to Tony Blair's support. We should also consider the cash for peerages affair but that would take too much time and I am running shot of bile.