Editor – The film this week about Tony Blair was a revelation. For much of it, he seemed ordinary until the day he woke up with the idea in his mind that John Smith, leader of the Labour Party, was going to die that day. And he did.
What Blair was not conveying till that moment was his deep and very unusual sense of self. He knew that he, not Gordon Brown, should rule the party and the country.
To general surprise, Blair beat Brown for the top job. Gradually, it became clear that Blair was no ordinary politician. He had gifts we had never seen before.
The essence of it was that Blair could talk anyone round to obtain their agreement. There were four cases of this in the film this week. The most obvious was his solving the Irish problem, which had caused the deaths of thousands over many years. Hardly a day went by without a Protestant murdering a Catholic, or vice versa. At times, we may remember, many people on one side or the other would be killed by a bomb almost daily.
But Blair thought he could bring them together and talk them into an agreement. And he managed it. He had help, of course. He could talk them round also. He got President Clinton to help, among others. Clinton even fell out with him during it.
But Blair never lost his cool. He just smiled and worked his charm.
That Blair should have talked them all into signing a treaty was a brilliant achievement. Paisley and Adams even got together, had some kind of relationship, which they clearly enjoyed.
That was phenomenal.
Then there was the Kosovo problem. Slobodan Milosevich was bent on the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 innocents. Blair got it stopped and Milosevich went to jail.
There were other cases.
Blair has never made much of his gift. He just knows he has it. No one else has ever come close at bringing people together.
