Opinion of Tony Blair

[Oakvale]

Obvious FF. Prevented thousands upon thousands of deaths in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and, yes, in Iraq, and led one of the better governments in British history, white elephant architectural projects aside. The attempts to reduce him to a Bush puppet or whatever are as silly today as they would have been in 1999, when Bush was idling away the months half-governing Texas and Blair was publicly equating Saddam Hussein and Milosevic.

A little closer to home is the fairly undeniable fact that Blair, due to sheer tenacity and an impressive ability to toe a line between negotiating with republicans and not overtly outraging (most of) the unionists, deserves a huge share of the credit for the Good Friday Agreement.