Philobiblon

Tony Blair says “god will judge” his decision to go to war in Iraq.

“If you have faith about these things then you realise that judgement is made by other people. If you believe in God,it’s made by God as well.” His remarks, made in an interview to be shown on ITV’s Parkinson show tonight.

Odd, really – I thought that he had been elected by voters – the citizens and residents of Great Britain, not by a small collection of cardinals, or indeed by the “hand of God”. And since those voters elected him, you’d think he should be worrying about their verdict on his decisions – not some “inner voice”.

I’ve thought for a long time that the messianic gleam all too frequently spotted in Blair’s eyes has been a serious worry, and this only goes to prove it. Such a pity that you can’t just ban religious fanatics from politics.

He refused to accept a description of himself as a “Christian socialist” – but only because the phrase contained the “s” word. “It’s a long time since anyone used the word socialist about me,” he said.

Lovely. There’s only one problem with this. His party is still at least partly “socialist” (broadly defined), as indeed are the people who elected him, but few would regard their politics as “Christian”.

Once again the Prime Minister refused to answer when asked if he prayed for guidance before taking the decision to go to war. But given the general tenor of his remarks the conclusion that he did can hardly be avoided. So great, a key decision is made because a voice in the PM’s head told him it should be war. There are other words for that …

Blair really should leave for America. He’d be so much more at home there.
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Turning to the distinctly profane: the Guardian’s online editor todaycomplains about the quality of onlineadverts while making the interesting revelation that the Guardian Unlimited (its online arm) will break even this year. In absolute terms I doubt this means much – no doubt it depends largely on how you allocate costs – but it is nevertheless a small landmark in the maturation of the web.