Justice for Tony Blair!

Thanks to Theo for drawing my attention to the 'Justice for Tony Blair' blog, which aims to end the practice of 'Blair-bating', which sort of like bear-bating and is defined as 'attacks on our former Prime Minister by the dogs of anti-war. Less metaphorically it can be defined as the constant incitement of hatred against Tony Blair for taking us to war in Iraq.'

The petition argues that "Parts of the media, the anti-Iraq war lobby and some families of soldiers killed in the war are already calling for this to be a TRIAL of Tony Blair with a view to gathering as much evidence as possible to send him to The Hague for "war crimes"...The organisers of this petition do not belong to any one party but are united in our belief in "innocent until proved guilty" and that Mr Blair should be given a fair hearing at the inquiry. To this end we demand that if the Blair-baiters want to turn the inquiry into a trial they should follow the same rules as a trial and not be allowed to make any public comment on the proceedings until they are over."

The argument 'if you think someone has committed war crimes, you have a duty not to make any public comment to that effect' is at least a novel rationalisation for demanding that opinions that you don't like should be silenced.

I am pleased to see that influential journalists John Rentoul and Stephen Pollard as well as Tom Harris have signed the petition. But it's sad to see that Iraq war supporters and Blairites like David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Paul 'the thinker' Richards, Martin Kettle, Michael Gove and Hazel Blears have yet to commit their support. I would encourage readers to contact these fair weather friends and ask them to commit publicly their support for justice for Tony Blair.