There is something mysterious about Tony Blair just now. Hostility towards him over the cash-for-honours investigation, Iraq and much else does not abate. In interviews, he’s constantly asked when he’s going to leave. The polls are terrible. He should be grey, worn down, despairing. Yet he seems almost perky. He ought to have given up on his “legacy”, but he doesn’t seem to have done so. It is as if he knows something we don’t.
Well, he does. There is a far-advanced, detailed plan for his life after Downing Street, which he hopes will keep him in the spotlight and save his reputation. It has been quietly worked on for 18 months and key meetings, which took place this week, will take it forward.
But what is so momentous that it has the faintest chance of blurring, if not eradicating, the appalling and bloody disaster that has been Iraq? The answer is climate change. Blair has told friends he will embark on a mission to save the world from global warming.
Some of those close to Blair have urged him to devote his time to earning huge sums of money making speeches and sitting on corporate boards. But he has decided to use his personal contacts, his reputation in the United States, his undoubted energy and his experience in compromise-broking to help bring world leaders to “Kyoto 2”, the carbon emission treaty needed to replace the partial and deeply flawed first attempt, which runs out in five years’ time.
The plan goes back to July 2005 at the Gleneagles G8 summit. There Blair spotted a chance for a new diplomatic crusade. It was obviously necessary to bring the Americans on board, and friends say the prime minister had long realised this would be a post-George W Bush project. But just as important was gaining the support of the high-emitting, fast-developing nations.
The problem is well known: the US won’t agree to anything that restricts its competitiveness while new economic powers such as China and India are leaping ahead; the latter insist they must be allowed the same freedom to develop that the West enjoyed.
Blair saw an opportunity to broker a deal. A new group, Globe, was formed, bringing together parliamentarians from the G8 countries, plus China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico. Its timetable is fairly urgent, as the replacement for Kyoto must be ready by 2010 to give a two-year run-up to implementation. As a new US president won’t be in place until 2009, it is clearly too late to wait until then to start negotiations — a potential deal needs to be ready and waiting for the new president. So Globe has been working with possible Republican and Democratic candidates and their Congressional supporters. Its lobbying is resolutely non-partisan.
On February 14, through Globe, senior congressmen met representatives from India and China. This followed work by Stephen Byers, who has been one of Blair’s key behind-the-scenes fixers, preparing the ground for him in China. Among others quietly joining Globe is the veteran diplomat Sir Michael Jay, who was Blair’s foreign office “sherpa” at Gleneagles.
Also attending the Washington meeting was John McCain, the Republican presidential hopeful, plus four chairs of key Senate committees: Joe Lieberman (homeland security), Jeff Bingaman (energy), Barbara Boxer (environment) and Joe Biden (foreign relations). Members of the Chinese Communist party’s environment and energy committees were expected, as was Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi’s son and an important player in the Indian parliament.
With a change in atmosphere in America since the mid-term elections, Blair believes the time is ripe for a new push: even such corporations as Boeing and Dupont are in discussion about future carbon allowances and tradeable quotas.
The idea is that, as soon as Blair has left office in Britain, he will begin travelling. He remains popular in the US, where he will be speaking to the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and the rest of the developing Republican and Democratic field.
So what do we make of all this? Can some diplomatic shuffling in the US on “Kyoto 2” really make up for the horror of Iraq? Can we so soon forget Blair’s close relationship with Bush, however much he publicly repeats that they disagree on climate change? And, most crucially, if the beginnings of a deal really are formed between various US, Chinese and Indian politicians, won’t it really be their show, not Blair’s? Isn’t it, in short, mere grandstanding?
Against all that, though, it is impossible not to admire Blair’s chutzÂÂpah and optimism as, amid all the failures and disappointments, he struggles to find one more epic role. If Globe acts as a smoother of relations, working among parliamentarians with an energy and speed that official conferences and contacts often lack, then it can only do good.
Blair has credit in the US that he can still cash in — and it would be fine to see him cashing it in for something other than money. The old case for Blair was that his intentions were good; it was just the results that went awry. This time, let’s not look too closely at his intentions. All that matters is the result. If he wants a cause, none is bigger. — Â