Blair launches his faith foundation

Tony Blair, now a Roman Catholic, is still, to my mind, a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character. That may sound terribly uncharitable and even downright unChristian, but I do think he has a few "issues" to confront. As an Anglican, apparently of the High Church tendency, he never really gave much support to Catholic issues. His ambivalence on homosexuality, abortion, and general moral matters seemed paramount in the New Labour pantheon. His wife, Cherie, and his children are all Roman Catholics. However, Blair thought it inappropriate to convert to Rome whilst Prime Minister. I cannot think why. Maybe he was under excruciating pressure from the secularists in the party, who are a bedevilment of control freakery. Maybe he felt the British public would rise up against him with Cromwellian fervour, seeking his head on a plate. I may find his politics unsavoury, but I do think Blair has his moral compass in the right direction. He's just a bit hazy with the pointing skills.

His new organisation is simply styled The Tony Blair Faith Foundation. It has three aims - to promote faith as a force for good, improve awareness between religions and tackle poverty and war. The last one is a bit hard to take. For those of us steadfastly opposed to the War in Iraq, both on the right and left of politics, this can only be taken seriously if he apologises for usurping international law with dodgy dossiers and fake facts. Incidentally, John McCain was talking recently of his understanding that every intelligence agency believed Saddam Hussein had WMD. If McCain had bothered to contact the Swedish embassy in Baghdad at the time, he'd know this was nonsense. It suited all concerned in the stoking up of the battle cry to believe such stuff. Regime change had never been a legitimate reason for declaring or for waging war. Tony Blair was sailing very close to the wind indeed!

Tackling poverty? He could take on the generals in Rangoon for a start. They seem quite at home with suffering and destitution and that was before the present calamity. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's thugs are dragging Christians from the very altar rails of their churches. Some Catholic Mugabe has turned out to be! No regime change here. Just platitudes and pleasantries.

I wish Tony Blair well in his endeavours. All of us who profess the Faith would support such laudable action. Maybe he has had a Road to Damascus vision of how to confront the ills of society. It's just a pity that he gave us ten years of New Labour government, a lot of which was at odds with Catholic thinking. A more public admission of previous policy errors would give a lot of credence to his current ambitions.