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The Killings Of Tony Blair (2016) reviewed by Martin Summers and Tony Gosling on BCfm Politics show

2,717 views · Published 19 August 2016 · 7:51 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: Public Enquiry · 2016 · News & Politics

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George Galloway presents a surprisingly sober doc about our former PM's dirty dealings
Just the name ‘George Galloway’ – this doc’s presenter and co-writer – will have some vowing to go nowhere near this lively character assassination of Tony Blair. But anyone expecting wall-to-wall ranting and raving might be surprised by it’s relative sobriety. 

Yes, Galloway’s disdain for Blair is blindingly obvious, and some of Galloway’s language (banging on about the ‘Blair rich project’) and posturing (ringing the doorbell of Blair’s Mayfair office like a slimmer Michael Moore in a fedora) are grating. But this Kickstarter-funded film doesn’t need to pile on the hysteria to remind us how, in Galloway’s words, Blair masterminded three ‘killings’: he killed thousands in Iraq; he killed the Labour Party; and he continues to make a killing in his post-Prime Ministerial life as a globetrotting speaker and political consultant. 

It’s only because the Iraq story is so familiar, especially post-Chilcot, that the central section devoted to that war feels like well-trodden territory. But that still doesn’t make it any less commanding or essential, and any reminder that Coalition forces inflicted phosphorus and depleted uranium on Iraqi civilians is as welcome as it is ugly. Galloway’s interviewees (none of them supporters of Blair; this is just not that sort of film) are a diverse bunch and include newly-crowned Tory Cabinet member David Davis, writer Will Self, former New Labour minister Clare Short and even Cherie Blair’s half-sister Lauren Booth, who we must assume is off the Blairs’ Christmas card list. 

The chapter dedicated to Blair’s international dealings since leaving office in 2007 is beyond distressing: if you need a nauseating reminder of why so many Brits feel alienated from the political centre, here it is.
http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-killing-of-tony-blair

At the end of this evisceration of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, its narrator and producer George Galloway calls Blair “a mere symptom of the west’s wider malaise – an economic system run by and for the super-rich”.

Blair may be just a “symptom”, but that doesn’t stop Galloway from holding him personally responsible for the “near killing of the Labour party”, the “killing of Iraq” and for making a “huge financial killing” since he left office. Galloway even blames him for the emergence of Isis.

To say Blair emerges badly from this crowdfunded documentary would be an understatement. Galloway’s self-set remit stretches far further than that of the recent Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War. Blair is portrayed as a money-grubbing war criminal, a pariah who has left misery in his wake wherever he has gone.

tony-blair.jpg

One of the weaknesses here is that there is nobody to argue Blair’s case. When Galloway comes knocking at the door of the Blair offices in Mayfair asking for an interview with his subject, the terrified receptionist hangs up and won’t come to the door. This isn’t remotely a balanced film, but it is a compelling one. 

In making his case, Galloway has assembled a formidable list of witnesses for the prosecution. There are former ambassadors, Tory and Labour politicians, newspaper columnists, novelists, intelligence experts and human rights lawyers. Stephen Fry has his say too. We are taken through Blair’s property interests (31 UK homes worth £25m); we are briefed on his holding companies Windrush Ventures and on his relationships with banks and oil companies; we are told about the jaw dropping amounts he is paid for his consultancy work for some very unsavoury regimes. Alongside the axe-grinding and settling of scores, many interviewees seem genuinely dismayed that such a popular politician, in whom so much hope was once vested, is now seemingly so devoted to the pursuit of making money.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/the-killing-of-tony-blair-film-review-george-galloway-clare-short-stephen-fry-citizen-kane-iraq-war-a7155326.html

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