Tony Blair’s recent conventional appointment to the Order of the Garter has polarised public opinion. While some argue that Blair has achieved more than recent prime ministers, others contend that Blair’s legacy is overshadowed by the aftermath of the Iraq War. In our first head-to-head piece, Hugh Jones argues against honouring the former Prime Minister, while Jonathan Heywood makes the case for Blair.

Hugh Jones

January 1st 2022, Tony Blair became a companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry in the British honours system. The Order was established in 1348 by Edward III – a king best known for costly and ill-judged military adventurism. In the intervening 662 years, the British monarch has lost their powers, bit by bit, as Britain gradually grew into a Parliamentary democracy. One of the few powers which remain in the Queen’s gift is the ability to award certain honours – including membership of the Order of the Garter – without input or oversight from the Government. The exception to this is that, by convention, former Prime Ministers are always made Knight or Lady Companions of the Order of the Garter, and this, apparently, is why Tony Blair is now Sir Tony.

This is a most undesirable state of affairs. Whether or not Blair gave us the Human Rights Act; the Freedom of Information Act; civil partnerships for gay couples; passed the Minimum Wage Act; helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement – he also made the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq; deceived the British people over WMDs; greatly reduced civil liberties in the wake of 9/11, and is held by a substantial proportion of the British public to be a war criminal. For him to be honoured in this way is a matter for public debate.

“The Queen failed in her most fundamental duty: to remain resolutely apolitical”

Public debate, however, is the sort of thing which Her Majesty is supposed to stay out of. This is the problem with the convention. In awarding Sir Tony this honour, the Queen was forced to make a politically charged decision between either letting the convention fade away, thus risking being seen as supporting the criticisms levelled at Blair, or continuing the convention of awarding this knighthood, and so risk being perceived as dismissing those criticisms. These criticisms prompted over a million Britons to sign a petition demanding the knighthood be revoked.

Almost 15 years after he resigned, the convention could in practice have been allowed to lapse without much comment. By choosing to reignite the controversy over Iraq, and New Labour in general, the Queen failed in her most fundamental duty: to remain resolutely apolitical.

More fundamentally, though, awards which are in the Queen’s personal gift should not be used to reward politicians except in truly exceptional circumstances, and certainly should not be awarded by convention, because clearly sometimes it is inappropriate to award an honour. When John Bercow resigned from the Speakership of the House of Commons in 2019, he was controversially denied the peerage which would have been customary, reportedly due to allegations of bullying. Then, it was the Government - elected and accountable - who were accused of using honours as a political tool. The Queen is an unelected, ceremonial figurehead, whose neutrality is essential if she is to fulfil her role as head of state. She must not, therefore, be forced to publically judge the worthiness of politicians. That royal prerogative was yielded to the electorate long ago.

Jonathan Heywood

Obviously, Tony Blair deserves a knighthood. Putting his knighthood into context - former Prime Ministers are given a place in the Order of the Garter by honour of the Queen when a place opens up. To say the Queen has chosen to give Blair this knighthood is nonsense; he received it because he was Prime Minister, just as Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, and Major were. I’m not sure it’s right to honour Prime Ministers in this neo-medieval way, especially when, like Thatcher, they are often actively destructive; but to say the Queen should uniquely deny this honour to Blair is to say that Blair was so exceptionally worse than previous Prime Ministers – such as Thatcher and Major – that it merits the Palace and the Civil Service acting politically to deny him.

That would be insane. Blair was a vastly better Prime Minister than Thatcher or Major, and one who made Britain better. Blair’s government created the minimum wage. It hugely reinvested in the NHS, so much so that by the end of his term 98.5% of A&E patients were seen within 4 hours, compared to 84.4% in 2019. SureStart, created during the Blair government to provide universal pre-school childcare and education (similar to the National Education Service at the heart of Labour’s 2019 manifesto), set up 3,500 centres in Britain’s most deprived communities, transforming the prospects of these children. Blair personally brokered an almost unimaginably successful and long-lasting peace in Northern Ireland. In foreign policy, Blair prevented a potential genocide in Kosovo by Serbia, and is beloved to such an extent there that there is a generation of children named ‘Tonibler’. Blair repealed Section 28, created Civil Partnerships for LGBT couples, and enacted the Human Rights Act.

“If you concede the existence of knighthoods, Tony Blair clearly deserves one”

I, like almost everyone in the modern Labour Party, believe that Blair did not go far enough in transforming society, and made serious mistakes. In particular, the removal of Saddam Hussein, bloodthirsty dictator he may have been, was not worth the humanitarian disaster that unfolded. The expansion of Private Finance Initiatives and privatisation within the public sector was similarly misguided. But as much as one may disagree with many significant decisions he made, that must not make us forget that he made Britain fairer, more just, wealthier, and more progressive – albeit, tragically, for a short time, because of the hugely destructive Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties. Yet sadly, factionalism with the Labour Party has made Blair a target by people who want the very same things he made big steps to achieving.

If opponents of Blair made an argument about abolishing the honours system, they might have a point – though I’m undecided on it. But people are not debating that – rather, the calls online are for making a one-off intervention for no reason other than to embarrass someone they dislike. This is silly. If you concede the existence of knighthoods, Tony Blair clearly deserves one.

More importantly, I think it’s an abject embarrassment that Labour members are in yet another internal spat over a completely meaningless issue in which neither side has any chance of changing anything. This is a time when we should be unifying around an increasingly realistic prospect of government – rather than focusing on the past, Labour should look towards the new dawn yet to break.