Summary
Here are the main points from the Tony Blair hearing.
- Tony Blair said his government’s decision to bring Libya “in from the cold” may have prevented chemical weapons falling into the hands of Islamic State (Isis). The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to abandon his chemical and nuclear weapons programme as part of the process that saw Britain starting to repair relations with Libya. Blair said this had important consequences today.
Otherwise, we would have had a situation where Libya was continuing to sponsor terrorism, was continuing to develop chemical and nuclear weapons and would have remained isolated in the international community.
I think it is important that we brought them in from the cold, as it were, and important also in today’s context because I think - particularly if we had still had the residue of that chemical weapons programme in Libya today, given the state of Libya today and given the presence of Isis there - it would have constituted a real risk, even today.
- He said Libya’s chemical and nuclear weapons programme was more extensive than people thought.
- He said the subsequent cooperation that Britain had from Libya in the fight against terrorism was “invaluable”.
- He rejected suggestions that it would have been better to leave Gaddafi in power.
You often find people saying look wouldn’t it just be better if we dealt with the dictators? At least when we had Assad there and Saddam there and Gaddafi there, and Ben Ali there we knew what we were dealing with. I completely understand that argument, by the way. But I think what the Arab Spring shows you is that however much we may want to have dealt with these people, the populations of these countries are not going to tolerate it. In particular they are not going to tolerate a tiny group of people often unrepresentative of the majority in the country running the country.
I can tell you today obviously Libya is a real security problem, it is a security problem for us actually here. But I don’t think you can make the judgment as to whether it would be better if we had not intervened. Because you then have got to say how that would that then have played out as Gaddafi tried to cling on to power and others tried to remove him. You can look at Syria today where we didn’t intervene by the way and say that is even worse.
- He said that when he spoke to Gaddafi by phone before the 2011 Western internvention he was not trying to “save” him. He was just trying to see if a peaceful transition would be possible, he said.
- He declined to criticise David Cameron or Nicolas Sarkozy for taking military action against Gaddafi in 2011.
I know how difficult these decisions are. I am sure they did it for reasons that are perfectly well intentioned and in good faith.
- He rejected claims that he sidelined issues relating to Lockerbie and Yvonne Fletcher when he began to establish relations with Gaddafi.
- He said he had never had personal business interests in Libya.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Blunt ends by thanking Blair for coming.
Blair says he will send the committee transcripts of his calls to Gaddafi.
And that’s it. I will post a summary shortly.
Crispin Blunt goes next.
Q: Was Gaddafi rational as an actor?
That’s a very good question, says Blair. He was certainly unusual.
Blair says he does not know. Was he rational enough to realise he needed to stop aside? It is hard to judge.
But he says Gaddafi had a clear view that Islamism was a severe threat, and that the Wst did not understand it.
(Blair implies that Gaddafi was right about this, but he does not say so explicitly.)
He says on other issues, like the Israel/Palestine conflict, Gaddafi’s views were much more extreme.
It has hard to judge, says Blair.
Blair says Libya’s support to the UK over terrorism was “invaluable”
Blair says Gaddafi had been shut off from the world for 30 years. He had theories on all sorts of things, he says.
He says people like Gaddafi get so isolated that they do not hear sensible arguments. The system does not expose them to those views.
And he says the engagement with Libya on terrorism was “very very important ... invaluable for our security services”.
- Blair says Libya’s support to the UK over terrorism was “invaluable”.
Andrew Rosindell goes next.
Q: Did you feel uncomfortable dealing with a man who had killed so many people? Do the ends justify the means?
Blair says he thought the ends did justify the means.
He knew Gaddafi’s record.
But the gains were significant. Not only did Gaddafi give up his chemical and nuclear weapons programme, he also cooperated with the UK in tackling terrorism.
He says Libya first made contact in March 2003. After that there were 10 steps before Blair went to see Gaddafi. And issues like Lockerbie and Yvonne Fletcher were in his mind and part of the conversation.
He says he thought this was worth it.
That does not mean that he approved of Gaddafi’s record.
He says he also had the hope that Gaddafi would engage in political and economic reform. But that hope was probably “misplaced”, he says.
Crispin Blunt goes next.
He suggests that, if Blair had been prime minister in 2011, he would have taken more notice of the concerns raised about the security services about intervention.
Blair says the committee will have its own report. He will not second-guess the decisions that Cameron took.
Q: With all your experience, were you “weeping into your pillow at night” at the government’s unwillingness to think this through?
Blair says if he had been there it would have been different because of his relationship with Gaddafi. If he could have got an agreed way out, that would have been preferable. But he understands why Cameron decided that was not possible.
Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’ international editor, is not impressed by the hearing so far.
Watching Select Committee interview #Blair re #Libya. No hard questions. Nothing on rendition. Most not even on his policies in office.
— Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) December 11, 2015
Do not understand why MPs on Select Committee asking #Blair on his views on post 2011 #Libya, not on his policies in office eg rendition.
— Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) December 11, 2015
The answer to Hilsum’s question probably lies in the inquiry’s terms of reference.
Blair says in north Africa a mix of bad politics and abuse of religion has been a problem for a long time.
And where there are Islamist extremist, the problem is not just that they are malicious. The threat to order is much greater, he suggests.
John Baron goes next.
Q: Once military action started, did you think it went beyond the terms on UN security council 1973, which did not authorise regime change?
Blair says sometimes people agree UN resolutions with different agendas. Once you engage in military action to protect people from a regime, the line between that and regime change is pretty thin.
He won’t say that he thinks the terms of UNSCR 1973 were exceeded.
He says the committee can make up its mind about this.
He will not criticise Cameron over this, he says.
Q: Do you think the military action exceeded UNSCR 1973?
“I don’t think it did,’ says Blair.
- Blair says he does not think 2011 intervention exceeded terms of UN security council resolution.
Updated
Andrew Rosindell goes next.
Q: Was it your initiative to contact Gaddafi? Or did they contact you?
Blair says he is pretty sure it was his decision, but he will check.
He says Gaddafi wanted him to explain Libya’s case, which was that Gaddafi was not attacking his population.
Q: Was Cameron positive about this?
Blair says he was content for this conversation to happen. But he was not making any commitments.
Stephen Gethins goes next.
Q: You said dealings with Assad were more difficult?
Blair says he does not know whether Assad could have been persuaded to stand down.
Crispin Blunt goes next.
Q: Those phone calls - were they your only intervention?
Yes, says Blair.
It became clear Gaddafi would not go.
Q: Did you speak to other members of his family, or to members of the regime?
No, says Blair.
Once it became clear that Gaddafi would not go, and that there would be conflict, he did not want to get involved.
Blair reveals details of his 2011 call with Gaddafi
Stephen Gethins goes next.
Q: Can you tell us about your conversation with Gaddafi in February 2011.
Blair says this has been presented as him trying to save Gaddafi.
It was not that, he says.
He repeatedly said that the violence had to stop, and that Gaddafi had to leave the country.
My concern was not for his safety. My concern was to get him out of the situation so that a peaceful transition could take place.
Q: Were you doing this on behalf of someone, or as a private citizen?
As a private citizen, says Blair. It was because he knew Gaddafi, and wanted to avoid violence.
Q: Was there just one call?
Blair says he spoke to Gaddafi two or three times, in the space of 24 hours.
Q: Did you clear it with anyone?
Blair says he cleared it with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state. And he spoke to David Cameron too. They were non-committal.
Andrew Rosindell goes next.
Q: Do you think Cameron and Sarkozy wanted a transition?
Blair says he cannot speak for those two. He does not know what they thought. But he believes they took the decision in good faith, assuming there was no alternative.
Q: So, if you had been in Number 10, would you have handled it differently.
Blair says, because of his relationship with Gaddafi, he would have tried “very hard” to get Gaddafi to stand down. And because of his experience in Iraq too. But he cannot say whether or not that would have been successful.
Some of these people can be hard to remove, he says.
Q: Do you think the bombing campaign in 2011 was right?
Blair says, once it was clear that there was not going to be a transition, there was no option but to get Gaddafi out.
But it would have been better to have had a transition, he says.
Blair says evolution is better than revolution, if you can get it.
And Islamism, especially in its extreme of fundamentalist version, is going to be a problem, he says.
Blair says he does not accept the claim that having dictators in place guarantees stability.
It does not, he says, because people do not accept living under regimes like this.
John Baron goes next.
Q: Do you think Gaddafi was really planning a massacre at Benghazi before the West intervenes? There are claims he only wanted to go after “the bearded ones”, Islamist extremists.
Blair says he does not know.
He does know that Gaddafi was worried about fundamentalists.
He says he accepts the reason for intervention was the one given at the time; that the government thought there would be a massacre of innocent people.
But Blair says he thought it worth seeing if Gaddafi could be made to step down.
Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative, asks why different arrangements applied for the compensation paid to victims of semtex supplied by Libya to the IRA.
Blair says a compensation regime was put in place by the previous government.
Blair says he thinks there is evidence that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, learnt lessons from seeing Gaddafi give up his WMD and then being deposed by the West.
Stephen Gethins goes next again.
Q: If Gaddafi had had WMD in 2011, do you think he would have used them.
Blair says he does not know. He hopes not.
But the bigger danger was those weapons getting into the hands of extremists. Gaddafi had 3,500 chemical airborne bombs, and 23 tonnes of mustard gas.
Q: In 2007 the CPS had evidence that two people should be prosecuted over the death of Yvonne Fletcher. But the Met did not go to Libya to pursue those cases.
Blair says the relationship did not change in 2007. Britain has been working with Libya for years then.
He does not know why the Met did not take the case forward in 2007.
But the Met had already interviewed people. They had interviewed around 60 people. That did not happen under previous governments.
He says his government “did not hold back on Lockerbie or on Yvonne Fletcher”.
John Baron, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: We are trying to work out why relations with Gaddafi changed so quickly. Was there any understanding that issues like justice for Yvonne Fletcher would be sidelined in the interests of commerce?
No, says Blair.
He says Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984.
Compensation was secured under Blair’s government.
Lockerbie happened in 1988. And compensation was secured under Blair’s government.
We did not set any of these issues aside.
But the government thought there was a “huge prize” in turning Libya from a country sponsoring terrorism to one helping to fight it, he says.
And this process helped end Gaddafi’s weapons programme. He says Britain discovered that Gaddafi’s chemical and nuclear programme was much more extensive than people throught.
- Blair says Gaddafi’s chemical and nuclear programme was much more extensive than people thought.
The SNP MP Stephen Gethins goes next.
Q: Is Libya in a better or worse state because of the 2011 intervention?
Blair says you cannot say. You have to consider the counter-factual, he says. If the West had not intervened, the population of Gaddafi would have wanted to get rid of him anyway.
He says he does not think you can make the judgment that it would have been better not to intervene.
Look at Syria, he says. The West did not intervene, and the situation is even worse.
Blair says the situation changed after 9/11.
In Kosovo (before 9/11), once the fighting was over, the West was able to help Kosovo an the other Balkan countries.
But when you are dealing with countries with radical Islamist forces trying to stop what you are doing, it is far more difficult.
However much planning you are doing, you also have to do the fighting.
Security becomes key, he says.
No amount of planning will make up for the fact that you don’t have security.
If you look at the lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, they show how extremists fill the gap when there is a power vacuum.
Q: Do you think all diplomatic options had been exhausted before the 2011 intervention?
Blair says he thought Gaddafi had to go. But it was worth seeing if he could be made to go voluntarily.
He says he made an attempt at the time, as people know.
Q: I have been told that British policy was to bet everything on Saif Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi’s son. Is that true?
Blair says Saif was the obvious successor, so it made sense to focus on him.
But after the Arab Spring it became clear the the children of the dictator would never take over.
He says he met Saif once or twice himself.
If the Arab Spring had not happened, there may have been a more peaceful transition in the country.
"Who knows what would have happened if the Arab Spring had not erupted. It may have been a more peaceful evolution," says @tonyblairoffice
— Lindsay Jane Watling (@LJWatling) December 11, 2015
Updated
Blair says he has never had business interests in Libya
Q: Those meetings before 2010 - what were they about? Were you there as Middle East envoy, or on business.
Blair says he has never had any business interests in Libya.
He was mainly there talking about Africa, but also there to talk about the Middle East, he says.
He says he was encouraging Libya to open up their economy.
The tragedy of the country is that its potential is enormous. It has “incredible assets”. It has oil, but great tourist potential too.
In the 1960s, when he was growing up, Tripoli was like Dubai is today, he says.
If Libya could get stability, it would be a fantastic country.
- Blair says he has never had business interests in Libya.
Crispin Blunt, the chair of the committee, is asking the questions.
He says Blair is reported to have made six visits to Libya between 2007, when he stood down as prime minister, and 2010.
Tony Blair is giving evidence now.
He says it was important to bring Libya “in from the cold”.
Given the presence of Islamic State (he calls it Isis) in Libya today, it would have been dangerous if the residue of Gaddafi’s WMD programme had been left there, he says.
Tony Blair does not often speak in public in the UK but in recent days he has made a series of interventions on policy issues.
At the end of last week he published a lengthy essay on his website about the need for the West to tackle extremism. Here is an extract.
That is why I say we’re confronting a spectrum not a fringe. The violent fringe grows out of the wider spectrum. It comes in many different varieties – and across the Sunni/Shia divide. Sometimes the link between various groups is tenuous; at other times it is very strong. But the point is that there is a shared way of looking at the world that has the same characteristics and has the same inimical attitude to those who do not follow that way.
This is what it has in common with the ideologies of the 20th century. It is a mono world view that is all-encompassing in an age defined by diversity and pluralism.
People can believe in this world view without being terrorists or criminals. But they share a perspective which is incompatible with the development of modern societies and peaceful co-existence. That is why the challenge is not violent extremism. It is extremism. It is not only the acts of violence; but the ideology behind them.
This is the essential bridge of understanding which we have to cross.
We keep looking for the compromise, for the ‘give and take,’ for the very Western notion of ‘let’s agree to disagree.’ This misunderstands the ideology. It isn’t one that co-exists. It is one that prevails.
At the weekend he gave an interview to the Sunday Times (paywall) promoting this argument. Here’s an extract.
Every one of [Blair’s] arguments is a riposte to the world view of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies in the Stop the War group. Blair does not just back airstrikes: he thinks the West should create “safe havens” in Syria and may have to threaten President Bashar al-Assad with “direct military action to disable” barrel bomb attacks on civilians. Most radically, he wants an international rapid reaction force to take on the jihadists wherever they seize ground. We need . . . coalitions of armed forces that can mobilise quickly to target these people wherever they try to establish a base.” He sees western air power and intelligence combining with Arab and African troops and even Chinese help.
And this week he published an article in the Spectator defending his record on domestic policy. Here’s an extract.
All wings of the Labour Party which support the notion of the Labour Party as a Party aspiring to govern, rather than as a fringe protest movement agree on the tragedy of the Labour Party’s current position. But even within that governing tendency, there is disagreement about the last Labour Government, what it stood for and what it should be proud of ...
Many – especially in today’s Labour Party – felt we lost our way in Government. I feel we found it. But I accept in the process we failed to convince enough people that the true progressives are always the modernisers, not because they discard principle but because they have the courage to adhere to it when confronted with reality.
MPs question Tony Blair about Libya
Tony Blair will be back in the Commons soon. He is giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about Libya.
The committee is holding an inquiry into Libya but its decision to invite Blair is slightly odd because mostly it is investigating British policy towards the country since David Cameron’s intervention in 2011. Blair, of course, left office in 2007.
But select committee chairs are a bit like over-eager impressarios, always keen to spice up their hearings with some box office stardust, and Blair should be an interesting witness. Although his attempts to tackle the menace of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are now widely seen as a failure, because the US and the UK invaded Iraq only to discover that Saddam Hussein did not have any, the invasion did prompt the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to dismantle his own WMD programme. He saw what was happening to Hussein and decided he did not want to suffer the same fate. Libya was a WMD success for Blair, although there are claims that has been overstated and that Libya’s WMD programme was in practice no threat to anyone.
But Blair’s willingness to move towards normalising relations with Libya was also very controversial, not least because it seemed to involve prioritising commercial interests over human rights concerns. As the Guardian has revealed, cooperation between the two countries even extended to the Libyan and British security services working together in relation to the rendition of Libyan dissidents flown back to Tripoli.
The Telegraph has a preview of some of the issues that may come up at today’s hearing. Here’s an extract.
Tony Blair will be accused of allowing a trade-off between UK business interests in Libya and justice for IRA victims and families of Yvonne Fletcher when Britain restored trade links with Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime a decade ago.
The former Labour Prime Minister will be pressed by MPs in public for the first time about whether the government agreed to not to press for British victims of Gaddafi’s regime in return for trade deals, after the Gaddafi regime renounced terrorism in 2003,
Two weeks ago, Sir Vincent Fean, a former British ambassador to Tripoli, said that a decision was taken by Mr Blair’s administration “not to take up the cudgels on behalf of the victims directly” after relations were restored.
Sir Vincent said that he was involved in efforts to secure justice for the family of WPc Fletcher -who was gunned down outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 - and the relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing.
Updated
Nigel Farage's LBC phone-in - Summary
Here are the main points from the Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s LBC phone-in.
- Farage said that calls to ban Donald Trump from the UK over his call for Muslims to be banned from entering the US was a “massive over-reaction”.
Do I think people have overreacted? Yes, I do think people have overreacted, which does not mean I support the tone of everything Donald Trump has said, because I don’t ... Love him or hate him, Trump is now part of the democratic process in the West.
- He said that he did not support Trump’s comments, but he confirmed that he favoured giving preferential treatment to Syrian Christians when accepting refugees. That was because Christians faced particular persecution in the region, he said.
- He said that visiting Oldham reminded him of Belfast because communities were so segregated. In the constituency white Britons and Asian Britons were living separate lives, he said.
- He defended the boxer Tyson Fury’s decision to express his views about women, homosexuality and abortion.
Farage on Tyson Fury: ppl shld be able to have their views. There's an attempt to shut him. Get down to the bookies because he'll win SPOTY.
— Theo Usherwood (@theousherwood) December 11, 2015
Fury is an evangelical Christian. We've big religious communities who hold strong views, we've got to stop hounding these people - Farage.
— Theo Usherwood (@theousherwood) December 11, 2015
On the Today programme this morning the Labour MP Emma Reynolds urged Jeremy Corbyn to rethink his decision to attend the Stop the War Coalition’s Christmas party this evening. She said the group was “more anti-West than anti-war”.
They blamed Paris for reaping the whirlwind of Western intervention after the recent terrorist attacks, they compared Isil/Daesh with the international brigades who fought fascism in 1930s Spain and they have failed to condemn Russia for its invasion and occupation of Ukraine and Georgia.
I don’t think these are views that are based on the values of internationalism and solidarity of the Labour Party and I hope my party leader will distance himself from this organisation and pull out of the dinner tonight.
Stop the War’s Chris Nineham said the group’s leadership had “distanced themselves” from the blog posts that Reynolds was referring to about the Paris attacks and making the international brigade comparison. He added:
We need to move on from what are essentially tittle tattle and smears. These were two blog posts that have been removed.
“We are the builders,” George Osborne, the chancellor, claimed in his speech to the Conservative party conference. In the light of last night’s non-decision about Heathrow, which goes back on a commitment David Cameron gave to settle the issue before the end of the year, an alternative motto, “We are the ditherers”, might be more appropriate.
Earlier Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, was on the Today programme trying to defend the government’s stance. Here are the key points.
- McLoughlin denied that David Cameron had broken his promise to make a decision on Heathrow by the end of the year. Asked about this, he replied:
Yes, and there is a decision that we have accepted what the report has said, that there needs to be extra capacity.
This claim was so feeble that it prompted John Humphrys, the interviewer, to laugh.
- McLoughlin said that “hopefully” the government would take a final decision by next summer. This would still allow the government to ensure the new runway was ready by 2030, he said.
We will make a decision on where we are going on [additional airport capacity] hopefully in the summer of next year.
Here is my colleague Patrick Wintour’s comment on this.
Transport secretary now adds a "hopefully" to making a decision on airport expansion by next summer. Prevarication as art form.
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) December 11, 2015
- McLoughlin rejected suggestions that the government had delayed the decision because it wanted to wait until after the London mayor elections. Zac Goldsmith, the Tory MP and candidate for London mayor, has said he will resign his seat if the government chooses Heathrow, and it would suit the government to postpone this until after the May election. But McLoughlin claimed this was not a factor. He said:
I know that is what you would like to think ... But the simple fact is we have known for a very long time when the mayoral elections were going to be. So if we deliberately wanted to say we weren’t going to make this until after the mayoral elections, we would have just set the timetable for another 12 months. And we didn’t do that.
- He said the government was delaying a final decision partly because the Commons environmental audit committee said recently that the government should not back a third runway at Heathrow until certain environmental conditions have been met.
- He said all three options described as viable in the final Davies commission report - a third runway at Heathrow, extending an existing runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick - were still options. The Davies report said all three options were viable, but it recommended the Heathrow third runway as the best
This morning I will be focusing on Tony Blair giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about Libya. Here is the timetable for the day.
9am: Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, hosts his LBC Phone Farage phone-in.
10.30am: Tony Blair gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about Libya.
I will just be blogging until lunchtime and I will post a summary before I finish.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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