So Tony Blair is going to get £500,000 per year to advise JP Morgan. Not sure what on: the art of verbless sentences perhaps? I bet the Pope is impressed by his new convert. Marina Hyde, one of those newspaper writers/columnists who I hope is one of the last to be put out of a job by the rise of blogging, I think hits several nails on the head with her comparison of the Blairs with another well-known celeb couple from these shores...
The Blairs are back on stage, in a Posh'n'Becks tribute act: Finally, untrammelled by oversight, No 10's former residents are free to cash in on their name - like any other celebrity couple
Marina Hyde, The Guardian, Saturday January 12, 2008
At long last, Tony Blair has unveiled his fabled legacy. And - would you believe - it will be an actual legacy, in the most mundane sense of the word. All those years of people wondering what on earth he'd scratch about for to pass on to future generations, and it turns out the answer was "a lot of money". Then again, the most obvious place is always the last one you look, isn't it?
Quite why there has been the remotest surprise as to how Mr Blair has begun his second act is a mystery. On Thursday he announced he would be taking an estimated £500,000-a-year advisory post with the investment bank JP Morgan, and the only conceivable shock will be if he has had the confidence to get his market rate. Under his leadership, you'll recall, New Labour turned tricks for rich donors for the most paltry of sums. They took a mere £100,000 from Richard Desmond, just days after - by a dazzling coincidence - they had waved through his £125m purchase of Express Newspapers. And, as Desmond later told this newspaper: "I gave a cheque for £100,000 and they spent £113,000 or £114,000 on advertising. So I made money on the deal."
Perhaps because he hung around so many rich people, Mr Blair certainly appeared to suffer from an inferiority complex regarding his own worth or that of things in his gift, a trait which armchair psychologists also noted in his special, give-and-take relationship with the US president. He gave, Bush took.
Just memories now, as he adds the JP Morgan job to his role as the Quartet's Middle East envoy, and to his stewardship of something called the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which should delight those who simply haven't seen enough pictures of him having a kickabout in brogues and a Newcastle strip. (Indeed, with a vacancy having opened up at the football club to which he is so unconvincingly devoted, and the fans apparently hellbent on parachuting in someone with no experience at all, he should at least make the short list to replace sacked manager Sam Allardyce.)
Amusingly, in these new roles he has managed to distil the essence of Blairism more perfectly than he ever did in office. We might paraphrase his ideology as a birra cash, a birra Middle East posturing, a birra football, and a lorra lorra grins. That makes it sound far more complex than it is, but you get the idea.
Speculation abounds over the "further positions" he has yet to announce, though you'd think the former PM might need to address the star-humping aspect of his skill set, perhaps by launching his own chatshow as his predecessor Harold Wilson so horrifyingly did. (On further consideration, that wouldn't suit him at all, unless he was the only guest every week.)
But, as mentioned, none of this is surprising, and he must do something with his time. Given that these days people become party leader at about 12, their career trajectory can be seen as most analogous to that of a professional footballer, with early retirement necessitating the carving out of a new direction that, though not offering the adulation you once received, will at least keep you in Range Rover Sports or Renaissance palazzos. For erstwhile footballer Jamie Redknapp, this new direction involves dressing up platitudinous nonsense as a serious point on Sky Sports; for erstwhile leader Blair, it will involve doing much the same only on some podium in Jerusalem, or at the JP Morgan Christmas lunch.
The only thing we must be disapproving of is the vogue for likening the Blairs to the resurgent Clintons. No, their story arcs diverged a long time ago, and it is quite another famous couple upon whom our former PM and his wife appear to be modelling their second act.
Well, isn't it obvious? The trolley dash mentality, the ever-expanding portfolio, the whole his-n-hersness, American dreaminess of it all: what are the Blairs if not the Beckhams with law degrees?
How unnervingly like David and Victoria are Tony and Cherie, with the chaps' more natural charisma underpinned by the lesser-loved ladies' flinty protectionist instincts. Look at the emphasis on their very coupledom, their pashes on America, that clear belief that the USA is the land of opportunity where they will be celebrated, as opposed to sniffed at for being vulgar.
Just like the Beckhams, the Blairs have the separate autobiographies, the sports foundation, the overplayed ambassadorial roles ... even the fashion gaffes. At this rate one half-expects the planned launch of fragrances on the Beckham model - Intimately Blair for him, and Intimately Blair for her. Pending satisfactory sales, they will be followed by Intimately Blair Nightz.
The Beckhams are the ultimate private citizens with lucratively attention-seeking public lives, yet deliciously untrammelled by standards commissioners and the like. What very modern models for a second act they are, and we must long for the day on which their lives and the Blairs' finally collapse into one another, as both couples are photographed enjoying a free holiday together on the JP Morgan corporate yacht, an image so surpassingly heartwarming it will bring immediate peace to the Middle East and the wider world.
marina.hyde@guardian.co.uk
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