by Dipesh Gadher
TONY BLAIR has admitted that his Christianity played a “hugely important” role during his premiership but he was forced to play down his religious conviction for fear of being seen by the public as “a nutter”.
In his most frank television interview about his religious beliefs, Blair confesses he would have found it difficult to do the job of prime minister had he not been able to draw on his faith.
The admission confirms why Alastair Campbell, then Blair’s director of communications, was so wary of the prime minister mentioning religion. “We don’t do God,” he once said.
In a documentary to be broadcast on BBC1 next Sunday, Campbell now says of his former boss: “Well, he does do God – in quite a big way.”
The former spin doctor reveals that Christianity was so important to Blair that “wherever you were in the world on a Sunday you had to find a church”.
In The Blair Years, the former prime minister, who is expected to convert to Roman Catholicism soon, compares the differing attitude to religion in British politics with that in America.
“It’s difficult to talk about religious faith in our political system,” he says. “If you are in the American political system or others then you can talk about religious faith and people say ‘Yes, that’s fair enough’ and it is something they respond to quite naturally. You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter. They sort of [think] you maybe go off and sit in the corner and commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say, ‘Right, I’ve been told the answer and that’s it’.”
Blair once tersely denied that he prayed with President George W Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, although Bush said his decision to go to war was “a mission from God”.
During next week’s programme, Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, describes Blair as “an almost messianic politician”, and Peter Mandelson, the former Northern Ireland secretary, claims Blair takes a Bible with him everywhere and reads it before going to bed.
Blair says: “The reason that Alastair, my press secretary, has said ‘We don’t do God’ was not because he is opposed to religious faith, but because you always get into trouble talking about it. So, anyway, here we are talking about it.”
He continues: “I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong in having religious conviction – on the contrary, I think it is a strength for people . . . You can’t have a religious faith and it be an insignificant aspect because it’s profound about you and about you as a human being . . . If I am honest about it, yes, of course, it was hugely important.”
Policy aides, however, were keen to hide Blair’s religious fervour. He was told to leave out the phrase “God bless you” at the end of a speech on the eve of hostilities in Iraq, and one aide even went as far as trying to ensure that Blair was not photographed next to a cross during an Easter procession.
In one of his final acts while prime minister, Blair met Pope Benedict XVI and is believed to have told him of his determination to leave the Anglican church and convert to the faith of his wife Cherie.
Earlier this month, The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper, claimed that Blair would be received into his new church “within weeks” in a mass at the private chapel of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster. Blair, whose four children are all Catholics, previously attended private masses at Downing Street led by Father Michael Seed, a prominent Westminster priest.
In the BBC documentary, Blair takes credit for the “people’s princess” epithet given to Princess Diana after her death. Until now, the phrase was thought to have been coined by Campbell. But Blair says: “I knew at a moment like that, people wanted it said.”
He also reveals that friends thought he was “completely nuts” for trying to achieve peace in Northern Ireland and admits it was “totally unfair” to sack Mandelson from the cabinet for a second time over the Hinduja passport affair.
“Did he do something in fundamental terms that was wrong?” asks Blair. “No, he didn’t.”
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