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Tony Blair's decision to openly court Rupert Murdoch to win power and ensure favorable coverage during his decade-long tenure as British prime minister will come under scrutiny when he faces a media inquiry on Monday. The inquiry, ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron after Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid admitted hacking phones, has tarnished Britain's elite by laying bare the collusion between politicians, the police and the media. Blair kicks off an important week at the Leveson inquiry by answering questions about his often obsessive media management which included courting Murdoch. The inquiry has so far focused...

Tony Blair has disclosed that he once wanted to end an address to the nation with the words “God bless Britain”. However, the former Prime Minister said his suggestion provoked such strong concern from civil servants that he was forced to drop the idea. Mr Blair said he had intended to echo the traditional closing remark of Presidents in the United States, who typically sign-off television broadcasts by saying, “God Bless America”. For much of his time in office, Mr Blair was accused of adopting a “presidential” style of leadership, and became close to former American presidents Bill Clinton and...

Exclusive: In joint interview, Tony Blair refuses to comment on Liberian president's remarks supporting anti-gay lawsThe Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are." In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve." Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been...

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism in 2007, is backing the government's plan to legalize same-sex marriage before 2015, which has drawn sharp criticism from leaders of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. U.K.'s The Independent on Sunday reported it found that Blair, a British Labour Party politician, had told his friends that he "strongly supports the Prime Minister's proposal" to enact a new law to make gay marriage legal. The government of Prime Minister David Cameron, led by his Conservative Party in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, announced their plan last...

Tony Blair calls for regime change in Iran and Syria as he blames Tehran for prolonging the conflict in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. In an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the former prime minister warns that the Middle East would be "very, very badly" destabilised if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

Former British Prime MInister Tony Blair has made an impassioned defence of his close ties with the Gaddafi regime and confirmed that he had tried to persuade the Libyan leader to give up power after the start of the revolt against his regime. Mr Blair said he had no regrets about setting aside decades of hostility between Britain and Libya and holding out an olive branch in 2004. In return, Col Gaddafi agreed to give up his programme of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "No," he said in an interview with the Reuters news agency to mark the tenth anniversary...

The former British prime minister’s family member has previously sailed illegally to Gaza on a flotilla boat. She joined an anti-Israel rally in London Trafalgar’s Square, where another protest today (Sunday) may be the last as the mayor London vows to crack down on the incitement as the date for the next Olympics approaches. "The Mayor believes that intolerance of our fellow citizens and hate crimes against specific communities are totally unacceptable, particularly in a city like London and especially in 2012 when the eyes of the world will be on the capital,” said a spokesman for Mayor Boris Johnson,...

Blair: 'Riots Not Caused By Broken Society' 11:00pm UK, Saturday August 20, 2011 Peter Spencer, political correspondent Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has weighed into the debate over this summer's rioting, accusing David Cameron, Ed Miliband and his successor as Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown of not properly understanding and addressing the underlying causes. Writing in the Observer, he says suggestions that what happened shows Britain is in moral decline are nonsense. "The big cause is the group of alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of...

Tony Blair uses his new book to expose Gordon Brown as a manipulative figure who lost a winnable election by abandoning the principles of New Labour. The former prime minister’s memoir discloses that a “maddening” Mr Brown effectively blackmailed him while he was in No 10. He suspects the then chancellor of orchestrating the investigation into the cash-for-honours scandal. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair at a Labour Party rally The pressure on Mr Blair to step aside became so great that he admits he may have become reliant on alcohol as he faced coup attempts from Mr Brown’s supporters. He...

LONDON : The world is overestimating the dangers of global terrorism, especially when compared with a possible greater threat posed by environmental risks, former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Sunday. "I think we still overestimate the danger of terror," Blix told BBC television. "There are other things that are of equal, if not greater, magnitude, like the environmental global risks," he said without being more specific. Blix was speaking after British Prime Minister Tony Blair had given an impassioned defence of his decision to back the US-led war against Iraq given the threat of global terrorism. In one...

Bush's second coup aids election race By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 21 December 2003 The announcement by Libya has given President Bush his second coup in a week and delivered a resounding blow against Howard Dean, the man most likely to be his challenger in next year's presidential race. When Saddam Hussein was dragged from a hole near Tikrit last weekend, Mr Dean pointed out that his capture had done nothing to make America safer - an analysis shared by many observers. Just six days later, however, the White House has been able to respond with what was presented as...

Peter and Hazelmary Bull with supporters. January 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It is illegal in Britain for guesthouse keepers to refuse to allow two homosexual men to share a bed in their homes, according to a ruling by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in a test case sponsored by the country’s leading homosexualist lobby group. Peter and Hazelmary Bull, devout Christians who own a guesthouse in a popular holiday resort in Cornwall, were ordered by the EHRC to pay a fine of £1,800 each to Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, two men who had booked a room in...

A high-profile conversion begs the question: what are these women seeking that they could not find under liberty? Very recently Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, journalist Lauren Booth, embraced the faith after what she described as a “holy experience” in Iran. Based on what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has described as the brutal, totalistic character of Islam, one is obliged to ask why any modern career woman would opt for conversion to the Muslim religion. After all, as so many autobiographies of Muslim women note, the religion bans anything that is fun (“haram,” or forbidden). No chewing of gum, no bicycle riding, no...

London // The sister-in-law of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is now the UN special envoy in the Middle East, has converted to Islam. Lauren Booth, the half-sister of Mr Blair's wife Cherie, said she had converted from Christianity after a "holy experience" six weeks ago following a visit to the shrine of Fatima al Masumeh in Qom, Iran. Ms Booth, 43, a journalist who works for Press TV, the Iranian English-language broadcaster, announced her conversion at the Global Peace and Unity Event in London on Saturday. To cheers, she told the meeting: "What I wanted to...

It was only a matter of time. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a dose of “spiritual morphine” in Iran, although she talks about the world’s fastest-growing religion like it was the latest version of the Atkins Diet: “Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she said. And she’s even refused to rule out wearing a burka: “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?” Politically Booth has always struck me...

Recently UK Soccer Star Marlon King had joined the enemy, and converted to Islam. To make matters worse, Lauren Booth who is sister in law of Tony Blair, has also converted to Islam. Booth who recently had some kind of Islamic “awakening”, had converted after protesting against Israel with a million hatemongers in Iran.

Coming nine years into the world created by 9/11, his words are haunt ing. And timely. "The problem is not simply the extremism. And I think one of the mistakes is in thinking that if you deal with the extremists, you deal with the problem." Ideally, such words of wisdom would come from President Obama. But they didn't, because Obama remains stuck in the feel-good myth that the problem is limited to a "tiny minority" of Muslims distorting Islam and that America must prove it is worthy of trust. We therefore turn to Tony Blair for the clear-eyed view that...

WASHINGTON -- I like Tony Blair. The left always is lecturing us conservatives on moderation. It would do us good, the left says. If only we were moderate, we might win the fall elections. Yet we are likely to go for people like Joe Miller in Alaska and the dreaded Sharron Angle in Nevada, and we are going to get clobbered -- or at least not win as thumpingly as expected. For some reason, this troubles sages E.J. Dionne and Sam Tanenhaus. I sense they cry crocodile tears, but maybe I have misperceived them. Maybe they really wish us the...

He could never run for the White House because he was not born in the United States but, Tony Blair could have been the ideal American candidate. t was fitting that Tony Blair should have been in Washington taking part in the Middle East summit when his startlingly candid memoir A Journey was published in the USA. While he left office as a derided and diminished figure in Britain, on this side of the Pond he was still treated with near reverence by Left and Right. Over the past decade, the easiest way of bonding with an American of any...

Defining 'New Labour,' defending the Iraq war, getting to know George W. Bush. It is now painfully obvious that Tony Blair—the man who led Britain for a decade, who transformed the country's dully orthodox Labour Party into dashing, moderate "New Labour," who faced down parliamentary opponents with brio and eloquently defended the invasion of Iraq—is no longer much of a hero in his own country. Indeed, he is intensely disliked, not least for his loyalty to the "freedom agenda"—the idea that, after 9/11, Western democracies had a duty to face down tyrants like Saddam Hussein and end the threat they...