Few have cashed out like Blair has since leaving 10 Downing Street, operating a dizzying, and often overlapping, web of charities, firms, and foundations that have catapulted him to the status of one of Britain’s wealthiest people. #LabourLeaks https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/the-ghoulish-post-politics-career-of-tony-blair

He’s mixed private enrichment with public service in a way that would make the Clintons blush. And he’s racked up a list of unseemly clients that Henry Kissinger would drool over. What follows is an extremely condensed history of Tony Blair’s post-prime ministerial career.

Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees and financial donations became a major issue in the 2016 presidential race. More recently, Barack Obama provoked entirely justified outrage for pocketing $400,000 from a Wall Street firm.

Tony Blair puts them all to shame.

Blair’s hostility to the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, or even any political movement marginally left of center, has to be understood in the context of the enormous wealth Blair has amassed since leaving Downing Street. #LabourLeaks

For a long time, no one knew quite what he was worth, owing partly to the inscrutable nature of his businesses. In 2012, when one accountant guessed his wealth as somewhere in the range of £30-40 million, his spokesman denied it was “anything remotely approaching” that sum.

Blair was in fact worth substantially more — £60 million as of 2015. This was due in part to a portfolio of ten properties worth £25 million including several multi-million pound manors and townhouses, one of which — a £1.13 million house for their son — they paid for in cash.

Visitors report that the Blairs “live like royalty,” with up to twenty staff members waiting on them hand and foot. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furniture for their £5.75 million country house and nearly £30,000 for a fitness pool. #LabourLeaks

He’s hung out on the superyacht of the world’s fourth-richest man, dines regularly with a billionaire media tycoon and his contact details were in the “little black book” of pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, the man whose plane was dubbed the “Lolita Express. #LabourLeaks

Blair forged a close friendship with Rupert Murdoch. The former PM tried to get his successor, Gordon Brown, to stop the investigation into the phone hacking scandal and later unofficially advised the chief of Murdoch’s UK newspaper group a week before her arrest. #LabourLeaks

The Telegraph reported “A lot of the people he socializes with are billionaires, and his lifestyle involves moving between five-star hotels and mansions around the world, always in private jets and helicopters.” #LabourLeaks

Immediately after leaving office Blair took advantage of every lucrative opportunity he could while setting up an intersecting network of private organizations that have helped further enrich him, and whose structure shields his earnings from public scrutiny. #LabourLeaks

He became an advisor for JP Morgan at £2.5 million per year. This was particularly controversial as the bank was set to profit from the war Blair had started in Iraq. The father of an Iraq veteran called it “Almost akin to taking blood money.” #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

Blair received a £4.6 million advance for his memoirs from Bertelsmann-owned Random House, a lavish sum that was also criticized by family members of soldiers who died in the war. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

Blair became the world’s highest paid public speaker. Institutions lined up to book Blair, who charged anywhere between £157,000 and £180,000 per speech on average. The waiting list was two years long. By contrast Bill Clinton was charging £100,000 per speech. #LabourLeaks

Blair was paid £300,000 by Goldman Sachs for one speech. The World Hunger Forum in Stockholm planned speech fell through when organizers couldn’t pay the £330,000 price tag he was asking for a twenty-minute of time - presumably on the subject of world hunger. #LabourLeaks

Despite making tens of millions of pounds over the years, it took until 2012 for Blair’s companies to stop the practice of hiring unpaid interns for months at a time, and that was only when the risk of investigation by the government reared its head. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

Blair’s religious foundation appeared to be swimming in money. In its first year, the foundation received $9.8 million worth of donations. A 2009 tax return for the foundation’s US branch showed that Blair had somehow raised $1.1 million by working an average of one hour a week

The staff of Blair’s sports foundation were loyalists carried over from his time as prime minister, and their compensation in the foundation’s first four months exceeded the total spent on actual charitable activities. Two of them earned more than the chief executive of Oxfam.

When he won the Save the Children legacy award in 2014, two hundred of the charity’s staff signed a letter calling the award “morally reprehensible” and demanding it be withdrawn. The CEO of its UK branch, who was a former aide to Blair, was forced to apologize. #LabourLeaks

When Israel launched its brutal war in Gaza in 2009, with a 107-to-1 ratio of Israelis to Palestinians killed, “Peace Negotiator” Tony Blair said nothing. A week after the bombing began, Brown told puzzled reporters that Blair was “on holiday at the moment”. #LabourLeaks

He was meeting Israel’s defense minister. With Gaza still smoldering, Blair received a $1 million prize from Tel Aviv University for “his exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict.”

Unsurprisingly, when Blair did do something, it appeared to largely favour the Israeli position. When Israel choked off the Gaza’s electricity supply in response to Hamas rocket attacks, even the British and US governments were critical. Blair, however, was more reticent.

Years later, when the Palestinian Authority made a bid for UN statehood, Blair warned it would be “deeply confrontational,” and then worked with the Obama administration to tempt the Palestinians away from such a move. But the proposal he created was a non-starter #LabourLeaks

A Palestinian presidential aide said that, instead of a neutral entity, he “Sounds like an Israeli diplomat''. In 2013, Blair hired an ex-Israeli intelligence officer and former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu as a private consultant, further undermining his appearance of neutrality.

Blair made two undisclosed trips to Libya on Gaddafi’s jet just as JP Morgan was trying to negotiate a multibillion-pound loan from Libya. Blair claimed it wasn’t a business trip, but emails showed JP Morgan’s urging the deal be finalized “before Mr. Blair’s visit to Tripoli.”

The Guardian, “There is no clear division between Blair’s diplomatic dealings and business dealings in the Middle East.”
It was alleged that Blair introduced a Chinese businessman wanted by Interpol for bribery to the Abu Dhabi royal family, for a deal worth $3 billion.

Blair was pitched by a Saudi prince, as someone who could “unlock situations which might otherwise be blocked by political factors.” He went onto promote the company in private meetings with Chinese officials — all for a $100,000 per month retainer.

Impropriety - Blair’s deal with PetroSaudi - as PM, Blair had pressured the UK’s Serious Fraud Office to quash an investigation into alleged corruption in arms deals between Saudi Arabia and British firm BAE Systems, which the British High Court later ruled had been illegal.

Blair told Vanity Fair that Henry Kissinger was his role model because Kissinger continued working even into his nineties. But given Blair’s work, one might be forgiven for thinking he was referring to Kissinger’s history of enabling dictatorships.

He signed a deal said to be worth £8 million to advise the corrupt and repressive government of Kazakhstan, which Pavel Sheremet, a Russian journalist, called a sign “that Western politicians can do any work for money” #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

But Blair’s whole post-prime ministerial career has been one big advertisement for the failure of his particular brand of globalization. He is precisely one of those “Few” for whom the new hyperconnected, globalized world has paid handsome dividends. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

It's all thanks to grotesque corruption and obscene private wealth. And far from advancing a vision of “Liberal Democracy,” he’s used his privileged position to bolster countless authoritarian regimes, all for a price. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut

When he left office, Blair promised to use his global connections to heal the world. Instead, he worked to make himself fabulously wealthy. Now he’s back, behind the scenes and Starmer is his puppet. Expect promises but don't expect delivery. #LabourLeaks #StarmerOut