Petition tony blairs knighthood gets hundreds
The MailOnline’s report came as an opinion poll published by UK polling company YouGov revealed 63 percent of Britons are opposed to Blair being knighted. Petition to Rescind Tony Blair’s Knighthood Gets Hundreds of Thousands of Signatures Written by BHFN on JanuLONDON By tradition, former British prime ministers are honored by Queen Elizabeth some years after leaving 10 Downing Street, so the elevation of Tony Blair to a knighthood on New Year’s Day could have been a routine. However, this order was defied and the memo was locked in a safe at the UK’s Ministry of Defence instead.īlair and Powell have previously dismissed these allegations – which first emerged in 2015 – as false. Hoon said his secretary was told “in no uncertain terms” by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s then-chief of staff, that the note was to be destroyed after it had been read, the Daily Mail reported, citing passages from Hoon’s recently published memoir, See How They Run. The site said a former aide of his had in 2003 ordered then-Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to “burn” a memo written by then-Attorney General Peter Goldsmith that said the invasion of Iraq could be illegal.Īt the time, the US and UK had failed to secure a specific UN resolution giving them international backing for the incursion. Late on Tuesday, as the campaign to remove Blair’s knighthood was gathering pace, the UK’s MailOnline news website published resurfaced allegations against Blair. The ex labour leader was handed one of the country’s most senior titles Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, in the Queen’s New Year’s Honour List. can agree with but perhaps youd dispute what the it is that he should get. The decision to Knight former Prime Minister Tony Blair has been met with outrage, with ten of thousands signing a petition to strip him of the award.
‘Burn after reading’ Iraq war memo allegation sign online petition demanding removal of Sir Tony Blairs knighthood. To justify the invasion, Blair and then-US President George Bush had cast Hussein as a global threat who possessed weapons of mass destruction as Washington, in particular, focused on neutralising supposed threats in the wake of the Septemattacks.īut no such weapons were ever found. The invasion, which resulted in former President Saddam Hussein’s removal from power and subsequent execution, ushered in years of conflict that saw hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed as the country descended into chaos. The ex-Labour Party leader, who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2007, has faced constant criticism in recent decades over his involvement in the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.