Row over Blair’s mental health

July 18, 2003 - Source of this article: timesofoman.com

Tony Blair is not mad, his spokesman said this week, after a leading magazine branded him a “psychopath” who was capable of extraordinary self-delusion.

“The term ‘potty’, I think, is, if I may say so, potty,” Blair’s spokesman said after the New Statesman magazine asked psychologists and psychiatrists to give their verdict on the prime minister’s mental health.

Blair’s popularity at home has been sagging in the wake of the Iraq war as controversy rages over the way his office allegedly doctored intelligence to bolster its case for a pre-emptive offensive.

“One view emerged strongly: there appears to be something worryingly adrift in the mind of Anthony (Tony) Charles Lynton Blair, a man who doesn’t really know who or what he is,” the New Statesman said.

“More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor,” the magazine said.

“What most people call ‘spin’, the routine lubricant of all political gearboxes, is, in Blair’s case, eloquent self-delusion a heroic scale...

“He is one of the few politicians who has never told a lie because his belief in whatever he says — about public transport, hospitals, schools, weapons of mass destruction — is total,” the magazine continued.

Blair’s office denied the report.

“You have got to look at what the prime minister has achieved in the past six months in terms of handling major international issues like Iraq, in pursuing the goal of progress in the Middle East settlement, in pursuing public service delivery at home,” his spokesman said.

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