Tony Blair’s legacy on tackling extremism

It may be unpopular to say, but there is reason to be charitable to Tony Blair and his latest warnings about Islamist extremism. The former Prime Minister gave afascinating interview to Charles Moore in yesterday’s Telegraph where, inter alia, he talks about the challenge of militant Islam. ‘The West is asleep on this issue,’ he tells Moore.

Blair has been more vocal and unequivocal on the issue than almost any other politician in recent years. He notes that the success of his Africa Governance Initiative faces ‘this threat above all others’. Failed states in the Horn of Africa have accentuated this, while one of the unintended consequences of the Libyan revolution has been to strengthen Islamist militants in northern Mali – an area the size of France.

On the Arab Spring, Blair is equally clear. He is ambitious about the potential for democracy in the region but notes the Middle East ‘won’t achieve democracy unless it understands that democracy is a way of thinking as well as voting.