A petition on Change.org, demanding that Queen Elizabeth rescind the knighthood she conferred on Tony Blair on Jan. 1 has already gathered 350,000 signatures in the two days since. There is a strong resistance in the U.K. to allowing this outrage, in which a man—former Prime Minister or not—whom millions of Britons regard as a murderer and liar who should be at The Hague court, is instead rewarded by the royal family and Privy Council whose agent he was. It has been called “a kick in the teeth” to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, given Blair’s central role in the development and spread of lies of state used to start the regime change-wars there.
Blair was made Sir Anthony of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the “highest” knighthood available to the Malthusian and anti-human British royals and therefore the recognition of the greatest “service” to them. Ironically Elizabeth conferred the same “honour” on her daughter-in-law Camilla, Duchess of Cambridge (Prince Charles’s wife, and mistress when he was married to Princess Diana) at the same time.
According to the Daily Mail Jan. 3, the petition leaders were aiming for 500,000 signatures. It quotes Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, linking the outrage against this to the humanitarian disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq. German told LBC radio, “I think it’s pretty incredible given that this year, we’ve seen the collapse of Afghanistan, which [was] Tony Blair’s first major war in the war on terror. We have 8 million people on the edge of starvation in Afghanistan now. We have Iraq in a terrible state now, nearly 20 years after the invasion. And I think it’s a kick in the teeth for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a kick in the teeth for all the people who protested against the war in Iraq and who have been proved right.”
There are many other attacks on this atrocity quoted in the Mail and in a Guardian story today. The only defense being offered is that all former PMs are “customarily” made Knights of the Garter “for their service.” To the monarchy and Privy Council, no one else.
