8 Adar 5777
Revealed: Tony Blair's secret White House summit as he launches astonishing bid to work for Donald Trump... as his Middle East peace envoy
- Blair attended a secret meeting at the White House to discuss working for Trump
- Held talks with Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner this week
- The former PM and Kushner have met three times in secret since September
Blair and Kushner have discussed a role for the former Prime Minister in achieving what Trump has described as ‘the ultimate deal’ – peace in the Middle East. As a British citizen Blair would not be permitted to have a formal job in the US Government, but the President could give him a role as an adviser.
- Could setback Theresa May’s hopes of forging ‘special relationship’ with Trump
Blair was peace envoy for the ‘Quartet’ from 2007 to 2015. But he made little progress and was dogged by claims that he was ‘too close’ to the Israelis. When he stepped down, he was said to have been ‘frustrated’ by his limited role in helping the Palestinians.
Blair’s appeal to the Trump administration is believed to be his vastly greater knowledge of the Middle East than Kushner’s.
A well-placed source said Blair’s role could be as Kushner’s senior adviser: ‘Blair has been pitching hard for this job and Trump’s people are taking him very seriously.’ (DailyMail)And if you need reminding...
Blair explains conversion to Catholicism
Former PM tells Italian audience that church can make globalisation 'our servant, not our master, lit by God's love and paved by God's grace'
..."In seeking this path of truth, lit by God's love and paved by God's grace, the church can be the insistent spiritual voice that makes globalisation our servant, not our master."
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The Tony Blair Faith Foundation
We provide practical support to counter religious conflict and extremism in order to promote open-minded and stable societies.
...But we believe that the world faces a stark choice. Closed mindedness, where globalisation is seen as a threat and diversity and difference as a danger. Or the alternative open-minded approach to others, which can lead to tolerant and stable societies.
We provide practical support to counter religious conflict and extremism in order to promote open-minded and stable societies.
The battle is focused on combating the intractable mindset of extremist religious groups. Their resistance to the concept of different religions understanding each other and working together as a force for positive social change must be challenged. The work we do, and the work of many others, is not just about the uprooting of terrorism, but the uprooting of the thinking and philosophy behind it. There is no answer to this problem that doesn't start, and continue, with the importance of educating our young people and exposing them to others' views.
There is no issue that is more pressing. In the longer term, the only answer is to educate the future generation to an open-minded view of the world. The 21st Century will not face the same struggle around political ideology that dominated the 20th Century, but there is a real danger that conflict around religious ideology replaces that struggle in an equally devastating form. Our prospects for peace rely on understanding the many forces at play and confronting those which affront an open and just society. We have got to show people that we have got a better idea than the extremists have – to learn from each other and live with each other.Before you understand how this threatens the Torah-observant Jewish world, you have to look past the obvious allusions to Islamic terrorism and imagine how this could just as easily be applied against Jews who insist on adhering to Torah law.
