Tony Blair and God

There's a good letter in the Guardian today in response to Terry Jones's feeble column on Wednesday about Tony Blair's televisual conversation with Michael Parkinson. The letter comes from a rather more prestigious address than did mine on the same topic which they've sensibly chosen not to use.

David Hill's (for it is from him) says: ".... the prime minister did not say, suggest or imply in any way was that he knew what God's judgement would be. .... But without this distortion, there wouldn't have been much of a column to write, would there?".

After graduating from being the least funny of the not-really-terribly-funny-but-there-were-some-very-good-bits-and-it-seemed-wonderful-at-the-time Python team, Mr Jones has taken to light journalism and lighter history. Aided by some low-budget animation, he has made some amusing but not terribly accurate jokey history programmes for BBC2. A similar lack of attention to boring old detail is often evident in his Guardian columns.

He rather spoils his understandable and perfectly honourable anti-war arguments by ignoring anything that doesn't support them. His anti-Blair blindness is a symptom. You might think that an historian would understand complexity but he's not a very serious one so perhaps the simple view he takes of our fascinatingly complex modern world isn't a surprise.

And why should he let facts get in the way of a good old rant?