Taking Aim

Blair to go on trial for war crimes - Drama

September 1st, 2006 by andy

The television screens of England, it seems, are soon to be awash with political docu-dramas. 

Robert Lindsay, who played the prime minister in its satire of the David Blunkett affair A Very Social Secretary, will reprise his role for The Trial of Tony Blair. Also written by Alistair Beaton, the political satire imagines a future in which Gordon Brown is in No 10 and Mr Blair is put on trial for war crimes.

I’ll leave aside, for now, cracks about how some impressionable young prosecutor might try to emulate the movie and ruin an upstanding Prime Minister’s life by putting him on trial.

Because, actually, I’m quite looking forward to this show.  The cynic in me thinks there will be one of two endings:

• He’ll be found guilty.
• The programme will demonstrate conclusively that he is guilty, but he’ll get off on a technicality.

I hope, though, that Beaton takes the more challenging route of having the court exonerate Tony Blair.  Not necessarily because I believe he is innocent (or that he is guilty, for that matter), but because I think it would make for a more challenging and thought-provoking piece of television.