Teflon Tony is coming unstuck

So the arch war criminal Tony Blair has said he will donate the advance for his no-doubt wildly self-aggrandising and revisionist memoirs to a sports centre for injured troops.

Well, when you're on an estimated £20 million a year you don't tend to worry about the small change do you?

Maybe he's been having one of his late-night talks with Him upstairs again and it was pointed out to him that he'd be saying hail marys for the rest of his life otherwise.

Blair seems to have the unwavering belief that he can manipulate public opinion and rewrite history at his whim, a trait so common in his fellow evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Falwell, Robertson and their odious ilk usually only warp and manipulate the Bible to suit their own ends and dupe their credulous faithful.

This is a text that, whether you believe in it or not, is wildly ambiguous and couched in archaic language which many feel free to interpret however they wish. A book dealing with the mythical adventures of a cast of characters who, if they ever existed, are unlikely to have you up for misrepresentation. It would be like being sued by Asterix and Obelix.

And of course evangelists always use the get-out clause that no-one can prove their interpretation - which in a roundabout way uncannily always leads to calls for greater donations - is wrong because it's a question of faith.

As the late, great comic Bill Hicks noted, these are people who state categorically that the Bible is the word of God then say: "I think what the Lord meant to say was..."

Like Blair, Robertson and Falwell used their professed "faith" to claim some deeply repulsive things.

Most recently in Robertson's case he claimed that the Haitian earthquake was due to the country having signed a "pact with the devil." In Falwell's case to demonise gays, Muslims and er... the Teletubbies.

Well, they say the Lord moves in mysterious ways... and no more so than when "interpreted" through the mouth of a racist, homophobe con man like Falwell.

But compared to these two Blair is attempting to pull off a sleight-of-hand trick that David Blaine would be proud of.

He's trying to rewrite a history that we all witnessed for ourselves. We know he's lied repeatedly. We know he led Britain into an illegal war in order to cosy up to the US.

This latest in a long list of attempts to define himself in the public eye as a "pretty straight kind of guy" reeks of the cynicism which clings to him like cheap aftershave making people gag wherever he goes.

But then he has had a great deal of encouragement to believe that he can wipe the slate clean. His farcical appointment as Middle East peace envoy being the most obvious example, closely followed by the seemingly never-ending corporate gigs and lecture tours around the US and elsewhere.

The money, despite the dubious motivation for the donation, may well do some good but that doesn't let him off the hook. In one very obvious way he has not changed in the slightest. He still doesn't give a damn about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians slaughtered as a result of his jingoistic adventurism. Where's the donation to ease their suffering?

Blair himself, in common with Bush, has said he will answer to a higher authority.

If there's any justice they will - and it will be at the Hague.