Harris is author of The Ghost - a novel about a PM accused of war crimes

Says Blair believed he had 'outgrown' Britain after stepping down as PM

Tony Blair is a narcissist with a messiah complex who is passionate about making money and lives a ‘strange life’ among the super-rich, according to a former close friend.

Best-selling author Robert Harris, once a confidant of the former prime minister, said Mr Blair now cuts a ‘tragic figure’.

In a savage attack, Mr Harris said Mr Blair was ‘quite disconnected from reality’ and hinted that his time in office had made him ‘mad’.

He also claimed that Mr Blair, 61, had delivered a ‘slap in the face’ to the British people by walking away from Parliament.



Former Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened in the growing debate over Europe this week, with a speech to the CBI business conference attacking UKIP for blaming foreigners for Britain's problems

Robert Harris (left) with the then Labour Party leader Tony Blair pictured together in 1997. Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's then spin chief, can be seen in the background

END OF A NEW LABOUR FRIENDSHIP Robert Harris fell out with Tony Blair after the former Prime Minister sacked Peter Mandelson for the second time in 2001. The novelist had been a close confident of the Labour leader and was even with him on the night of Mr Blair's 1997 landslide election victory. But he was furious with the way Mr Blair had treated his close friend Lord Mandelson - the godfather to one of Mr Harris's children. Mr Blair sacked Lord Mandelson - then Northern Ireland Secretary - in 2001 over the Hinduja affair in which he was accused of using his position to influence a passport application. Mandelson insisted he had done nothing wrong and was later exonerated. Advertisement

The former premier would never be forgiven for leaving British politics to go and ‘hang out with a lot of rich people in America’, the writer added.

The two men met in the early 1990s and Mr Harris became a close friend of the Blair family, remaining a supporter of the rising Labour star as he became party leader in 1994 and then Prime Minister.

He was by Mr Blair’s side when the 1997 election results came in.

But the pair fell out over Mr Blair’s sacking of Peter Mandelson, who is godfather to one of Mr Harris’s children.

A former political journalist, he wrote a novel, The Ghost, clearly based on Mr Blair – in which a fictional ex-premier faces being hauled to court for alleged war crimes. Mr Harris described the book as being somewhere ‘between reality and fiction’.

But his latest comments, in an interview with Total Politics, are the most devastating character assassination of the New Labour leader by a former member of his inner circle.

He said: ‘I find with Tony Blair it’s impossible to see the man he is now in the man that I knew. I met him first in 1992 I think.

‘Who knew that he would become a great friend of George Bush and would want to keep bombing people and would be so passionately interested in making money and live this strange life with the billionaire super-rich on yachts and private jets?

‘I mean, maybe someone more perceptive than I would have seen it, but I never saw that at the time, nor – knowing a lot of the people who know him very well – did they.

‘It’s a cliche to say that most politicians go mad if they are in office for more than about six or seven years and they become a member of a club and you become quite disconnected from reality, and I think there were in Tony things we perhaps didn’t realise at the time – of narcissism, a messiah complex, that had merely accelerated this impulse in him.’



Robert Harris (left) and Lord Mandelson attended the VIP screening of 'The Ghost' in 2010. The novel centres around a former British Prime Minister who is wanted by the International Criminal Court

He said Lord Mandelson – who has been criticised for mixing with some of the world’s super-rich – is ‘the soul of plain living’ compared with the former PM.

Mr Harris, 57, pointed to the way Mr Blair walked away from parliament after resigning as prime minister and as an MP in the summer of 2007.

He said: ‘I can’t believe there isn’t an element of tragedy that he himself feels, that a relatively young man in political terms should cut himself off from British democracy in the way that he has.

‘Because he could have had one of those 19th century careers and come back, as foreign secretary or maybe even as party leader, but he turned his back on it and walked out of the place.

‘I think it’s clear he felt that he had outgrown Westminster and the British, and you will never be forgiven for that.’

Robert Harris is a former friend of Tony Blair and remains close to the Labour peer Lord Mandelson. He said he could never have guessed how Mr Blair would change and attacked his close relationship to George Bush

Mr Harris referred to Sir Winston Churchill whose last spell as prime minister ended in 1955, but was still attending Prime Minister’s Questions as an MP in 1964.

He added: ‘Politicians love the House of Commons, they never wanted to leave it.

‘Blair seemed to have suited his purposes and then he walked out and that was a slap in the face, I think, for parliament and the British people.

‘I think people would have been perfectly prepared to accept the mistakes he made over Iraq or whatever if he’d hung around and fought his corner but to just simply remove yourself and hang out with a lot of rich people in America, that will never be forgiven.’