The rehabilitation of Tony Blair

The satirical one-off TV show the Trial of Tony Blair first aired on More4 in 2007.

It is an account of the former prime minister's demise after leaving office, when he finds himself abandoned by former allies in Britain and the US as he obsessively sets about establishing his political legacy.

Instead of being lauded, Blair finds his decisions come back to haunt him, culminating in his arrest for war crimes at the behest of the United Nations and his transportation to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

When first aired the show attracted rave reviews and impressive viewing figures despite being broadcast on More4 and not one of the main terrestrial channels - reflective perhaps of the pariah status enjoyed by the former PM.

However the recently released Labour Party sequel, the Rehabilitation of Tony Blair, has proved both a critical and political disaster.

By bringing the former PM in from the cold to act as an adviser on the Olympic legacy - why is it that whenever Blair is mentioned either the words "legacy" or "war criminal" invariably follow? - Ed Miliband has effectively spat on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the Iraq war.

Alastair Campbell has already managed to reintegrate himself into British public life despite being responsible for "sexing up" the intelligence dossier which constituted the main plank of Blair's case for the war,

Perhaps through the prism of time there is a tendency to forget the humanitarian disaster that resulted from the war on the Iraqi people, when the richest nations in the world attacked one of the poorest after first placing the country under UN sanctions for 13 years.

As a direct result 2 million Iraqis died, with half a million of those children under the age of five, leading US congressman David Bonior to famously describe it as "infanticide masquerading as politics."

The war that followed proved a disaster, just as the millions who came out in protest all over the world in February 2003 predicted it would be.

The Iraqi dead were not even given the respect of being counted, such was the barbarism unleashed by the war.

This task was left to the likes of the Lancet medical journal and John Hopkins University in the US. Both estimated a body count of over 600,000 in the period from 2003 to 2006.

Since 2006 it is fair to assume an exponential increase given the near daily incidents of sectarian violence that have occurred from then to the present.

Blair has enjoyed immense earnings since departing Downing Street in the summer of 2007 - his fortune is now estimated to be somewhere in the region of £50 million, made up of huge property investments, lucrative contracts with multinational corporations and speaking engagements.

Blair has also served as the Middle East peace envoy, an appointment which raised more than a few eyebrows - not to mention derisive laughter - when it was announced.

That Miliband would even countenance bringing Blair back into the political arena given the huge controversy which still surrounds him is hard to fathom.

To the many thousands at home and across the world who consider Tony Blair a man with blood on his hands, it is reprehensible.