Why Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East | Oliver Eagleton

The Blair-Trump fantasy for postwar Gaza shows the former PM still thinks that free enterprise can solve all the world's ills

There are two types of politician," Tony Blair observed in 2012. Reality creators and reality managers." While postwar politics was generally a matter of steady management, he claimed, the emerging order called for more creativity, both in the economy and foreign policy". Only a particular type of visionary leader was fit for the task.

More than a decade later, Blair has now joined forces with the pre-eminent reality-creator, Donald Trump, to draft a hallucinatory 20-point plan for Gaza. It aims to turn the devastated Strip into what seems to resemble a colonial protectorate: cleansed of armed conflict, buzzing with development projects and a special economic zone" through which foreign capital can flow, and overseen by an international board of peace" with Trump himself as chair.