It's OK for Tony Blair to Cash Out

Yves Smith says that Tony Blair's decision to work as a part-time adviser to JP Morgan is "reprehensible". I'm more sanguine about it. Yes, the amount that Blair is pulling in is huge: 5 million pounds for his memoirs, millions more for speeches, (including $500,000 for a 20-minute speech in China), and now "a series of positions" in the private sector, some if not all of which are likely to carry seven-figure stipends.

One can't explain all of this by saying that he has a large mortgage: after all, his wife is a very big earner in her own right, and Blair could probably have paid the full 3.5 million pounds that his house cost from his book advance alone.

On the other hand, Blair has four children, and I'm sure he wants to do well by them. His main job, as Middle East envoy, is unpaid. And if he does become president of the EU, he'll have to give up his lucrative private-sector positions, so he might not have a lot of time to cash in between now and then.

If JP Morgan wants to pay Blair something north of $1 million a year to schmooze clients and add his lustre to the bank, that's great: I don't think there's much in the way of conflict there. Hell, the bank might even take his advice now and then: Blair certainly knows a lot about the inner workings of UK politics at its highest levels, and that's something that any major bank in London has to be able to navigate.

Besides, Tory PMs do this kind of thing all the time; there's no reason why Labour PMs shouldn't follow suit. And what's more, if people thought that going into British politics could make you rich, the country might get itself a better class of people wanting to become MPs in the first place.

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