THE MAIL ON SUNDAY – PETER HITCHENS’ BLOG: Why should politicians get rich at all? When President Harry Truman left the White House in January 1953, he had no income apart from his meagre army pension from the First World War. Yet he refused offers to take well-padded corporate posts, because he feared it would damage the dignity of the office.
The man who had authorised the use of the atom bomb walked out of the Oval Office to become plain Mr Truman and to live out a life of modest obscurity.
He survived for years by writing his memoirs and selling small bits of inherited property, until he was eventually granted a modest payment by the US Government.
The same rules used to apply here. When Clement Attlee died in 1967, he left just over £7,000 in his will, not very much even before the wild inflation that has since made our national money into joke currency.
Both these men, with all their faults, were indisputably greater than Anthony Blair.
History has tended to increase their reputations, as it will diminish Mr Blair's.
Yet the ridiculous Blair creature is to be paid sums rumoured to be as high as two million pounds a year by an enormous Wall Street Bank.
What for? Mr Blair was no great shakes as a lawyer, his only real job.
I suspect it was a relief to him to land a safe seat in Parliament, with its plump salary and enjoyable perks. What next for Blair ... Viscount Dodgy of Dossier? >>> By Peter Hitchens
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