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Blair in the dock for TV war crimes 'trial'
By Alexa Baracaia, Evening Standard Last updated at 09:00am on 10.01.07
Trials and tribulations: Robert Lindsay as Tony Blair
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Channel 4 is to screen a hardhitting drama which portrays Tony Blair facing an international tribunal charged with war crimes. Robert Lindsay plays the Prime Minister, who is shown becoming increasingly unhinged.
In dramatic scenes shown at a private screening today Mr Blair hallucinates about dead Iraqi children, sees the coffin of a British soldier on his kitchen table and believes he is to be murdered by a suicide bomber.
The Prime Minister has a waking nightmare that he is found dead. In sinister echoes of Dr David Kelly's death, he hallucinates that a newsreader announces that “it appears the former Prime Minister had gone for a walk on his own”.
The 72-minute film The Trial Of Tony Blair will be screened on Monday on digital channel More4.
Written by Alistair Beaton, who also wrote A Very Social Secretary about David Blunkett, it opens in 2010 with the vision of a distressed
Blair, having converted to Catholicism, about to make confession for his “mortal sins”.
In Beaton's account, the US and British forces have declared war on Iran, there has been a second terror attack in London and George Bush, deposed by Hillary Clinton, has entered rehab after being found comatose on his ranch.
Today, Beaton insisted he had no qualms about screening a film which could affect public opinion while a leader of state is still in power.
He said: “That would be terrific if I'd contributed to the public perception of Blair having done something he must pay a price for.
“I did set out, however, from the position of Blair as being fundamentally a man who cares but whose decisions have backfired and he is struggling to live with that.”
