Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is taking on a new role in “combating anti-Semitism’, becoming chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR).
In his new role Mr. Blair will lobby to make it a criminal offence for anybody to question the Holocaust in Europe, including the UK.
Yahoo News reports:
Writing in The Times, Mr Blair and Moshe Kantor, a Russian-born Jewish businessman, warned that Europe is at a turning point.
“We live in dangerous times,” they wrote. “There have been three periods in the past hundred years when the annual GDP growth in Europe went below 1%: first in 1913, just before the First World War, second in 1938, just before the Second World War, and third in 2014.
“Economic decline fuels instability.”
Mr Blair and Mr Kantor pointed to a recent report on global anti-Semitic incidents by the Kantor Centre at Tel Aviv University, which found 2014 was one of the worst years in the past decade.
The ex-PM confirmed last month that he was to step down as the representative of the Quartet – US, European Union, United Nations and Russia – in the Middle East.
But he has insisted he will remain engaged with the peace process.