Tony and Belinda launch American faith offensive

Tony Blair has linked up with perhaps his most intriguing partner yet as he seeks to create a powerful network across north America and shift the focus of his Tony Blair Faith Foundation away from his unappreciative native Britain.

A report in the Observer says the charity's accounts show Blair is sitting on a £4.5m war chest.  The paper claims this is to be used to launch a faith-based 'offensive' in north America where the former prime minister is admired across the political spectrum.

Helping Blair spend his bounty will be some controversial figures, including the liberal Canadian Belinda Stronach and right-wing evangelical US pastor Rick Warren.

The accounts reveal Blair intends to open an office in Toronto to develop his relationship with the Belinda Stronach Foundation.

Belinda, 43, is the more acceptable face of Blair's north American network, but she has been embroiled in her fair share of controversy. Readers of The First Post will recall her once close friendship with another of Blair's buddies, Bill Clinton. An affair was never proved, but in 2006 it looked for a while as though
"Bubba's blonde", as the Canadian tabloids called her, might be the most likely "other woman" in a Bill and Hillary divorce case.

In many ways the two are a perfect match. Belinda, the daughter of the billionaire owner of the Magna car parts empire, is well-known as a political opportunist in her homeland, where as a socially liberal Conservative MP, she was criticised for crossing the floor to join the Liberal party, which promptly lost a general election.

Currently the vice-president of Magna, the auto parts company founded by her father Frank, Belinda is also a noted philanthropist. Besides her charitable foundation, she is a co-founder of Spread the Net, a group that provides mosquito nets for African families in order to stem the spread of malaria.

As a Canadian MP she campaigned in favour of gun control, gay marriage and abortion rights, the last two of which will not endear her to another of Blair's buddies as revealed in his charity's accounts.

Rick Warren, the head of California's Saddleback church, sits on the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's advisory council. President Barack Obama caused uproar among his liberal supporters at his inauguration last year when he chose Warren, a  creationist  opponent of gay marriage and abortion, to give the invocation.

Warren is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that split from the 47 million-strong Baptist World Alliance (BWA) in 2004 in protest at the latter's increasing liberalism and tolerance of homosexuality. Blair, himself a Catholic since his conversion in 2007, is no stranger to sectarianism following his work in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He has put his mediation skills to use in persuading the BWA's president, David Coffey, to sit on his charity's
advisory council with Warren, one of the Southern Baptists' most powerful voices.

They join the Muslim Dr Ismail Khudr Al-Shatti and Hindu Anantanand Rambachan among others. It seems that when Blair is allowed to 'do' religion, he does it very well. ·