Since he’s now set a date to step down, I thought it might be a good time to see what people thought about his time in office.
What good things can be attributed to him and his government?
What bad things?
What do you think his legacy will be?
Good things:
- gave over control to the Bank of England to an independent body
Bad things:
- Iraq war
- Private Finance Initiative
- cash for Honours scandal
- Home Office incompetence fiasco
- Mandelson / Blunkett / Prescott incompetence
His legacy will be:
- Iraq
- staying in office for the sake of staying in office
Could you explain all of those for the benefit of us ignorant Yanks?
No matter how much you dislike Blair (I do, a lot) you have to include:
Good things:
- Brought peace to Northern Ireland.
Of course, he forgot those lessons when faced with a new set of terrorists.
Bad things:
- Happy to whip up fear in order to pass anti-terror legislation.
- Happy to take away rights of citizens under the guise of protecting the majority.
No matter how long I live, I will always remember one piece of classic comedy from Mr. Blair. To paraphrase: “This is not a time for sound bites… I feel the hand of history on my shoulder”. Beautiful.
Good - control over interest rates given to Bank of England
- introduction of minimum wage
- Northern Ireland (fingers crossed)
- social policy eg civil partnerships, equalization of age of consent
- on a somewhat childish note I like the fact that the mere existence of a 3 term Labour Prime Minister has really really pissed off so many Daily Mail types.
Bad - Iraq
- the authoritarian streak and general nanny-statism
Speak of the devil. Apparently, he’s off too.
Posted too soon…
I must confess to a little sadness today though. May 2nd 1997 was such a hopeful day, with the promise of so much and now, well…
I’m not sure what the legacy will be. The UK is a much better place than it was ten years ago in many ways, certainly more prosperous, but I think that parts of the country have become less pleasant places to live. I get the sense that people are having to run to stand still - due to property prices in many cases - and this is leading to a coarsening of our way of life. I don’t know how much of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of Government though.
Internationally, I can see Blair being fondly remembered in some US circles, but perhaps in not too many other places.
-
gave over control to the Bank of England to an independent body
Previously the Government set the Interest Rate. Brown/Blair gave this job to an independent advisory body tasked with controlling inflation and growth. -
Iraq war
Self explanatory -
Private Finance Initiative
A trick to stop capital investment in state projects (hospitals, schools prisons etc.) from showing up as government expenditure and thius allowing Brown to claim that he is not breaking his ‘golden rule’ of not spending more than is earned over na economic cycle. Basically, the government askes private companies to build and manage facilities (hospitals, schools and prisons etc.) and then pays an annual price for this. A bit like a company doing sale and lease back (which has also been done by some government departments). -
cash for Honours scandal
On going investigation into whether money (political donations) were accepted with the expectation that people would be given titles or peerages in exchange. -
Home Office incompetence fiasco
The Home Office was responsible for prisons, judiciary, police, immigration. The Home Secretary was always seen as the most difficult job to do succesfully. New Labour has continued the history of institutional incompetence that typifies admisitration in this department. -
Mandelson / Blunkett / Prescott incompetence
The first two managed to get themselves into a position where they were forced to resign because of financial or power abuse scandals and then each was reinstated after a short while, when again each descended into another scandal and was forced to resign again. Prescott is seen as incompetent and has held the office of deputy prime minister as a counter weight to Blairs conservatism/middle class ness and education- Prescott is working class, was a socialist and is not well educated- some attempt to keep Blair in touch with the traditional roots of the Labour Party.
Hope that helps.
I know that “cash for honours” is wrong and is probably going to lead to charges, but it is to laugh when indignant commentators try to give the impression that this is some horrid Blairite perversion of the system. How many centuries has the buying of honours been going on for?
Tony Blair is the man (LOVE his House of Commons debates). Now I totally understand WHY he had to side with Bush on the Iraq war, but it sucks that that happened during his term because that is indeed a blight on his record.
Andrew Rawnsley wrote a superb account of the Blair years in a recent Observer article. Its quite sympathetic in tone, but written with a lot of authority I think.
Well, the Iraq war you know about.
The Private Finance Initiative was actually started by the Major government. It’s a way to fund capital impovements. Lets say the government wants to build a hospital, but since hospitals are expensive, it doesn’t want to spend all that money up front. So it initiates a PFI. It makes a deal with private investors, and they work out a contract. The investors take the initial risk in building and running the hospital, and the contract sets out certain goals and benchmarks that the private company/investors have to meet. The government then, over a period of time, usually 30 years, makes annual payments to the private company. At the end of the time, ownership of the hospital goes back to the government. This process is controversial. It’s certainly led to a lot of infrastructure being built faster than it otherwise would, but critics have said that in the long run, it’s more expensive for the government, and is just a way to hide costs. It’s also unpopular with the unions.
The Cash for Honours scandal is what it sounds like. It came out that a number of people recommended for life peerages had given large “loans” to the Labour party (unlike donations to a political party, which have to be reported, loans can be made without public disclosure). It looked an awful lot like a quid pro quo, there were investigations, and Lord Levy has been arrested for his accused role in the affair.
Regarding Home Office incompetence, there have been a lot of things that suggest the Home Office doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground. There was notoriously lax security at a prison that led to regular escapes, there was a data entry snafu that led to the Criminal Records Bureau accidentally recording hundreds of innocent people as criminals. Meanwhile, there were reports that people who should have been put on registries for sex crimes weren’t. There were also revelations that immigration officials routinely lost paperwork and files, leading to tremendous backlogs for asylum seekers and people attempting to immigrate. Meanwhile, they failed to deport over 1000 foreign nationals who had been convicted of crimes…they just lost track of them.
Mandelson, Blunkett, and Prescott…Peter Mandelson was Sec. of State for Trade and Industry…it came out that he took an interest free loan from another MP who was being investigated by his department for bad business practices. Mandelson had to resign. Then Mandelson, after a bit, became Sec. of State for Northern Ireland. He had to resign again, after it came out that he had called the Home Office to lobby for an Indian businessman who was trying to get British citizenship.
David Blunkett was Home Secretary until it came out that he was, first, having an affair with the wife of the owner of the Spectator, and second, used his influence to speed up her nanny’s visa application. He was forced to resign. Later, he became Sec. of State for Work and Pensions, but had to resign from that when it turned out that he hadn’t revealed he had taken a position as a dirctor at a genetics firm, and bought £15,000 worth of shares in the company.
John Prescott (former Sec. of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and Deputy PM) is just embarassing. He punched a protester who threw an egg at him, he used government funds to pay his council tax, after criticizing the Tories for sleaze, it came out that he had affairs with and sexually harrassed subordinates, as well as at least one MP and the wife of another. After his department was dissolved, he kept its salary and benefits. He’s also being investigated for possible conflict of interest ties to an American developer. He also tends to put his foot in his mouth.
It may have been possible to build a case against Iraq that the British people would have understood/agreed with. He resorted to manipulation and outright lies. It’s not so much that he went to war (well, not to me), it’s how he ‘sold’ it.
I think by any objective measure, Tony Blair has been a very good Prime Minister. The economy is better, Britain is more respected globally, and British society as a whole is in better shape than it was when he took office in 1997. If The Queen is to be believed (and I haven’t seen its basic accuracy questioned anywhere), he performed an invaluable service in keeping the British monarchy relevant and responsive in a time of crisis.
Don’t think I’d call him “great,” though, and he certainly isn’t the “greatest” PM. He’s had ten years to fix NHS and public transportation, and has relatively little to show for it. Still plenty of problems in education, too. The antiterrorism legislation he championed could be used in tyrannical ways if the voters aren’t vigilant. He was right to align Britain with the U.S., both under Clinton and Bush, and I’m grateful that he did. But he tied himself so tightly to Bush after 9-11 that, when the Iraq War went so badly, he was dragged down too. I’m concerned about some of his constitutional changes, which tend to fray the bonds that unite the UK. Blair was always more committed to spin and PR than good governance, and now the honours scandal could leave him tarnished forever, I’m sorry to say.
So a mixed bag - more good than bad, though. He’s perhaps a notch or two below Walpole, Palmerston, Lloyd George, Churchill and Thatcher in terms of his impact upon history, I think.
Yes, but what have they been doing over in the Department for Administrative Affairs?? 
What about the Bank of England (which glee listed on the “good” side)?
That’s the control of interest rate thing.
glee posted, “gave over control to the Bank of England to an independent body,” and you posted, “control over interest rates given to Bank of England,” which seem to be two different things.
What is the Bank of England, anyway? Does it control the money supply and prime interest rate, like our Federal Reserve? Is that an innovation of Blair’s? If so, who controlled those things before? And what is this “independent body” that now controls the bank, and who controlled it before?
The Bank was chartered in the 1690s, so no, it’s not Blair’s invention. 
The Bank sets interest rates (since the Exchequer turned that over to them), issues banknotes, manages the Government’s accounts, monitors the financial situation in Britain and abroad, and, until recently, regulated the banking industry.