This is a simple question. Tony Blair is currently on his way out of British politics. How will he be remembered in the future, and what will be his effect on the country’s politics after he’s gone (other than a period of Conservative government under David Cameron and the resurgence of the LibDems)?
Brave man who stood up for principles, or spineless sycophant? You’ll be the judge.
Domestically, he did alot of good for my area, where the conference is being held, internationally, good intentions lead to hell kinda thing.
I think he did some initial good, but, in my opinion, he failed on a lot of his pledges and did not deliver what people would expect from a labour government. I’m not sure if this was his fault or the fault of in-fighting within the government.
I think he will be possibly be remembered possitively as a politician for his landslide victories, but the Iraq war fiasco will be his main legacy, and not many people look on that as positive at all.
Blair is a Sunflower
Ugly, with no perceptible smell, but valuable for his edible parts?
Apart from his Foreign policy, shouldn’t you be worshipping the likes of Blair since his leftist political party lowered unemployment, helped poorer families and pumped more money into the NHS than any government for the last 20 years?
He may have done all that, I don’t know. I do know I have never before, at any time since the 1997 election, seen Blair’s government characterized as “leftist.”
Quite. In lots of ways he was way to the right of Thatcher in that he was in a position to push forward privatisation into areas she could never do. Labour became New Labour, which in so many ways is just Thatcherism with a more human face and an internationalist intervention policy.
The large expansion of public-private partnerships to fund NHS expansion just so to keep the public sector borrowing requirement low means we get hospitals cheap but then we just keep paying and paying and paying for them - and then give them away.
Madness.
His abiding legacy will be another 3 terms of Tory rule. The impression I have of the UK electorate is like it was in the early 90’s. We are all sullenly waiting for the chance to throw the govt out. There is nothing Blair, Brown or any other PM candidate can do to change this.
We are all sick of the endless spin (which has just reached completely outrageous levels) and above all we are sick of Iraq and being Bush’s poodle. We don’t like being lied to. We know full well Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place and every time Blair tires to pretend otherwise he loses votes. We know full well we were lied into this war and if the Tories had not been unreformed and unelectable in the last election they’d have won. Now they have a pretty-boy Blair-Lite saying all the right things the Tories no longer frighten voters. We think we can have more of the same in terms of a good economy and functioning welfare system from them now when in the past every Tory leader reminded us of the dark days of the Thatcher Terror.
And I’m speaking as a lifelong Labour voter. If New Labour have lost me then they’re doomed. I remember the sheer euphoria that greeted New Labour in 1997, it was like VE Day. That it should all have come to this.
I agree with almost everything you say- I think it more likely the Tories will get two terms, actually, but that’s by the by. I think here is the root of Blair’s legacy- a wasted opportunity.
He came in on one of the strongest electoral mandates of the 20th century, a massive majority, with an electorate sick of more than a decade of Thatcherism and with an opposition in rags and tatters. He had the power to bring everything he promised in his 1997 manifesto- constitutional reform (including an implementation of the Jenkins report, which would have introduced a little much-needed PR to the British election system), a real commitment to high public spending, a moral foreign policy (which we appeared to have, for a brief, shining moment during the Kosovo affair), integration with Europe, and a genuine sea-change in politics- putting an economy-concious Labour party in a position to dominate the 21st century in British politics.*
Indeed, he started well- within a week of taking power Labour had transferred control of interest rates to the Bank of England, and within a year of taking power we had Scottish and Welsh assemblies, in accordance with the will of the people in those areas. But then all his vast political and moral capital petered out into feel-good intiatives and spin, spin spin. Yes, he increased funding to the public sector by 50%- but he also saddled those same public services with the ruinous Private Finance Initative, meaning that the NHS is now in the ludicrous position of having the biggest budget in its history- while also having hospitals closing due to debt. A focus on targets, hospital “management” (for which read bean-counting) and headline-chasing also wasted massive amounts of money, even though they achieved some (mostly incidental) benefits, such as a reduction in waiting lists.
With his second electoral victory, it seemed that Blair might leave a reasonable legacy yet- the country needed a real decision on European integration, either yea or nay, it needed focus on the overburdened home office to fight some of the highest crime rates in the developed world, and it needed more and better-thought-out investment in public services. What it got was a constant refusal to say whether we would have a Euro referendum, illiberal anti-terrorism laws, university tuition fees and, the crowning cherry on the turd, the Iraq war.
Then came the third term, which already looks wasted, with less than half of it gone. Wasted, in fairness, not due to Blair’s present decisions, but his past ones, as he finds that his goverment cannot avoid the dirty remains of the Iraq war, constant infighting due to his refusal to step down, and a steady breakdown of the very public services he claims to be trying to make his “legacy”. Add to that the constant, disgusting, wearying parade of lies- the claim, for example, that the 7/7 attacks, which, in my opinion, that of much of the intelligence community and of the bombers themselves, would not have happened without the Iraq war- were not the result of Blair’s foreign policy. And now we have both a worsening situation in Afghanistan, where more British soldiers have been killed in the past 18 months than in the four years before that, and the government’s reaction to Lebanon.
That turned a bit… ranty, so let me just say: I think that history will judge Blair as, fundamentally, a reasonable Prime Minister, one who did more or less the right things, but in the wrong way (with the exception of Iraq, which, in fairness, isn’t nearly as big a deal in the UK as in the US, simply due to a much lower bodycount and fewer- as yet- revelations of monumental cockups or abuses on the part of the British). But he had it in him to be a great one. He had the seats, he had the seats, he had the votes, and he had the money, too. He could have been a figure like Gladstone, Churchill or Lloyd George- instead he ended up being a Major or Wilson.
*I realise these are not necessarily going to sound like good ideas to some readers of the SDMB, but bear with me…
Well put. I believe history will judge him much more harshly though, on the basis of him lying us into a war of Bush’s choice and then sitting for the most incompetent military occupation since, well the dinosaurs became extinct.
He will go down as a fool of Eden proportions. The Fool of a malicious, ignorant clown.
And I do think Iraq has poisoned the well of trust. The public might not make it the number 1 concern but it underpins all the cynicism and distrust. We all know we were lied to deliberately and we no longer believe a word the Govt says about anything.
I find myself in the position I was in 1979 when no-one could seriously consider voting for the clapped out Callaghan Govt out of anything other than diehard loyalty. Like voting conservative in 1997.
Brown will be the Callaghan of this century. An unelected PM with no hope at all of ever being PM because the nation has no trust in his party. And for very good reasons.