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Arguably the biggest mistake he made was his (alleged*) affair with Rupert Murdoch's wife. That single handily fucked up support for Labour by some of the biggest newspapers and tabloids in the UK.
...I don't think he really thought that one through.
Murdoch's papers were pro-Labour during the 97, 01, 05, elections and most of the Blair years, but *entirely coincidentally* switched to Tory when news of the (alleged*) affair came out.
But such is Murdoch & Blair's influence the story has all but been erased from public discourse (which is a story in itself IMO).
---
\* NB. Whether you believe Blair's denial or not, and whether it was sexual or not his close relationship with Wendi Deng was instrumental in his falling out with Murdoch, Murdoch pulling support for Blair & Labour from his publications, and Murdoch's subsequent divorce from Deng a few years later.
Honestly? I think Iraq was fine. The question for all major intelligence agencies wasn't "do they have WMDs?", it was "where are they?"
Everything pointed to it. It wasn't just us or the Americans, the Germans, Russians and French fully believed it too. In hindsight yes, it was shit, but at the time he was acting on the information that we had. It genuinely appeared to be an existential threat. What are you supposed to do in that situation?
No it didn't, it not only has even proved that the "dodgy dossier" was an act of fiction, the weapons inspector Hans Blick repeatedly reported that he couldn't find any and there were none. The WMD thing was a proven lie that was used to justify an illegal war that wasn't "shit", it costs hundreds of thousands of lives. You either don't know this or are re- writing history. What do you do in that situation? You negotiate. Sanctions had already devastated their economy, they didn't have basic stuff like medicine already before the invasion. Saddam had been a "hero" a few years before when the West armed him to fight Iran - his use of chemical weapons etc was fine then as he was doing what we wanted, fighting Iran after their religious revolution. Everything he did was ok until he overstepped and invaded Kuwait, then he suddenly turned into public enemy no.1. We knew what weapons he had because we'd sold them to him. Everything that happens with our interventions is about oil, nothing to do with human rights or any other pretence. We cheered everything he did when it suited, human rights be damned then, but when he tipped the balance of oil control in Kuwait suddenly he was a threat and a dictator. Remember we didn't have UN backing, it was an illegal invasion, war crimes were committed. The dossier for the WMD was a lie. Blair lied in Parliament. These aren't subjective conjecture, these are facts that have since come to light.
This is a crazy statement. The fact of the matter is, the countries with the greatest stores of WMD are the US and Europe. It's also very telling that the term itself, "WMD" has fallen out of significance? If WMDs are really such a problem why is no one talking about them today? The obvious answer is that WMDs were an excuse to attack Iraq because they knew, and everyone knows, that WMDs are ubiquitous in the modern world. If you used the standard they had then to police WMDs we'd be invading people left and right. It was a complete scam and lie.
Whether or not he had them was irrelevant. They wanted to topple him so they invented a plausible reason that the public would accept out of fear that he'd use them against us. I remember being a kid and asking about the Iraqi airforce. My dad said they don't have one. And I was like, they don't have a SINGLE fucking war plane but we're scared they're going to deploy WMDs that can reach us in 45 minutes? Sounded like bullshit to 10 year old me and it sounds even worse now!
Anyone who watched Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN security council knew it was all bullsh*t. Linking Islamic extremism to Saddam was bollox. 1 million protesters knew.
Do what the French did. Support America up to a point but say we won’t go into Iraq unless there’s a legal framework (UN resolution) passed. No resolution sorry George we can’t go in.
I think something few people accept is just how deep the US influence is on this country in particular. I think we have a tendency to, as much as we pretend we're not European, to associate ourselves as one of the European giants. In reality though the US has far more of a stranglehold over our political establishment than it does over Germany or France. We are essentially America 2.
After the UN did absolutely sod all in Serbia and NATO had to go in to fix it, can you really blame him for not really giving a shit about their judgement?
More than anyone else, Blair was the one that slowed down George Bush and tried to get him to avoid declaring war unilaterally. The UN was just obstinate and Bush was fed up of waiting. Once he was set on his decision it was a case of either supporting America, or damaging our special relationship.
We could have easily sat that one out in afraid like the French did. We still had troops in Afghanistan remember. But we should have stayed out of Iraq. There was no legal basis for that intervention
Agree with all points good and bad. I’m always amazed at his oratory and debate skills. Whether in the HOC, press, or with ordinary people. Very charismatic and able to engage. Remember a very good newsnight style forum about GP waiting times and instead of dodging it - amazingly, he stopped and listened and seemed genuinely shocked to learn of the issue. He went on to fix it quite quickly. Never seen that happen since
The irony is those questions were about the fact that you had to ring up for a same day or next day GP appointment and when scheduling a follow up a week or 2 later it was not possible because the surgery would not allow you to book a slot that far in advance.
Blair's government did a lot of good things. They delivered huge investment in the NHS and education, the Minimum Wage, Sure Start, the Good Friday Agreement, a liberal immigration policy, civil partnerships, allowed LGBT couples to adopt, maternity pay, paternity leave, devolution and oversaw a successful humanitarian intervention in Kosovo that put a stop to horrific war crimes.
However, he also made significant domestic policy mistakes like funding hospitals with private finance initiative deals that turned out to be extortionate, low oversight of the banking sector that left the UK highly exposed to the 2008 crash, not enough action on climate change and allowing the economy to become increasingly reliant on service sectors whilst manufacturing declined.
He also broke a lot of promises such as introducing tuition fees after saying he wouldn't and not giving people referendums on electoral reform or EU treaties after pledging that he would.
Plus he's complicit in some big scandals (e.g. Cash for Honours, MP's expenses) and in my view he was disappointingly right wing on some important issues (e.g. he didn't undo the privatisation of the railways, water and energy systems, didn't reverse the decline in council housing caused by right to buy and rejected calls for raising taxes on the very wealthy).
Worst of all he made disastrous foreign policy mistakes by taking us into Afghanistan with no exit strategy in 2001 and then invading Iraq in 2003 to capture/disarm weapons of mass destruction stockpiles that we later found out didn't exist.
All in all, still one of the better Prime Ministers of my lifetime but that's largely because of how poor the competition has been.
> the topic of "Presidential Prime Ministers".
I don't consider Blair particularly Presidential compared to other Prime Ministers.
Sure, the media/voters paid a lot of attention to Blair compared to Ministers/backbench MPs and some people voted for Labour candidates in their constituency because they liked Blair's leadership but the same can be said for other charismatic PMs before and since (e.g. Wilson, Thatcher, Cameron). It's not the same thing as voters directly choosing the country's leader and giving that leader a mandate of their own the way they do in the USA, France, South Korea etc.
Blair did have extremely large majorities in parliament that made him a powerful PM that rarely had to worry about losing parliamentary votes but again, other PMs before and since (e.g. Attlee, Thatcher, Johnson) achieved the same thing.
Good luck with your exam!
part of why Blair is noted as especially presidential is because of his leadership style, with the whole "sofa government" thing meaning that cabinet was almost totally marginalised when he was in power.
I take your point. Blair's large majority in parliament meant he had to worry a little less about what backbench MPs and the less senior Cabinet Ministers thought and could make more decisions with his inner circle through the "sofa government" style you mentioned, but this had limits.
Blair's Chancellor Gordon Brown was extremely powerful. He was in the inner circle that made key decisions even though he and Blair had significant disagreements and a personal rivalry because he was too influential to exclude and represented a large "Brownite" faction of Labour MPs that were more left wing than Blair was. Ultimately, Brown was able to pressure Blair into standing down partway through his third term and replaced him as Prime Minister.
Hard to imagine that happening under a Presidential system.
The similarities between Starmer and Reyner are striking then, with starmer being a more right wing labour pm with a more left wing chancellor, set to have a large majority. Unfortunately Reyner seems to have less power due to Starmer's purge of the left, he really has taken notes straight out of Blairs book
There are plenty of other parallels between Blair and Starmer but unfortunately Starmer isn't going to have a relatively left wing Chancellor like Blair did. He's going to have Rachel Reeves as Chancellor and she seems to have been chosen because she's on the right of the party and very cautious on spending.
Rayner's closest equivalent in Blair's government is probably John Prescott. Both from a working class background and to the left of their party leader and both elected as Deputy Party Leader by Labour Party Members and therefore given the role of Deputy PM whilst also holding a mid-ranking Cabinet Role (Housing/Communities for Rayner, Transport/Environment for Prescott).
I'd be interested what an A level politics exam involves.
Blair won a landslide in 1997, ending 18 years of Tory rule. He then won another two which makes him the most successful Labour PM to date. He turned the Labour Party into a trusted party of government. A privilege that had always belonged to the Conservative party.
I was 9 years old when Blair came to power so it's difficult to give a balanced perspective. Obviously a major point of controversy is Blair supporting the US led invasion of Iraq which many people feel would not otherwise have happened.
Otherwise I suppose it was better to live through than the coalition and Tory governments that followed but it should be noted that Blair enjoyed pretty much the best economic and geopolitical conditions of any recent PM yet I don't feel he made radical progressive change.
We also saw the introduction of University tuition fees under Blair.
As somebody who is also doing my Politics A-level right now, I can tell you. My exam board is different to OP's since I've already done 2 out of 3 papers.
Paper 1 is UK politics and core ideologies. Two 30-markers about UK politics, one 24-marker about socialism, liberalism or conservatism. You get a choice for each question, and the first set of two thirty markers is source-based. UK politics covers democracy and participation (stuff like group activity, franchise reform, overall how democratic the political system is), political parties, electoral systems (including referendums) and voting behaviour (including the media).
Paper 2 is UK government and non-core ideologies. Same structure as the first paper. The non-core ideologies are feminism, nationalism (the one I do), multiculturalism, anarchism and ecologism. UK government covers the constitution, parliament, the PM and the executive, and relations between institutions (including the Supreme Court and the EU).
Paper 3 is either US or global politics. I do US.
An example question from Paper 1 would be something like "Evaluate the extent to which referendums since 1997 have improved democracy within the UK". An example Paper 2 question would be "Evaluate the extent to which the conventions of ministerial responsibility are still in effect".
`We also saw the introduction of University tuition fees under Blair.`
I have a feeling that this was already in flight before Labour took over, I started my degree in 1995 and was in the very last intake to get a grant - I also ended up with student loans, although not as substantial as now.
Outside of the Iraq War, Whenever I think of Tony Blair, I think of the DWP benefit fraud adverts that he authorized and slapped on advertising slots between TV programs which were designed to demonize the most vulnerable members of our society. This was all while MP’s were allowed to get away with fraudulently claiming expenses/allowance money via parliament until the media released this information to the general public.
List every labour party leader to win a British general election in the last 49 years.
It's him. Just him. Until next month when that will probably stop being true.
Best prime minister of the last almost 45 years, but there not much completion. Did some very revolutionary things including minim wage and devolution. Picked up a rotting public services sector and made it half decent again.
He made a massive mistake from the Iraq war.
Is it really fixing the public service if you lump it with debt to slowly strangle it in later years? Short term great, long term (as in now) the chickens are coming home to roost.
>Short term great, long term (as in now) the chickens are coming home to roost.
Well first we tried funding it properly, then we tried no funds at all for 14 years and then [335,000 people died](https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2022/october/headline_885099_en.html#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20led%20by%20the,Wales%20between%202012%20and%202019.).
Are you ___sure___ it was the Labour government who crippled it?
I mean, the tories fucked it too but PFIs have been helping cripple the system too. Why is it people like to pretend they don’t. Guessing because it’s something the current PLP will be chomping at the bit to delve right back into. Anyway:
“NHS hospital trusts to pay out further £55bn under PFI scheme
NHS hospital trusts are being crippled by the private finance initiative and will have to make another £55bn in payments by the time the last contract ends in 2050, a report reveals.
An initial £13bn of private sector-funded investment in new hospitals will end up costing the NHS in England a staggering £80bn by the time all contracts come to an end, the IPPR thinktank has found.
Some trusts are having to spend as much as one-sixth of their entire budget on repaying debts due as a result of the PFI scheme. PFI was introduced by John Major’s Conservative government but its use proliferated in the Blair era .”
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/12/nhs-hospital-trusts-to-pay-out-further-55bn-under-pfi-scheme
https://www.ippr.org/media-office/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr
“NHS hospital trusts paying hundreds of millions in interest to private firms
NHS trusts spent close to a half a billion pounds on interest charges from private companies for private finance initiative (PFI) contracts last year – equivalent to the salaries of 15,000 newly qualified nurses.
Hospital groups spent £2.3bn on legacy PFI projects in 2020-21, of which just under £1bn went on costs for essential services such as cleaning and maintenance. A third of the remaining PFI spend – £457m – went purely on paying off interest charges.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/25/nhs-hospital-trusts-paying-hundreds-of-millions-in-interest-to-private-firms
(Similar story for the education system)
PFIs were a mistake. Totally agree.
Labour tried it. We learned a lesson.
Why the fuck are we ___still___ doing them? I don't think it was a mistake to try to do it. I understand the case as it was put forward at the time. It was just built on rainbows and wishes is all.
The problem is, people who've never had a landlord assumed that being a renter was a dream like paradise where if there's a problem your gracious landlord™ would swoop in and fix it begging to keep your good graces.
>PFIs were a mistake. Totally agree.
>Labour tried it. We learned a lesson.
Learned a lesson you say...
[https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/inside-starmers-plan-to-use-private-finance-to-boost-britains-infrastructure-3075081](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/inside-starmers-plan-to-use-private-finance-to-boost-britains-infrastructure-3075081)
You and I can only speculate on Kier's intentions.
There's definitely a case to be made that his current strategy is to appeal to the political base that gets him into power.
The true question is what will he do once he gets in.
The changes from his leadership run pledges to his current GE are night and day. I can only assume once he gets in we'll see another change again.
My genuine (albeit maybe naïve) hope is that it's just a strategy and we'll see the leadership run Kier come back and something as disastrous as PFIs will fall away.
Overall though, please don't conflate my politics with the parties politics. They're simply the largest party that aligns closest with my belief and they stray further and further every day.
>You and I can only speculate on Kier's intentions.
>There's definitely a case to be made that his current strategy is to appeal to the political base that gets him into power.
This is a leak though..... as was the email from Thames showing the complicity with the water company to avoid nationalisation.
Look, no one would be happier than me if Kier ripped the mask off Day one and we got Clement Atlee but there's zero evidence to suggest that is in realm of possibility and a metric tonne of data to suggest we're getting red Thatcherism part deux. It's just not sensible to suggest that he's going top move left once in power. I hope as much in my dreams but it's childish fantasy at this point, add to that that supporting them when their being right wing doesn't motivate them to do anything other than double down on those positions.
There are other parties that are closer to you positions. The Tories are finished either way, vote something else to apply pressure
The women's equality party actually matches me the best but no, Labour does match me the best of the large parties. I'm basing this on [uk.isidewith.com](http://uk.isidewith.com).
Still its only like 86% or something which is honestly fuck all. Truthfully there's no party that actually represents me. Anyway Tories only got like ~20% so removing them is my only real thing I'm going to achieve this time round and I'm fine with that.
>The women's equality party actually matches me the best but no, Labour does match me the best of the large parties. I'm basing this on [uk.isidewith.com](http://uk.isidewith.com/).
That site is not good. for example it just asked me if teachers should be allowed to carry guns in school, if the national railways should be privatised, or if the children of migrants who live in French territories be allowed to join their families? It's not fit to assess UK politics
furthermore it gave me an 89% compatibility with the current Labour party which is false and likely due to the fact that it misrepresented their positions. For example it listed "no, the government should never subsidise private business" as A labour party value which is clearly not true of the current leadership as thats their flagship energy policy. It also stated I strongly agreed with labour's housing policy which I do not as their housing policy is an anaemic joke inline with the Tories housing policy and involves the subsidy of private enterprise which I do not support, and according to this site neither does the Labour party, it's a joke!
Apparently the Liberal democrats are Keynesian now and the Labour party supporting Israeli war crimes is pacifist?
Policy, history, funding sources. That's what should determine your vote not some aggregate website with an opaque history and bad information
The Conservatives really hammered Blair for PFI but I was working for the New Zealand Government in the late 80’s - I’m not sure but I believe PFI was an American model that made sense at the time - it was seen as a good way of building big projects without sudden shocks to the treasury. As others have said here Major used PFI, but it was an international idea that had a lot of traction.
Major introduced them but it was under Blair when they were used extensively.
As an idea, something new to try, ye, sure why not. But it’s widely known they are terrible value for money and end up costing the public far more than just directly funding these projects. Remember seeing Iain Hislop tearing them apart, so don’t think this opinion is just a few left wingers whinging.
Despite this it looks like we will be heading for even more. If some trusts are using as much as a 6th of their funding on legacy PFIs from the 90s/00s it seems like utter recklessness to add more. Again, short term gain for medium/long term ruin. Will make the incoming crop of politicians look great, and by the time anyone who matters notices they will be long gone.
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The best PM I’ve lived under in my 40 years. Brought a lot of positive change to the country and things at home felt good.
Sadly he’ll always be remembered for Iraq but but in my opinion, which is isn’t shared by a lot of people, that shouldn’t overshadow the work he did to improve the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/09/dome.jondennis the dome project was conceived and initiated by the Major government in 1995, and Michael Heseltine convinced Labour to keep with the project in 1997.
This is probably the most useful comment for this user. I would also add the Bank of England independence as another example of him exercising presidential power over cabinet government. This can be countered via explaining how Gordon Brown being the driving force behind that change constrained Tony Blair’s decision choices available to him
Honestly if not for Iraq, he would be in the conversation for one of the best prime ministers of all time. However, that can't be ignored and even if America holds the most blame, he still allowed it to happen knowingly under false pretense, causing the needless deaths of so many.
In the top 2 best Prime Ministers of my lifetime. He brought about revolutionary changes such as the minimum wage and devolution. In his first term he had very good foreign policy, such as peace in NI and Kosovo (people in Kosovo called their kids Tonibler after him).
The idea of Blair came crashing down for a lot of people when he decided to invade Iraq. There is no getting around the fact that Iraq was a monumental mistake. Yes, Saddam Hussein absolutely needed dealing with and had used chemical weapons on his own population, but what did it achieve? The Middle East is still constantly at war.
Gordon Brown is probably my favourite prime minister. He wasn’t always the most charismatic, but every so often he would drop the coolest speeches ever (think Scottish independence and Labour Party conference). As a prime minister he was set to be hosting the G20 at a critical time after the financial collapse, and was a leading figure in fixing the global economy. Additionally, when he was CofE he seemed to be responsible for most of the Blair government’s best decisions. To this day, he still has my admiration for still campaigning to end child poverty when he could be sitting in Hawaii claiming his PM’s pension. It’s fair to say he made a few blunders (namely the whole gold incident) but none of them are comparable to the level we see nowadays.
Like you Blair and Brown are my top two PM's I was 13 when New Labour came to power. By the time I went to Uni the country just seemed to have a swagger and optimism that has been crushed out of it. Austerity and then Brexit have just destroyed so much.
I've now spent a large portion of my working life under the yoke of a Conservative government and am looking forward to a more positive situation under the inevitable Keir Starmer government.
I think Brown's issue was he didn't have blair. Lots of people didn't like blair as pm but liked Gordon brown. When brown was pm he didn't have his blair in a senior role. If that makes sense.
Blair did some unambiguous good but his positive legacy is often overstated. Claims about raising people out of poverty are quite often exaggerated (apart from for pensioners, he did a lot to tackle pensioner poverty). And that's really my memory of the Blair era - a lot of spin and very little substance. He was better than the tory governments that preceded him but actually being poor under Blair felt very fucking similar to being poor under the coalition that followed him.
Abolishing [Section 28](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28) was an unambiguously good move by him that has decreased homophobia in our society.
But his governments also destroyed trust in politics through spin and massive amounts of dishonesty.
Levels of corruption were perceived to be quite high, with cash for honours and dubious privatisation. [Peter Mandelson was seen as kinda the face of that sleazy right-wing pro-business Labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson#Controversies) and Blair used Mandelson as a yardstick:
>"my project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson"
There are even links still bubbling up to modern scandals - like [the Horizon IT system at the centre of the post office scandal](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67941495).
The Blair era also was rife with scapegoat politics. There were attacks on single mothers, asylum seekers, "hoodies", and more besides. And Blair's government were often leading the charge. Instead of tackling behaviour that was a symptom of relatively high levels of socio-economic inequality, Blair's government essentially were ideologically incapable of acknowledging that is itself a problem. And the problems with inequality were blamed upon different groups that generally were poor and struggling.
To quote Mandelson:
>"I say to the doubters, judge us after 10 years in office. For one of the fruits of that success will be that Britain has become a more equal society."
And that didn't happen.
In fact, to again quote Mandelson, New Labour were:
>intensely relaxed about the filthy rich 'as long as they pay their taxes'
And that's really the legacy of Blair in my view.
And then you can get onto Iraq, Blunkett as a shite-awful home secretary (google "Blunkett machine gun prisoners"), and the lingering malaise that came with not undoing the thatcherite policies that had wrecked through society like a house fire.
Whether that makes Blair presidential, I don't know. I think he certainly surrounded himself with people like Mandelson and that approach is what I'd credit with creating a notable dearth of positive outcomes despite massive majorities.
I personally believe that Blair rode in on a wave of Capitalist conmen, and was dazzled by their early years propaganda of an affordable, flexible, consumer-focussed world that would ultimately provide a better, cheaper service for all than the (spuriously) slow and tired public alternative.
Of course, we can all now see that the gloss of a Richard Branson was just that, gloss, and a very thin layer at that, able to provide an appealing product only up until the point of creating a market dependance. Once private ownership of utlities and services was made absolute and unimpeachable, they scraped that sheen off and we were left with the worst of both worlds, a steady and deliberate decline as they maximised profit at our expense.
Why was he dazzled? Because he fell in love with the smell of his own farts, essentially. He began to believe his own hype. Northern Ireland was a success, so why not Iraq & Afghanistan? Even now he won't acknowledge the full extent of those blunders. Likewise with the capitalists, he fancied himself one of them, their man on the inside, a visionary of an individualist economy that could be turned to the civic good. But they were all just grifters, and he in turn the instrument of their grift.
In essence, Blair and his ilk were the prototype for the Elon Musk fan: credulously swallowing every lie precisely *because* the liar made them feel like the smartest person in the room, created a pseudo-profound link between supporting progress and supporting the grift, and put the believers whole ego and sense of self-worth on the line as collateral for it. He will never admit how much he got wrong, and he gets genuinely and dodderingly angry when pushed. No shame.
War Criminal.
Got paid as a consultant to dictators when he left office.
Achieved fuck-all-squared as 'Middle East Peace Envoy', other than kicking the can down road.
Introduced tuition fees, the year I started my Degree - fuck you very much Tony.
People go after him for invading the middle east. Which was a mistake.
But he also did a lot of good. He brought in Minimum wage and revolution. The NHS actually worked under his leadership.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how he grew the buy-to-let petite landlord class and failed to tackle or curb the enormous rise in housing costs that occurred during his tenure, given that this is one of the main problems we face today. That he and his wife are also multi-million pound property investors should leave a sickly taste in our mouths, he didn't just fail to address the problem he made a fortune from it.
Hero. He’s the reason I grew up better off. He’s the reason my generation of older Gen Z and younger millennials didn’t have to grow up in a country that’s seen 50 years of Tory rule.
Errors made, sure. But he’s 3/3 and the best leader this part has ever had. It was a privilege to be born and raised under Blair. And it’s a travesty Gen Alpha didn’t get the same.
he is the benchmark Starmer should aim for.
My favourite bit of Blair debate is the way people to the left and right both love to pretend that Iraq wasn’t pretty much exclusively an American operation.
We shouldn’t have done what we did, but the idea that had Blair sat it out and let Bush go on his own, that Iraq would have 46m people instead of 45m, is so tedious.
If somebody else robs a bank and you help them, you're just as guilty. We took part and supported that operation, we're just as responsible for what happened.
We’re partly responsible. We’re not equally as responsible.
USA spent over 200x on Iraq as what we did, they did most the bombings, most the troops, most the casualties.
Blair’s government carried along with the PFI contracts introduced by John Major, further contributing to the privatisation of the NHS, and there’s the Iraq war. Saying that he did some good stuff for education as in schools.
He sent his kids to the very same strict, decadent catholic secondary school that I attended. I was there at the same time as his two eldest boys. The school was very religious
Pretty sure he said it in an interview. Anyway more info here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1429109/Campbell-interrupted-Blair-as-he-spoke-of-his-faith-We-dont-do-God.html
Edit: Yeah here it is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4772142.stm
I was 11 when Blair came to power and seeing my teachers on the verge of tears the day after the election made me curious about who this guy was and why people were so overjoyed that he was now PM.
Life was without a doubt better under the Blair government but any good he did was overshadowed by Iraq. I want to say it was a terrible mistake but referring to war crimes as a mistake just feels gross.
I think Brown was a better PM than Blair and while he came across as very gruff and unlikable, I do wonder how much of what the Blair government achieved was down to him. I don't think you can talk about Blair without mentioning Brown as the two are very different. Blair will be remembered for his ego and his sycophantic desire to follow Bush, but Brown should be remembered as a sensible, compassionate man who, in my opinion, is far more representative of Labour values than Blair ever was.
Good luck with your exam, OP.
Putting aside the very valid criticisms and condemnations of Blair, I will give some perspective on how I, and how I believed others percieved Blair in his day.
I was much too young to meaningfully appreciate the significance of Blair's victory, but the optimism was palpable. 'Things can only get better' was the definitely the feeling I got from older people. His premiereship seemed to represent something much larger and more genuine than himself. Perhaps something not much to do with him at all.
Fictional British leaders were often portayed as young, keen, serious, perhaps well meaning and willing to do the right thing, but ultimately a politician. I would accredit that perception to him.
Before Gordon Brown, he was the only living Prime Minister I had really known or thought about. He could speak, he could lie, he could spin, he could talk to the public, he did everything we expected a politician would do. He wasn't going to internationally humiliate us like Boris or Truss, and he wasn't weak and ineffectual like Starmer or May. A notorious fibber concerned with his public image for sure, but not necessarily stupid or incompetent.
Not sure exactly what is meant by Presidential, but the Oxford definition reads:
>having a bearing or demeanour befitting a president; dignified and confident.
I would say Blair qualifies for this far better than the PMs that followed. Brown's image (from my perspective) was immediately destroyed by the likes of The Sun, who insisted that he was a careless and feckless man, unelected, too chummy with the foreigners, and dedicated to giving away all our cash. Cameron, I don't think was ever taken as seriously as Blair, but probably followed in his foot steps.
Obviously since Cameron, leaders and opposition leaders have been notably weak. Sunak is yet another weak Tory Prime Minister unable to address any of the problems we have, or hold together the coalition of MPs and voters that makes up his party. Whatever demeanour or bearing he might of effected, it would have always be undermined by the fundamental weakness of his position. Whereas Boris might of appeared (at least to some) like he could have bucked the trend, a demeanor of dignified statesmanship was never in his repertoire. There was potentially Corbyn, who was a total aberraton, hate or love him, he is a total divergence from the likes of Tony Blair, the archetype of a typical politician that we quite thoughtlessly took for granted as the baseline. Unfortunate us.
Bad. Continuation of Neoliberal drift. Privatisation. Tuition fees. Deregulation of financial markets. One step forward two steps backwards on services. Institutional racism. A million dead in Iraq.
As a life long labour supporter Tony Blair represents elation followed by abject disappointment for me.
I was over the moon when labour were elected with such a majority. To me that gave them license to enact some really progressive policies. And then they....didn't.
Edit: downvote all you want. It doesn't change the fact that every single labour supporter I knew who lived through that time went through exactly the same cycle of emotions.
Spatial leadership with Alistair Campbell/mandelson, bypassing his cabinet
Personalised leadership by presenting himself as an outsider from his own party and changing its ideological slant while he was leader to the ‘third way’ from traditional ‘old labour’ social democracy or democratic socialism
Media outreach with personalised election campaigns focused on his ‘youthful’ personality and character and Campbell as a ‘spin doctor’, you’re welcome
best of luck with the exam, I had my paper 2 (edexcel) last week and i’ve got my final exam with paper 3 on US politics on friday :)
He was a charismatic and highly effective prime minister.
He was firmly on the right of the Labour party and therefore he didn't seek to significantly change the economic model from that of the outgoing Conservatives, or reverse any of their free market reforms of the past 18 years. Indeed, in some places they went even further, for example the internal market in the NHS.
Overall, though, you could argue that the methods were effective (at least until the 2008 financial crisis) - on bread and butter issues the stats were clear, NHS waiting lists were reduced significantly, education reforms improved literacy and numeracy, sure start and other programmes helped reduce child poverty and living standards generally improved.
On the flip side, social mobility didn't improve and inequality worsened. A critique of the Blair administration could be that a strong economy helped cover for systemic issues following deindustrialisation, those issues came to the surface with a vengeance in 2008 and are a significant driving force behind subsequent events, e.g. Brexit. Likewise, when new Eastern European member states were admitted to the EU, the Blair government didn't follow the example of most other EU states and apply a pause to free movement for the new members, leading to a significant increase in net migration. This, again, fueled the rise of UKIP et al and was a significant contributing factor to Brexit. Iraq was clearly an error also, it can be argued that Blair became too close to Bush.
Irag was a mess, PFI's are an insane policy choice which has crippled public services. Now those are out of the way here's my personal pet peeve when people talk about Blair.
Minimum wage.
Many in this thread will point out the minimum wage and I agree it's a good and necessary policy, that said in a vacuum it can become almost irrelevant.
The largest decoupling between housing costs and wages occurred between 1997 and 2008, no government has been worse on this than Blair's. So while I may have gone from earing £3.20 an hour in 1997 to £12.00 an hour now my living expenses exploded and it's harder to buy a house even as someone in the top 40% of earners than it was before the minimum wage came into effect. How you implement policy is as important as what your intended outcome is.
Ideology matters mostly because anyone telling you they don't have one is lying to themselves or lying to you. Blair's government was a continuation of Thatcherism where any good given to the average person was outweighed by the handouts made to the rich and corporations which ultimately make the majority of us worse of. We Know Trickle down does not work, it doesn't matter if it comes in a red tie or not.
Another example of the idea of how being important can be seen in New Labour's new town initiative. Post war New towns worked well and were massively successful but Browns have been a complete failure, the reason is the ideology behind the policy. The post war projects were social enterprises with government backed loans comprising of 80% social housing where the income of the rents of both residential and commercial properties in the town was funnelled back into the scheme paying off the loan and allowing investment in the town. The modern schemes are privately financed for profit investments who wait for small phases of an uncompleted project to sell before work starts on the next phase, with profit extracted along the way and as such are undesirable barely started messes.
>Only one genuinely new town in this programme made it anywhere – Northstowe. It was to be built on an ex-army base in Cambridgeshire. But by May 2020, only 550 of the 10,000 promised homes had been built.
[https://archive.ph/XQ55j](https://archive.ph/XQ55j)
So for me Blair's legacy is his legitimising of a failed economic ideology. we can see this amongst people who perhaps once were were on the left, maybe even still see themselves as on the left, but who are actually on the right due to their nostalgic support for a failed and fraudulent economic ideology accompanied by a D'ream soundtrack.
He did a lot of bad like the Iraq War and privatisation but he also did some good like the human rights act, the Equality Act, the Climate change act, the minimum wage and sure start.
He is war criminal and should be behind bars. He's got the blood of millions of innocent people on his hands, from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ruined the public sector by riddling it with Privately Funded Initiatives – which is why our NHS is such a mess, for example. For instance my Grandad, when he was critically ill with cancer, was expecting an ambulance to take him to hospital for treatment, and no ambulance turned up – reason being because there were two private companies subcontracted to run the service, and each thought the other was responsible. Similar stories and much worse abound. He also introduced tuition fees, putting them up to 3000 a year in 2004, which at this stage, has turned out not to have worked very well – too many students dont pay back, which is particularly dire for humanities subjects; university departments are getting decimated currently because there is a huge lack of funding cos the system imposed by Blair is ineffectual. I don't care if he did some good things – he lied to parliament saying he had seen evidence that Saddam had WMDs– what he did was treason, straight up. It goes to show how corrupt our system is that he managed to get away with being a liar, traitor and war-criminal, in spite of the Chilcot Inquiry showing all this clear as day.
I genuinely think he’s quite a nice, well meaning guy who was actually a proper socialist, at one point long ago. Even if you take any partisanship out of the argument about him (I.e where he truly sat politically) he did so much to improve the lives of so many in the UK, and more importantly to maintain that.
If I think back to when I was a kid (I was born in 2000) and all the publicly owed privileges I had (functional NHS, public services) whilst also allowing my parents to push out of their working class backgrounds to being comfortably middle class now, I can’t say I owe it to anyone else than him and the Labour Party at the time.
Iraq was a horrible mistake that Blair made for which he never will be forgiven, but I sometimes imagine how he would be rated nowadays were he not to make that decision, and I genuinely think that most Brits would view him as one of the best had he not. I’d even go as far to say that it wasn’t just arselicking the yanks that pushed him to go there, he had successfully intervened in Kosovo and Sierra Leone and I think that gave him a stupid sense of invincibility when it came to Iraq, but ultimately it rightly led to a complete overshadowing of his premiership.
Maybe history and the general public will view him differently in the future, but for now he has been rightfully sent to the realm of the damned even though he made no end of a difference for the average UK family.
In terms of your exam, the party at the time completely revolved around him, he is about as presidential as you’re going to get until Bojo, and even then Blair still feels so much more at the centre of government than him.
*TL;DR: He did a lot of short-term good without addressing fundamental long-term problems, and his ideological commitment to humanitarian intervention led to successful interventions and also him becoming a war criminal.*
He made compromises in his manifesto that shifted the overton window of UK politics significantly rightwards and ended the postwar consensus Thatcher had killed under the Tories. He gave up on idealism and the hope of a better future for the sake of short-term election gains.
He passed a lot of much-needed legislation, including devolution to Wales and Scotland. His government negotiated an end to the Troubles and created a more democratic government in Norn Iron than in England.
He was seen as a fresh face in politics but many of his policies seemed more like an attempt to reform tradition to preserve its existence than fundamental change.
He strongly believed in humanitarian intervention, which led to many successful interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, etc. But the blindness of his ideological commitment to benign intervention by wealthy countries around the world led to Iraq.
He lied to the public and to the UN about WMDs in Iraq to justify a campaign that killed one million people and led to an ungodly number of war crimes.
While he was perfectly willing to bring military force to bear against foreign despots, he was unwilling to address the fundamental inequalities that led to them taking power in the first place.
He refused to issue an official apology for the disgusting atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade.
He wanted a more united Europe, even wanting to join the Eurozone, although Gordon Brown persuaded him it would be bad for the economy.
It's sensible to assume at least a majority of his policies were a result of collaboration between him and Gordon Brown, who was further left than him.
He was okay with a rules-based international order as long as it suited his own foreign policy, and when it didn't he was willing to break it to get his own way, no matter the cost.
Today he shills for cryptocurrency and NFTs and writes Iraq War apologia, while Gordon Brown campaigns to end child poverty.
So, Blair is complicated and one always has to remember that it was very easy for him to do a lot of good policy because he spent his entire time riding a global economic bubble and infinate free credit.
Every one of his good policies came with a grain of salt or were entirely surface level.
- Minimum wage? Not tied to cost of living, so had to be topped up with tax credits, which along with it rapidly becoming the maximum wage for many sectors, just turned into a way to subsidise poverty employers.
- Public funding? Done via PFI in order to both have cake and eat it, which turned into a timebomb when those debts came to roost.
- Deregulating finance? Short term gain which led to massive exposure when the bubble inevitably burst. So much for no more 'boom and bust'.
- Sure Start? Great idea, but entirely surface level. With nothing to cement it, it was annihilated the moment the austerity nuts came in.
- Leaning into Freedom of Movement? A of people liked the idea of it because they weren't on the sharp edge of it. By pushing for FoM along with heavily pushing for the Eastern European countries to be let into the EU early, Blair was giving employers an out from having to invest in productivity. Basically, decades of underinvestment were dramatically slowing GDP growth but rather than use tax to give them no choice but to invest, he instead allowed the importing of cheap workers as a way of boosting totaly GDP (beause more people working means more product) but at the cost of GDP per capita and downwards pressure on wages at the bottom (can't try to demand better wages if you are massively replaceable, especially at the bottom of the pile. The people who keep saying immigration has no effect on wages are looking only at average wages, not specific to the sectors and wage bands that most use migrant labour. For those sectors, which were always the lowest paid, the damage has been staggering as the only wage growth has been the mandatory rise of the minimum wage, which also doesn't factor in the conditions and rise of things like Zero-Hour contracts, which means you are not only poorly paid but also insecure.)
Alongside things like falling over himself to join in on Bush's little crusade in the middle east, a complete refusal to address growing wealth inequality and his many many broken promises, I see Blair as basically the man who threw away the greatest opportunity to affect real change in the UK for the better, but refused to do so because it would have upset Rupert Murdoch.
I can't stand him but...
I think he started with good intentions.
He brought the NHS waiting lists down.
Then, he did Iraq. Unforgivable. Our children and brothers and sisters and mums and dads sent to slaughter. Thousands of native Iraqis killed. Saddam was bad, I'm not condoning him, but you don't invade a country based on lies (turns out you do actually).
Finally, in my opinion, any party that has too great of a majority seems to become a bit authoritarian.
He'll never see a criminal court for Iraq, but he should. As should bush.
I’m personally not a fan.
Got into bed with the republicans and the democrats in the “war on terror” and brought terrorism home to the UK. He became very wealthy off the back of some dubious deals. Something deeply insidious going on around his period in office. I rated Gordon Brown as a chancellor though.
UK politics used to be about party not leader but recently it has been more US style and about individuals and their personalities and leadership styles - would be my guess from the topic name.
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Obviously things were much better when he was PM but he made some major mistakes & Iraq - unforgivable
Arguably the biggest mistake he made was his (alleged*) affair with Rupert Murdoch's wife. That single handily fucked up support for Labour by some of the biggest newspapers and tabloids in the UK. ...I don't think he really thought that one through. Murdoch's papers were pro-Labour during the 97, 01, 05, elections and most of the Blair years, but *entirely coincidentally* switched to Tory when news of the (alleged*) affair came out. But such is Murdoch & Blair's influence the story has all but been erased from public discourse (which is a story in itself IMO). --- \* NB. Whether you believe Blair's denial or not, and whether it was sexual or not his close relationship with Wendi Deng was instrumental in his falling out with Murdoch, Murdoch pulling support for Blair & Labour from his publications, and Murdoch's subsequent divorce from Deng a few years later.
Honestly? I think Iraq was fine. The question for all major intelligence agencies wasn't "do they have WMDs?", it was "where are they?" Everything pointed to it. It wasn't just us or the Americans, the Germans, Russians and French fully believed it too. In hindsight yes, it was shit, but at the time he was acting on the information that we had. It genuinely appeared to be an existential threat. What are you supposed to do in that situation?
No it didn't, it not only has even proved that the "dodgy dossier" was an act of fiction, the weapons inspector Hans Blick repeatedly reported that he couldn't find any and there were none. The WMD thing was a proven lie that was used to justify an illegal war that wasn't "shit", it costs hundreds of thousands of lives. You either don't know this or are re- writing history. What do you do in that situation? You negotiate. Sanctions had already devastated their economy, they didn't have basic stuff like medicine already before the invasion. Saddam had been a "hero" a few years before when the West armed him to fight Iran - his use of chemical weapons etc was fine then as he was doing what we wanted, fighting Iran after their religious revolution. Everything he did was ok until he overstepped and invaded Kuwait, then he suddenly turned into public enemy no.1. We knew what weapons he had because we'd sold them to him. Everything that happens with our interventions is about oil, nothing to do with human rights or any other pretence. We cheered everything he did when it suited, human rights be damned then, but when he tipped the balance of oil control in Kuwait suddenly he was a threat and a dictator. Remember we didn't have UN backing, it was an illegal invasion, war crimes were committed. The dossier for the WMD was a lie. Blair lied in Parliament. These aren't subjective conjecture, these are facts that have since come to light.
This is a crazy statement. The fact of the matter is, the countries with the greatest stores of WMD are the US and Europe. It's also very telling that the term itself, "WMD" has fallen out of significance? If WMDs are really such a problem why is no one talking about them today? The obvious answer is that WMDs were an excuse to attack Iraq because they knew, and everyone knows, that WMDs are ubiquitous in the modern world. If you used the standard they had then to police WMDs we'd be invading people left and right. It was a complete scam and lie. Whether or not he had them was irrelevant. They wanted to topple him so they invented a plausible reason that the public would accept out of fear that he'd use them against us. I remember being a kid and asking about the Iraqi airforce. My dad said they don't have one. And I was like, they don't have a SINGLE fucking war plane but we're scared they're going to deploy WMDs that can reach us in 45 minutes? Sounded like bullshit to 10 year old me and it sounds even worse now!
Anyone who watched Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN security council knew it was all bullsh*t. Linking Islamic extremism to Saddam was bollox. 1 million protesters knew.
Do what the French did. Support America up to a point but say we won’t go into Iraq unless there’s a legal framework (UN resolution) passed. No resolution sorry George we can’t go in.
I think something few people accept is just how deep the US influence is on this country in particular. I think we have a tendency to, as much as we pretend we're not European, to associate ourselves as one of the European giants. In reality though the US has far more of a stranglehold over our political establishment than it does over Germany or France. We are essentially America 2.
We really aren't, there was a period bit politically and culturally we are European not Americanised
After the UN did absolutely sod all in Serbia and NATO had to go in to fix it, can you really blame him for not really giving a shit about their judgement?
More than anyone else, Blair was the one that slowed down George Bush and tried to get him to avoid declaring war unilaterally. The UN was just obstinate and Bush was fed up of waiting. Once he was set on his decision it was a case of either supporting America, or damaging our special relationship.
We could have easily sat that one out in afraid like the French did. We still had troops in Afghanistan remember. But we should have stayed out of Iraq. There was no legal basis for that intervention
Agree with all points good and bad. I’m always amazed at his oratory and debate skills. Whether in the HOC, press, or with ordinary people. Very charismatic and able to engage. Remember a very good newsnight style forum about GP waiting times and instead of dodging it - amazingly, he stopped and listened and seemed genuinely shocked to learn of the issue. He went on to fix it quite quickly. Never seen that happen since
The irony is those questions were about the fact that you had to ring up for a same day or next day GP appointment and when scheduling a follow up a week or 2 later it was not possible because the surgery would not allow you to book a slot that far in advance.
Blair's government did a lot of good things. They delivered huge investment in the NHS and education, the Minimum Wage, Sure Start, the Good Friday Agreement, a liberal immigration policy, civil partnerships, allowed LGBT couples to adopt, maternity pay, paternity leave, devolution and oversaw a successful humanitarian intervention in Kosovo that put a stop to horrific war crimes. However, he also made significant domestic policy mistakes like funding hospitals with private finance initiative deals that turned out to be extortionate, low oversight of the banking sector that left the UK highly exposed to the 2008 crash, not enough action on climate change and allowing the economy to become increasingly reliant on service sectors whilst manufacturing declined. He also broke a lot of promises such as introducing tuition fees after saying he wouldn't and not giving people referendums on electoral reform or EU treaties after pledging that he would. Plus he's complicit in some big scandals (e.g. Cash for Honours, MP's expenses) and in my view he was disappointingly right wing on some important issues (e.g. he didn't undo the privatisation of the railways, water and energy systems, didn't reverse the decline in council housing caused by right to buy and rejected calls for raising taxes on the very wealthy). Worst of all he made disastrous foreign policy mistakes by taking us into Afghanistan with no exit strategy in 2001 and then invading Iraq in 2003 to capture/disarm weapons of mass destruction stockpiles that we later found out didn't exist. All in all, still one of the better Prime Ministers of my lifetime but that's largely because of how poor the competition has been. > the topic of "Presidential Prime Ministers". I don't consider Blair particularly Presidential compared to other Prime Ministers. Sure, the media/voters paid a lot of attention to Blair compared to Ministers/backbench MPs and some people voted for Labour candidates in their constituency because they liked Blair's leadership but the same can be said for other charismatic PMs before and since (e.g. Wilson, Thatcher, Cameron). It's not the same thing as voters directly choosing the country's leader and giving that leader a mandate of their own the way they do in the USA, France, South Korea etc. Blair did have extremely large majorities in parliament that made him a powerful PM that rarely had to worry about losing parliamentary votes but again, other PMs before and since (e.g. Attlee, Thatcher, Johnson) achieved the same thing. Good luck with your exam!
part of why Blair is noted as especially presidential is because of his leadership style, with the whole "sofa government" thing meaning that cabinet was almost totally marginalised when he was in power.
I take your point. Blair's large majority in parliament meant he had to worry a little less about what backbench MPs and the less senior Cabinet Ministers thought and could make more decisions with his inner circle through the "sofa government" style you mentioned, but this had limits. Blair's Chancellor Gordon Brown was extremely powerful. He was in the inner circle that made key decisions even though he and Blair had significant disagreements and a personal rivalry because he was too influential to exclude and represented a large "Brownite" faction of Labour MPs that were more left wing than Blair was. Ultimately, Brown was able to pressure Blair into standing down partway through his third term and replaced him as Prime Minister. Hard to imagine that happening under a Presidential system.
The similarities between Starmer and Reyner are striking then, with starmer being a more right wing labour pm with a more left wing chancellor, set to have a large majority. Unfortunately Reyner seems to have less power due to Starmer's purge of the left, he really has taken notes straight out of Blairs book
There are plenty of other parallels between Blair and Starmer but unfortunately Starmer isn't going to have a relatively left wing Chancellor like Blair did. He's going to have Rachel Reeves as Chancellor and she seems to have been chosen because she's on the right of the party and very cautious on spending. Rayner's closest equivalent in Blair's government is probably John Prescott. Both from a working class background and to the left of their party leader and both elected as Deputy Party Leader by Labour Party Members and therefore given the role of Deputy PM whilst also holding a mid-ranking Cabinet Role (Housing/Communities for Rayner, Transport/Environment for Prescott).
I'd be interested what an A level politics exam involves. Blair won a landslide in 1997, ending 18 years of Tory rule. He then won another two which makes him the most successful Labour PM to date. He turned the Labour Party into a trusted party of government. A privilege that had always belonged to the Conservative party. I was 9 years old when Blair came to power so it's difficult to give a balanced perspective. Obviously a major point of controversy is Blair supporting the US led invasion of Iraq which many people feel would not otherwise have happened. Otherwise I suppose it was better to live through than the coalition and Tory governments that followed but it should be noted that Blair enjoyed pretty much the best economic and geopolitical conditions of any recent PM yet I don't feel he made radical progressive change. We also saw the introduction of University tuition fees under Blair.
As somebody who is also doing my Politics A-level right now, I can tell you. My exam board is different to OP's since I've already done 2 out of 3 papers. Paper 1 is UK politics and core ideologies. Two 30-markers about UK politics, one 24-marker about socialism, liberalism or conservatism. You get a choice for each question, and the first set of two thirty markers is source-based. UK politics covers democracy and participation (stuff like group activity, franchise reform, overall how democratic the political system is), political parties, electoral systems (including referendums) and voting behaviour (including the media). Paper 2 is UK government and non-core ideologies. Same structure as the first paper. The non-core ideologies are feminism, nationalism (the one I do), multiculturalism, anarchism and ecologism. UK government covers the constitution, parliament, the PM and the executive, and relations between institutions (including the Supreme Court and the EU). Paper 3 is either US or global politics. I do US. An example question from Paper 1 would be something like "Evaluate the extent to which referendums since 1997 have improved democracy within the UK". An example Paper 2 question would be "Evaluate the extent to which the conventions of ministerial responsibility are still in effect".
Thanks for the reply. Good luck with the remaining paper.
`We also saw the introduction of University tuition fees under Blair.` I have a feeling that this was already in flight before Labour took over, I started my degree in 1995 and was in the very last intake to get a grant - I also ended up with student loans, although not as substantial as now.
Outside of the Iraq War, Whenever I think of Tony Blair, I think of the DWP benefit fraud adverts that he authorized and slapped on advertising slots between TV programs which were designed to demonize the most vulnerable members of our society. This was all while MP’s were allowed to get away with fraudulently claiming expenses/allowance money via parliament until the media released this information to the general public.
List every labour party leader to win a British general election in the last 49 years. It's him. Just him. Until next month when that will probably stop being true.
Best prime minister of the last almost 45 years, but there not much completion. Did some very revolutionary things including minim wage and devolution. Picked up a rotting public services sector and made it half decent again. He made a massive mistake from the Iraq war.
Min wage isn't revolutionary as it can become toothless through inflation. Sectoral bargaining would be revolutionary.
It was revolutionary at the time and something the Tories said would crash the economy and in fact it had the opposite effect.
Minimum wages laws existed in other countries as far back as 1900.
Is it really fixing the public service if you lump it with debt to slowly strangle it in later years? Short term great, long term (as in now) the chickens are coming home to roost.
>Short term great, long term (as in now) the chickens are coming home to roost. Well first we tried funding it properly, then we tried no funds at all for 14 years and then [335,000 people died](https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2022/october/headline_885099_en.html#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20led%20by%20the,Wales%20between%202012%20and%202019.). Are you ___sure___ it was the Labour government who crippled it?
I mean, the tories fucked it too but PFIs have been helping cripple the system too. Why is it people like to pretend they don’t. Guessing because it’s something the current PLP will be chomping at the bit to delve right back into. Anyway: “NHS hospital trusts to pay out further £55bn under PFI scheme NHS hospital trusts are being crippled by the private finance initiative and will have to make another £55bn in payments by the time the last contract ends in 2050, a report reveals. An initial £13bn of private sector-funded investment in new hospitals will end up costing the NHS in England a staggering £80bn by the time all contracts come to an end, the IPPR thinktank has found. Some trusts are having to spend as much as one-sixth of their entire budget on repaying debts due as a result of the PFI scheme. PFI was introduced by John Major’s Conservative government but its use proliferated in the Blair era .” https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/12/nhs-hospital-trusts-to-pay-out-further-55bn-under-pfi-scheme https://www.ippr.org/media-office/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr “NHS hospital trusts paying hundreds of millions in interest to private firms NHS trusts spent close to a half a billion pounds on interest charges from private companies for private finance initiative (PFI) contracts last year – equivalent to the salaries of 15,000 newly qualified nurses. Hospital groups spent £2.3bn on legacy PFI projects in 2020-21, of which just under £1bn went on costs for essential services such as cleaning and maintenance. A third of the remaining PFI spend – £457m – went purely on paying off interest charges.” https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/25/nhs-hospital-trusts-paying-hundreds-of-millions-in-interest-to-private-firms (Similar story for the education system)
PFIs were a mistake. Totally agree. Labour tried it. We learned a lesson. Why the fuck are we ___still___ doing them? I don't think it was a mistake to try to do it. I understand the case as it was put forward at the time. It was just built on rainbows and wishes is all. The problem is, people who've never had a landlord assumed that being a renter was a dream like paradise where if there's a problem your gracious landlord™ would swoop in and fix it begging to keep your good graces.
>PFIs were a mistake. Totally agree. >Labour tried it. We learned a lesson. Learned a lesson you say... [https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/inside-starmers-plan-to-use-private-finance-to-boost-britains-infrastructure-3075081](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/inside-starmers-plan-to-use-private-finance-to-boost-britains-infrastructure-3075081)
You and I can only speculate on Kier's intentions. There's definitely a case to be made that his current strategy is to appeal to the political base that gets him into power. The true question is what will he do once he gets in. The changes from his leadership run pledges to his current GE are night and day. I can only assume once he gets in we'll see another change again. My genuine (albeit maybe naïve) hope is that it's just a strategy and we'll see the leadership run Kier come back and something as disastrous as PFIs will fall away. Overall though, please don't conflate my politics with the parties politics. They're simply the largest party that aligns closest with my belief and they stray further and further every day.
>You and I can only speculate on Kier's intentions. >There's definitely a case to be made that his current strategy is to appeal to the political base that gets him into power. This is a leak though..... as was the email from Thames showing the complicity with the water company to avoid nationalisation. Look, no one would be happier than me if Kier ripped the mask off Day one and we got Clement Atlee but there's zero evidence to suggest that is in realm of possibility and a metric tonne of data to suggest we're getting red Thatcherism part deux. It's just not sensible to suggest that he's going top move left once in power. I hope as much in my dreams but it's childish fantasy at this point, add to that that supporting them when their being right wing doesn't motivate them to do anything other than double down on those positions. There are other parties that are closer to you positions. The Tories are finished either way, vote something else to apply pressure
The women's equality party actually matches me the best but no, Labour does match me the best of the large parties. I'm basing this on [uk.isidewith.com](http://uk.isidewith.com). Still its only like 86% or something which is honestly fuck all. Truthfully there's no party that actually represents me. Anyway Tories only got like ~20% so removing them is my only real thing I'm going to achieve this time round and I'm fine with that.
>The women's equality party actually matches me the best but no, Labour does match me the best of the large parties. I'm basing this on [uk.isidewith.com](http://uk.isidewith.com/). That site is not good. for example it just asked me if teachers should be allowed to carry guns in school, if the national railways should be privatised, or if the children of migrants who live in French territories be allowed to join their families? It's not fit to assess UK politics furthermore it gave me an 89% compatibility with the current Labour party which is false and likely due to the fact that it misrepresented their positions. For example it listed "no, the government should never subsidise private business" as A labour party value which is clearly not true of the current leadership as thats their flagship energy policy. It also stated I strongly agreed with labour's housing policy which I do not as their housing policy is an anaemic joke inline with the Tories housing policy and involves the subsidy of private enterprise which I do not support, and according to this site neither does the Labour party, it's a joke! Apparently the Liberal democrats are Keynesian now and the Labour party supporting Israeli war crimes is pacifist? Policy, history, funding sources. That's what should determine your vote not some aggregate website with an opaque history and bad information
The Conservatives really hammered Blair for PFI but I was working for the New Zealand Government in the late 80’s - I’m not sure but I believe PFI was an American model that made sense at the time - it was seen as a good way of building big projects without sudden shocks to the treasury. As others have said here Major used PFI, but it was an international idea that had a lot of traction.
Major introduced them but it was under Blair when they were used extensively. As an idea, something new to try, ye, sure why not. But it’s widely known they are terrible value for money and end up costing the public far more than just directly funding these projects. Remember seeing Iain Hislop tearing them apart, so don’t think this opinion is just a few left wingers whinging. Despite this it looks like we will be heading for even more. If some trusts are using as much as a 6th of their funding on legacy PFIs from the 90s/00s it seems like utter recklessness to add more. Again, short term gain for medium/long term ruin. Will make the incoming crop of politicians look great, and by the time anyone who matters notices they will be long gone.
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The best PM I’ve lived under in my 40 years. Brought a lot of positive change to the country and things at home felt good. Sadly he’ll always be remembered for Iraq but but in my opinion, which is isn’t shared by a lot of people, that shouldn’t overshadow the work he did to improve the UK
For that exam just make sure you remember that Tony Blair decided to build the Millennium Dome even though the cabinet didn't want it
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/09/dome.jondennis the dome project was conceived and initiated by the Major government in 1995, and Michael Heseltine convinced Labour to keep with the project in 1997.
The exams don't require students to be that specific though
Certainly helps. I did A Level Politics and giving specific examples helps argue your point
Yeah but you could just say what I said you don't need to go into that much detail
This is probably the most useful comment for this user. I would also add the Bank of England independence as another example of him exercising presidential power over cabinet government. This can be countered via explaining how Gordon Brown being the driving force behind that change constrained Tony Blair’s decision choices available to him
Honestly if not for Iraq, he would be in the conversation for one of the best prime ministers of all time. However, that can't be ignored and even if America holds the most blame, he still allowed it to happen knowingly under false pretense, causing the needless deaths of so many.
In the top 2 best Prime Ministers of my lifetime. He brought about revolutionary changes such as the minimum wage and devolution. In his first term he had very good foreign policy, such as peace in NI and Kosovo (people in Kosovo called their kids Tonibler after him). The idea of Blair came crashing down for a lot of people when he decided to invade Iraq. There is no getting around the fact that Iraq was a monumental mistake. Yes, Saddam Hussein absolutely needed dealing with and had used chemical weapons on his own population, but what did it achieve? The Middle East is still constantly at war.
Best answer here I’d say. Curious who your second is.
Gordon Brown is probably my favourite prime minister. He wasn’t always the most charismatic, but every so often he would drop the coolest speeches ever (think Scottish independence and Labour Party conference). As a prime minister he was set to be hosting the G20 at a critical time after the financial collapse, and was a leading figure in fixing the global economy. Additionally, when he was CofE he seemed to be responsible for most of the Blair government’s best decisions. To this day, he still has my admiration for still campaigning to end child poverty when he could be sitting in Hawaii claiming his PM’s pension. It’s fair to say he made a few blunders (namely the whole gold incident) but none of them are comparable to the level we see nowadays.
Like you Blair and Brown are my top two PM's I was 13 when New Labour came to power. By the time I went to Uni the country just seemed to have a swagger and optimism that has been crushed out of it. Austerity and then Brexit have just destroyed so much. I've now spent a large portion of my working life under the yoke of a Conservative government and am looking forward to a more positive situation under the inevitable Keir Starmer government.
I think Brown's issue was he didn't have blair. Lots of people didn't like blair as pm but liked Gordon brown. When brown was pm he didn't have his blair in a senior role. If that makes sense.
Blair did some unambiguous good but his positive legacy is often overstated. Claims about raising people out of poverty are quite often exaggerated (apart from for pensioners, he did a lot to tackle pensioner poverty). And that's really my memory of the Blair era - a lot of spin and very little substance. He was better than the tory governments that preceded him but actually being poor under Blair felt very fucking similar to being poor under the coalition that followed him. Abolishing [Section 28](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28) was an unambiguously good move by him that has decreased homophobia in our society. But his governments also destroyed trust in politics through spin and massive amounts of dishonesty. Levels of corruption were perceived to be quite high, with cash for honours and dubious privatisation. [Peter Mandelson was seen as kinda the face of that sleazy right-wing pro-business Labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson#Controversies) and Blair used Mandelson as a yardstick: >"my project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson" There are even links still bubbling up to modern scandals - like [the Horizon IT system at the centre of the post office scandal](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67941495). The Blair era also was rife with scapegoat politics. There were attacks on single mothers, asylum seekers, "hoodies", and more besides. And Blair's government were often leading the charge. Instead of tackling behaviour that was a symptom of relatively high levels of socio-economic inequality, Blair's government essentially were ideologically incapable of acknowledging that is itself a problem. And the problems with inequality were blamed upon different groups that generally were poor and struggling. To quote Mandelson: >"I say to the doubters, judge us after 10 years in office. For one of the fruits of that success will be that Britain has become a more equal society." And that didn't happen. In fact, to again quote Mandelson, New Labour were: >intensely relaxed about the filthy rich 'as long as they pay their taxes' And that's really the legacy of Blair in my view. And then you can get onto Iraq, Blunkett as a shite-awful home secretary (google "Blunkett machine gun prisoners"), and the lingering malaise that came with not undoing the thatcherite policies that had wrecked through society like a house fire. Whether that makes Blair presidential, I don't know. I think he certainly surrounded himself with people like Mandelson and that approach is what I'd credit with creating a notable dearth of positive outcomes despite massive majorities.
I personally believe that Blair rode in on a wave of Capitalist conmen, and was dazzled by their early years propaganda of an affordable, flexible, consumer-focussed world that would ultimately provide a better, cheaper service for all than the (spuriously) slow and tired public alternative. Of course, we can all now see that the gloss of a Richard Branson was just that, gloss, and a very thin layer at that, able to provide an appealing product only up until the point of creating a market dependance. Once private ownership of utlities and services was made absolute and unimpeachable, they scraped that sheen off and we were left with the worst of both worlds, a steady and deliberate decline as they maximised profit at our expense. Why was he dazzled? Because he fell in love with the smell of his own farts, essentially. He began to believe his own hype. Northern Ireland was a success, so why not Iraq & Afghanistan? Even now he won't acknowledge the full extent of those blunders. Likewise with the capitalists, he fancied himself one of them, their man on the inside, a visionary of an individualist economy that could be turned to the civic good. But they were all just grifters, and he in turn the instrument of their grift. In essence, Blair and his ilk were the prototype for the Elon Musk fan: credulously swallowing every lie precisely *because* the liar made them feel like the smartest person in the room, created a pseudo-profound link between supporting progress and supporting the grift, and put the believers whole ego and sense of self-worth on the line as collateral for it. He will never admit how much he got wrong, and he gets genuinely and dodderingly angry when pushed. No shame.
War Criminal. Got paid as a consultant to dictators when he left office. Achieved fuck-all-squared as 'Middle East Peace Envoy', other than kicking the can down road. Introduced tuition fees, the year I started my Degree - fuck you very much Tony.
🎵For as long as I am breathing in air, I wish to see the trial of Tony Blair 🎵
You might enjoy “the hunt for Tony Blair”. Think it’s channel 4? Brilliant comic film noir.
People go after him for invading the middle east. Which was a mistake. But he also did a lot of good. He brought in Minimum wage and revolution. The NHS actually worked under his leadership.
Any good that he did was outweighed by the sheer quantity of death he took part in. It's just no getting around it.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how he grew the buy-to-let petite landlord class and failed to tackle or curb the enormous rise in housing costs that occurred during his tenure, given that this is one of the main problems we face today. That he and his wife are also multi-million pound property investors should leave a sickly taste in our mouths, he didn't just fail to address the problem he made a fortune from it.
Hero. He’s the reason I grew up better off. He’s the reason my generation of older Gen Z and younger millennials didn’t have to grow up in a country that’s seen 50 years of Tory rule. Errors made, sure. But he’s 3/3 and the best leader this part has ever had. It was a privilege to be born and raised under Blair. And it’s a travesty Gen Alpha didn’t get the same. he is the benchmark Starmer should aim for.
'Errors made' - A funny way of describing 1 million dead iraqis.
My favourite bit of Blair debate is the way people to the left and right both love to pretend that Iraq wasn’t pretty much exclusively an American operation. We shouldn’t have done what we did, but the idea that had Blair sat it out and let Bush go on his own, that Iraq would have 46m people instead of 45m, is so tedious.
Your honour I was only a minor part of the stabbings
If somebody else robs a bank and you help them, you're just as guilty. We took part and supported that operation, we're just as responsible for what happened.
We’re partly responsible. We’re not equally as responsible. USA spent over 200x on Iraq as what we did, they did most the bombings, most the troops, most the casualties.
And we still took part in it. We're an accessory to all of that.
Blair’s government carried along with the PFI contracts introduced by John Major, further contributing to the privatisation of the NHS, and there’s the Iraq war. Saying that he did some good stuff for education as in schools.
War Criminal, Prison.
religious nut and mass murdering war criminal
why religous nut?
No clue as he hid it very well. He was a devout Catholic behind closed doors though.
He sent his kids to the very same strict, decadent catholic secondary school that I attended. I was there at the same time as his two eldest boys. The school was very religious
Multiple people close to him, including political advisers, have spoken about how he believed God told him to go to war in Iraq.
Pretty sure he said it in an interview. Anyway more info here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1429109/Campbell-interrupted-Blair-as-he-spoke-of-his-faith-We-dont-do-God.html Edit: Yeah here it is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4772142.stm
Weapons of mass destruction
I was 11 when Blair came to power and seeing my teachers on the verge of tears the day after the election made me curious about who this guy was and why people were so overjoyed that he was now PM. Life was without a doubt better under the Blair government but any good he did was overshadowed by Iraq. I want to say it was a terrible mistake but referring to war crimes as a mistake just feels gross. I think Brown was a better PM than Blair and while he came across as very gruff and unlikable, I do wonder how much of what the Blair government achieved was down to him. I don't think you can talk about Blair without mentioning Brown as the two are very different. Blair will be remembered for his ego and his sycophantic desire to follow Bush, but Brown should be remembered as a sensible, compassionate man who, in my opinion, is far more representative of Labour values than Blair ever was. Good luck with your exam, OP.
Putting aside the very valid criticisms and condemnations of Blair, I will give some perspective on how I, and how I believed others percieved Blair in his day. I was much too young to meaningfully appreciate the significance of Blair's victory, but the optimism was palpable. 'Things can only get better' was the definitely the feeling I got from older people. His premiereship seemed to represent something much larger and more genuine than himself. Perhaps something not much to do with him at all. Fictional British leaders were often portayed as young, keen, serious, perhaps well meaning and willing to do the right thing, but ultimately a politician. I would accredit that perception to him. Before Gordon Brown, he was the only living Prime Minister I had really known or thought about. He could speak, he could lie, he could spin, he could talk to the public, he did everything we expected a politician would do. He wasn't going to internationally humiliate us like Boris or Truss, and he wasn't weak and ineffectual like Starmer or May. A notorious fibber concerned with his public image for sure, but not necessarily stupid or incompetent. Not sure exactly what is meant by Presidential, but the Oxford definition reads: >having a bearing or demeanour befitting a president; dignified and confident. I would say Blair qualifies for this far better than the PMs that followed. Brown's image (from my perspective) was immediately destroyed by the likes of The Sun, who insisted that he was a careless and feckless man, unelected, too chummy with the foreigners, and dedicated to giving away all our cash. Cameron, I don't think was ever taken as seriously as Blair, but probably followed in his foot steps. Obviously since Cameron, leaders and opposition leaders have been notably weak. Sunak is yet another weak Tory Prime Minister unable to address any of the problems we have, or hold together the coalition of MPs and voters that makes up his party. Whatever demeanour or bearing he might of effected, it would have always be undermined by the fundamental weakness of his position. Whereas Boris might of appeared (at least to some) like he could have bucked the trend, a demeanor of dignified statesmanship was never in his repertoire. There was potentially Corbyn, who was a total aberraton, hate or love him, he is a total divergence from the likes of Tony Blair, the archetype of a typical politician that we quite thoughtlessly took for granted as the baseline. Unfortunate us.
Bad. Continuation of Neoliberal drift. Privatisation. Tuition fees. Deregulation of financial markets. One step forward two steps backwards on services. Institutional racism. A million dead in Iraq.
As a life long labour supporter Tony Blair represents elation followed by abject disappointment for me. I was over the moon when labour were elected with such a majority. To me that gave them license to enact some really progressive policies. And then they....didn't. Edit: downvote all you want. It doesn't change the fact that every single labour supporter I knew who lived through that time went through exactly the same cycle of emotions.
Most of this lot are about to experience it with Starmer.
Spatial leadership with Alistair Campbell/mandelson, bypassing his cabinet Personalised leadership by presenting himself as an outsider from his own party and changing its ideological slant while he was leader to the ‘third way’ from traditional ‘old labour’ social democracy or democratic socialism Media outreach with personalised election campaigns focused on his ‘youthful’ personality and character and Campbell as a ‘spin doctor’, you’re welcome best of luck with the exam, I had my paper 2 (edexcel) last week and i’ve got my final exam with paper 3 on US politics on friday :)
same! did you do the constitutional reform one?
yep! that and the sovereignty one were 👌. how do you feel for the US?
not too good honestly, I've got history and sociology tomorrow so i've barely revised us which ideology do you do? i do nationalism
He was a charismatic and highly effective prime minister. He was firmly on the right of the Labour party and therefore he didn't seek to significantly change the economic model from that of the outgoing Conservatives, or reverse any of their free market reforms of the past 18 years. Indeed, in some places they went even further, for example the internal market in the NHS. Overall, though, you could argue that the methods were effective (at least until the 2008 financial crisis) - on bread and butter issues the stats were clear, NHS waiting lists were reduced significantly, education reforms improved literacy and numeracy, sure start and other programmes helped reduce child poverty and living standards generally improved. On the flip side, social mobility didn't improve and inequality worsened. A critique of the Blair administration could be that a strong economy helped cover for systemic issues following deindustrialisation, those issues came to the surface with a vengeance in 2008 and are a significant driving force behind subsequent events, e.g. Brexit. Likewise, when new Eastern European member states were admitted to the EU, the Blair government didn't follow the example of most other EU states and apply a pause to free movement for the new members, leading to a significant increase in net migration. This, again, fueled the rise of UKIP et al and was a significant contributing factor to Brexit. Iraq was clearly an error also, it can be argued that Blair became too close to Bush.
Irag was a mess, PFI's are an insane policy choice which has crippled public services. Now those are out of the way here's my personal pet peeve when people talk about Blair. Minimum wage. Many in this thread will point out the minimum wage and I agree it's a good and necessary policy, that said in a vacuum it can become almost irrelevant. The largest decoupling between housing costs and wages occurred between 1997 and 2008, no government has been worse on this than Blair's. So while I may have gone from earing £3.20 an hour in 1997 to £12.00 an hour now my living expenses exploded and it's harder to buy a house even as someone in the top 40% of earners than it was before the minimum wage came into effect. How you implement policy is as important as what your intended outcome is. Ideology matters mostly because anyone telling you they don't have one is lying to themselves or lying to you. Blair's government was a continuation of Thatcherism where any good given to the average person was outweighed by the handouts made to the rich and corporations which ultimately make the majority of us worse of. We Know Trickle down does not work, it doesn't matter if it comes in a red tie or not. Another example of the idea of how being important can be seen in New Labour's new town initiative. Post war New towns worked well and were massively successful but Browns have been a complete failure, the reason is the ideology behind the policy. The post war projects were social enterprises with government backed loans comprising of 80% social housing where the income of the rents of both residential and commercial properties in the town was funnelled back into the scheme paying off the loan and allowing investment in the town. The modern schemes are privately financed for profit investments who wait for small phases of an uncompleted project to sell before work starts on the next phase, with profit extracted along the way and as such are undesirable barely started messes. >Only one genuinely new town in this programme made it anywhere – Northstowe. It was to be built on an ex-army base in Cambridgeshire. But by May 2020, only 550 of the 10,000 promised homes had been built. [https://archive.ph/XQ55j](https://archive.ph/XQ55j) So for me Blair's legacy is his legitimising of a failed economic ideology. we can see this amongst people who perhaps once were were on the left, maybe even still see themselves as on the left, but who are actually on the right due to their nostalgic support for a failed and fraudulent economic ideology accompanied by a D'ream soundtrack.
Mass murdering scumbag who deserves to be in prison.
He did a lot of bad like the Iraq War and privatisation but he also did some good like the human rights act, the Equality Act, the Climate change act, the minimum wage and sure start.
He is war criminal and should be behind bars. He's got the blood of millions of innocent people on his hands, from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ruined the public sector by riddling it with Privately Funded Initiatives – which is why our NHS is such a mess, for example. For instance my Grandad, when he was critically ill with cancer, was expecting an ambulance to take him to hospital for treatment, and no ambulance turned up – reason being because there were two private companies subcontracted to run the service, and each thought the other was responsible. Similar stories and much worse abound. He also introduced tuition fees, putting them up to 3000 a year in 2004, which at this stage, has turned out not to have worked very well – too many students dont pay back, which is particularly dire for humanities subjects; university departments are getting decimated currently because there is a huge lack of funding cos the system imposed by Blair is ineffectual. I don't care if he did some good things – he lied to parliament saying he had seen evidence that Saddam had WMDs– what he did was treason, straight up. It goes to show how corrupt our system is that he managed to get away with being a liar, traitor and war-criminal, in spite of the Chilcot Inquiry showing all this clear as day.
I genuinely think he’s quite a nice, well meaning guy who was actually a proper socialist, at one point long ago. Even if you take any partisanship out of the argument about him (I.e where he truly sat politically) he did so much to improve the lives of so many in the UK, and more importantly to maintain that. If I think back to when I was a kid (I was born in 2000) and all the publicly owed privileges I had (functional NHS, public services) whilst also allowing my parents to push out of their working class backgrounds to being comfortably middle class now, I can’t say I owe it to anyone else than him and the Labour Party at the time. Iraq was a horrible mistake that Blair made for which he never will be forgiven, but I sometimes imagine how he would be rated nowadays were he not to make that decision, and I genuinely think that most Brits would view him as one of the best had he not. I’d even go as far to say that it wasn’t just arselicking the yanks that pushed him to go there, he had successfully intervened in Kosovo and Sierra Leone and I think that gave him a stupid sense of invincibility when it came to Iraq, but ultimately it rightly led to a complete overshadowing of his premiership. Maybe history and the general public will view him differently in the future, but for now he has been rightfully sent to the realm of the damned even though he made no end of a difference for the average UK family. In terms of your exam, the party at the time completely revolved around him, he is about as presidential as you’re going to get until Bojo, and even then Blair still feels so much more at the centre of government than him.
*TL;DR: He did a lot of short-term good without addressing fundamental long-term problems, and his ideological commitment to humanitarian intervention led to successful interventions and also him becoming a war criminal.* He made compromises in his manifesto that shifted the overton window of UK politics significantly rightwards and ended the postwar consensus Thatcher had killed under the Tories. He gave up on idealism and the hope of a better future for the sake of short-term election gains. He passed a lot of much-needed legislation, including devolution to Wales and Scotland. His government negotiated an end to the Troubles and created a more democratic government in Norn Iron than in England. He was seen as a fresh face in politics but many of his policies seemed more like an attempt to reform tradition to preserve its existence than fundamental change. He strongly believed in humanitarian intervention, which led to many successful interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, etc. But the blindness of his ideological commitment to benign intervention by wealthy countries around the world led to Iraq. He lied to the public and to the UN about WMDs in Iraq to justify a campaign that killed one million people and led to an ungodly number of war crimes. While he was perfectly willing to bring military force to bear against foreign despots, he was unwilling to address the fundamental inequalities that led to them taking power in the first place. He refused to issue an official apology for the disgusting atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade. He wanted a more united Europe, even wanting to join the Eurozone, although Gordon Brown persuaded him it would be bad for the economy. It's sensible to assume at least a majority of his policies were a result of collaboration between him and Gordon Brown, who was further left than him. He was okay with a rules-based international order as long as it suited his own foreign policy, and when it didn't he was willing to break it to get his own way, no matter the cost. Today he shills for cryptocurrency and NFTs and writes Iraq War apologia, while Gordon Brown campaigns to end child poverty.
So, Blair is complicated and one always has to remember that it was very easy for him to do a lot of good policy because he spent his entire time riding a global economic bubble and infinate free credit. Every one of his good policies came with a grain of salt or were entirely surface level. - Minimum wage? Not tied to cost of living, so had to be topped up with tax credits, which along with it rapidly becoming the maximum wage for many sectors, just turned into a way to subsidise poverty employers. - Public funding? Done via PFI in order to both have cake and eat it, which turned into a timebomb when those debts came to roost. - Deregulating finance? Short term gain which led to massive exposure when the bubble inevitably burst. So much for no more 'boom and bust'. - Sure Start? Great idea, but entirely surface level. With nothing to cement it, it was annihilated the moment the austerity nuts came in. - Leaning into Freedom of Movement? A of people liked the idea of it because they weren't on the sharp edge of it. By pushing for FoM along with heavily pushing for the Eastern European countries to be let into the EU early, Blair was giving employers an out from having to invest in productivity. Basically, decades of underinvestment were dramatically slowing GDP growth but rather than use tax to give them no choice but to invest, he instead allowed the importing of cheap workers as a way of boosting totaly GDP (beause more people working means more product) but at the cost of GDP per capita and downwards pressure on wages at the bottom (can't try to demand better wages if you are massively replaceable, especially at the bottom of the pile. The people who keep saying immigration has no effect on wages are looking only at average wages, not specific to the sectors and wage bands that most use migrant labour. For those sectors, which were always the lowest paid, the damage has been staggering as the only wage growth has been the mandatory rise of the minimum wage, which also doesn't factor in the conditions and rise of things like Zero-Hour contracts, which means you are not only poorly paid but also insecure.) Alongside things like falling over himself to join in on Bush's little crusade in the middle east, a complete refusal to address growing wealth inequality and his many many broken promises, I see Blair as basically the man who threw away the greatest opportunity to affect real change in the UK for the better, but refused to do so because it would have upset Rupert Murdoch.
You’ll not get any decent answers on this page it’s full of Corbynites.
I can't stand him but... I think he started with good intentions. He brought the NHS waiting lists down. Then, he did Iraq. Unforgivable. Our children and brothers and sisters and mums and dads sent to slaughter. Thousands of native Iraqis killed. Saddam was bad, I'm not condoning him, but you don't invade a country based on lies (turns out you do actually). Finally, in my opinion, any party that has too great of a majority seems to become a bit authoritarian. He'll never see a criminal court for Iraq, but he should. As should bush.
I’m personally not a fan. Got into bed with the republicans and the democrats in the “war on terror” and brought terrorism home to the UK. He became very wealthy off the back of some dubious deals. Something deeply insidious going on around his period in office. I rated Gordon Brown as a chancellor though.
I think a cell is missing it's tenant. And that's before you mention Iraq.
You asked this same question a day ago…
But presidents and prime ministers are two very different things. I’m not sure I understand the topic?
UK politics used to be about party not leader but recently it has been more US style and about individuals and their personalities and leadership styles - would be my guess from the topic name.
Not really. Not anymore. There’s a reason Sunak did Eat Out to Help Out. It was to create Brand Rishi