So Tony goes on June 27th and another political era will end. Unlike Margaret Thatcher and John Major before him, Tony Blair has been able to pick the time and the style of his own departure. His speech in Sedgefield , his home constituency may be as close as we’ll get to an apology for Iraq with a seemingly genuine “Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right”.
He said that our expectations of him an New Labour were too high and maybe they were. Those of us who feel let down by the last 10 years are probably those that hadn’t quite taken in how much Labour had been forced to change in order to become electable again. How you feel about him depends, probably, on how well you’ve done over the last 10 years. I’ve been directly affected by the loss of what pension provisions I had made in my days as an employee and the extent to which I have and have not been able to get needed NHS treatment and other support I needed through various states of ill health with which I still grapple today. I can maybe dismiss that as purely an intractable problem of management within the NHS but having been in a situation of needing help during times when I was unable to work perhaps gives me a different experience to somebody who may have enjoyed good health during the same period.
I can certainly recognise that the economy has been stable though for me this increased wealth and stability I would have hoped would have made us a more equal and a more compassionate society. I only have to read the BBC’s “Have your say” each day to see that largely that’s not the case.
I can say that I’ve benefited from legislation to equalise the rights of those of us in the LGBT community but at the same time am able to point to more vocal opposition to my existence from many Britons which reminds me that Government legislation and how people actually feel about treating people as equals is still some way apart. That kind of inequality still exists whether you are one side or the other of the gender, sexuality , racial , disablement or any have and have not divisions.
I recognise that a lot of people have done well materially over the past decade and welcome the introduction of the minimum wage, maternity rights, high employment and the changes in Northern Ireland.
So best wishes to you Tony Blair. I do believe that you thought you had our best interests at heart but you’ve proved to me that ultimately politics and government will always fall short and dissapoint and I’m sure that many of what has resulted from your support of the privatised industries,target economics, the NHS, schools, a neo con US Government and Iraq may even have left you disappointed in what has actually resulted when compared to , perhaps, what you may have wished for.
Here’s to the future and its winers and losers.
An interesting pictorial of the Blair years over at The First Post
The key quotes from Blair’s speech.
Transaltions: French German Italian Spanish
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Goodbye Tony Blair « Stuffem-Up the hill backwards
Up the hill backwards 
An interesting and balanced summation of “the Blair experience” though personally I would say you are kinder to him than I would be.
I still believe he took us into Iraq knowingly on false charges. As he knew there were no WMD, the invasion of Iraq cannot possibly have been for the good of our country while for Iraq and the thousands who have died there unnecessarily it was utterly disastrous. I have sympathy with those who think that he and Bush should be brought to trial at The Hague. Unfortunately, it will never happen.
Moreover, taking the lead from the US, Blair has used terrorism as an excuse has eroded our freedoms and privacy beyond anything we have ever known including WWII. It will take a miracle to restore what has been stolen from us.
With the best will in the world, I do not think that the desire to get elected justifies a party adopting bad policies. Better to be true to yourself and remain unelected than to gain power and betray those who trusted you.
I would be hypocritical to wish Blair well feeling as I do. Not that it matters. He will survive like the closet Fat Cat that he is and he will enjoy being fawned upon by sycophants on the world lecture tour. He can be an engaging speaker but under the glitz lies a character that I am far from admiring.
Not that I believe his successor Brown or his successor Cameron are any better. I now believe that good people have to live on the margins of society, not in the political mainstream, in order to preserve their ethics and dignity.
Hi SilverTiger. Your comments are always welcome and considered. In my reaction to his speech I’ve tried to see the humanity in the man and give him the benefit of the doubt even though he and his party have let down many of us. The speech was almost American in style , almost Kennedyesque if that’s not being too unkind to the memory of JFK and the reality of the Tony Blair experience. I heard Iain Hislop of Private Eye say that the speech even ended on an almost “God bless America” sentiment.
You are probably right about some of us having to live on the margins (if only to stay sane). If Maggie had been wrong about there being “no such thing as society” when she said those words over 20 years ago then it is increasingly true of the very near future as we all break into our own ghettos and cliques and reject the idea of a diverse society, multi culturalism and a consensus to help the less well off. This trend is not all down to one man or even one political party but down to the increasingly narrow ideals that seem to have gained wide appeal.
A presidential style of politics is something which Tony Blair undoubtedly brought us. Like you, I can see some basic decency in the man, and whole lot more pragmatism which is undoubtedly the quality that enabled him to be elected in 1997 and govern (for the most part successfully) ever since.
Whilst at times (and 1997 was undoubtedly one of them) Blair managed to capture and interpret the mood of the country, a great weakness, I believe, was a serious and unjustified lack of confidence during his first term, which at least in part carried over into his second. His failure to recognise that the two landslide victories he won really were a mandate for change and his refusal at times to grasp the mettle and be radical enough.
As one example, I would cite Blair’s reluctance to push forward the European cause as one key missed opportunity. By the time of his re-election in 2001, he might finally have felt brave enough to take on the challenge but the moment had passed and he could do little more than spinelessly postpone progress for yet another Parliament. Or two.
Another illustration of that caution surely comes from the House of Lords, so ripe already for overhaul and replacement in 1997. Yet it took almost 10 years and massively concerted efforts from beyond the front benches to enable that process to go any further than the half-baked compromise which the government had too cautiously favoured. And fox-hunting – yet another case where change took years to achieve when it was begging to be made from the very first days whilst the Gallaghers were still schmoozing around No. 10.
Conversely, and at other times, Blair’s zeal-like fervour to carry through his own will against passionate and informed criticism did neither him nor us any favours. Top-up fees and Iraq are key examples, massively different in scale, of course, but each in their own way serving to undermine the potential, cherished strengths and international future of this country, as well as leading many centre-left voters probably to wish in 2005 that they could have voted a more left-wing Liberal Democrat government into power.
If we are all unanimous that his legacy is Iraq, then what are Blair’s achievements ? A stable economy (thanks to Gordon Brown and the independence of the Bank of England), Northern Ireland, and the relatively healthy survival against enormous pressures of the NHS and state education. Those contributions are surely not to be ignored, and will bring enduring benefits for years and generations to come.
Looking forwards, the scent of the wind beyond our shores (particularly in the US) now suggests that the economy may not have such an easy ride under Gordon Brown, a man much more interested in principle and action than in electoral mastery.
So, strangely, now at last that we will likely have a leader who is much more likely to take the radical decisions and to push for real change where change is needed, the voters may well be more fickle in their whims and decide that they might look at other options instead.
Tony Blair is going to be a tough act to follow, and in more ways than one.
Hi Roads, many thanks for your well thought out comment. I will certainly agree that Tony seemed to be fainthearted in many areas considering the initial size of his mandate. The only radical step early on was the handing over of independence to the Bank of England.To me it would seem that Blair tried to court favour with middle England which he may have seen as the people that gave him his mandate. It’s interesting that Gordon Brown has stated his pro Europe credentials this morning and yet wasn’t it he who blocked Blair’s enthusiam for joining the Euro. I would certainly agree that considering his mandate and the many years that the opposition were wrong footed Blair could have been more radical than he ended up being (Iraq aside obviously).
That’s an interesting observation you make there about Brown and Europe.
It doesn’t fit with Gordon’s past too well, I’d agree.
So I wonder then, if this might simply be perhaps the best card he has to play the tricky Scotland game ahead – since in some unlikely ways the case for a more determined splintering of the UK union becomes strangely easier if carried out beneath the banner of closer European ties.
The line would be that Scottish independence is all well and good, but, hey – we’re all growing ever closer together in Europe, so what does a little local separatism really matter, anyway …