Time Mr Blair Please
At long last, the light is visible at the end of the tunnel. The shadow of Blair over Britain and the Labour party slowly recedes after what was yet another speech of arguably epic proportions at the end book chapter of a mighty frontline political career – that was, in the end, far overshadowed by spin, incompetence and political decadence.
Today, the curtain falls on a political career that began so full of hope and promise, but ended in failure and despair. The master at work, for perhaps the last time, delivered as memorable a speech as anything made in the prime of his career. He bid farewell to an audience in his constituency of Sedgefield that thunderously applauded as he finally bowed out – but how many of the faces in that crowd wished for him to be gone ‘sooner rather than later?’ The man that brought his party two landslide electoral victories and a third decisive victory only two and a half years ago is soon to be struck off and forced out of office into exile.
In the Conservative party; we might despise Mr Blair and what he has done to our country in ten years of misrule – but we perhaps, and it is hard for many of us to admit, still have some small and barely registerable amount of respect for the abilities of a man who has thwarted us for so long. Clearly there is little love for Anthony Blair left in the Labour party. On June the 27th, he is gone – and all eyes shall turn to the man looming in the shadows, Gordon Brown.
Filed in Tony Blair, New Labour |
May 15th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Personally, I felt that Blair’s farewell speech was exactly what this country needed; a good dose of patriotism from an honest man with good intentions.
We in the Conservative party should be glad to see the back of Tony Blair, not because of how he has made this country a worse place, but in fact quite the opposite. Putting his ineptness in Europe aside, can we seriously argue that Britain is worse off now than 10 years ago? Blair has always been a Tory at heart and we should be thankful that he has left in plenty of time before the next election.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Darien, while I marginally respect Tony Blair’s abilities as an orator - he is neither an honest man, nor did he have good intentions when he became Labour party leader and subsequently Prime Minister.
I think that in many ways, yes, we can say that this country has become worse off than it was 10 years ago. The dramatic decline in moral standards. Mass cynicism of the political system due to Blair and Brown’s spin. Massive stealth tax increases and billions wasted on public services for very little (if any) gain. The politicising of the Police Force (now a bureaucratic ’service’) and the civil service. An increasingly authoritarian outlook on civil liberties. The list goes on, and on, and on.
When Tony Blair came to office in 1997, he did so with such an unprecedented outpouring of goodwill from the British people that he received a 179 seat majority in the House of Commons. He had the opportunity to reform and reshape this country for the better - but he never took the opportunity. Each consecutive term in office was about securing their next four years in power, through cynical policies and controlling the media. It has been ten years of wasted opportunities.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Britain is better off now than it was in 1997, BUT, it has started to get worse again. Economic policies (any type of policies for that matter) take time to have an effect. The period of economic growth seen by Britain in the late 90s was a result of Ken Clarke as Chancellor. Gordon Brown made one good decision - to make the Bank of England independant. This capitalised on the Conservatives work. Ever since then both Brown and Blair have slowly started to erode the hard work and growth implemented by the Tories.
May 16th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
While Blair is still a Labour politician, I think that we may thank him for not reversing most of Thatcher and Major policies. In fact by granting independence to the Bank of England, he even followed them in a sense.
But Blair’s ministers did not always shared views like this, Gordon Brown for example is much more left wing than Blair is. While certain improvements were made, some public services the main one being transportation are in shambles, courtesy of DfT bureaucracy.
While I think it is unfair to say that the Blair era was a complere failure, it could certaily have been better. Moreover as Nathan said, the actual trends are far from good, especially since the Labour Party is slowly going back to the left.