As Tony Blair gets set to pack his bags and anoint his heir apparent Gordon Brown his legacy is being dissected. Ten years of Blair have produced a very different Britain from that of his predecessors John Major and Margaret Thatcher, and according to polls the majority of Britons are not amused.
Financially, many Britons are better off now than they ever were. Salaries are some of the highest in Europe, property values have skyrocketed often turning ordinary folk into millionaires, and due to cheap air-travel and a strong pound more and more Britons are snapping up second homes abroad. At the same time the rich-poor divide has widened with class once again becoming an issue.
People at the lower end of the scale are battered by disproportionately high taxation - much of it indirect and hidden - as well as unprecedented levels of personal debt to banks and credit companies.
Blair has the dubious honor of being one of the most popular British prime ministers ever and also one of the most unpopular. When he first moved into Number 10 in 1997 he was a welcome fresh face bursting with ideas that would revolutionize the health service and the educational system.
His was supposed to be a squeaky clean Cabinet that would tackle corruption and work toward eradicating crime. A May 1997 Gallup Poll found that voters perceived Blair as caring, trustworthy, competent and effective.
Ten years on, on all counts he has failed to deliver. Waiting lists for National Health operations are still lengthy, money is short and in some areas the overweight and smokers are being deprived of needed operations. In others, expensive drugs to combat cancer and other diseases are being rationed or have been withdrawn. Many hospital wards are plagued with deadly MRSA and other bugs.
Youngsters are leaving school unable to read and write while university graduates struggle to pay off student debt, often for years.
Violent crime has doubled and prisons are overflowing to the extent ships are to be used as temporary jails. Blair himself admits there is a prevailing culture of disrespect worsened by dwindling family values. His answer comes in the form of family re-training programs to which they will be forced to sign up to at pain of losing their council homes or having to move into an inferior property. Or ASBOS (Anti-social Behavior Orders), which confine people to certain parts of town and exclude them from others. Some people require a nanny state, he recently announced without blinking.
Since Blair, Britons have become the most spied-upon people in the world. Some 4.5 million CC-TV cameras watch citizens’ every move on the streets. In the pipeline are compulsory biometric ID cards and genetic harvesting by law enforcement. Every vehicle may be fitted with a GPS tracking device. A government minister has proposed using satellite tags to track the elderly. How long will it be before babies are automatically chipped at birth?
It is little wonder that more than 55 percent of Britons have at one time or another contemplated moving permanently abroad.
The question is how did the British people allow this authoritarian state to creep into being right under their noses? In many other countries there would have been rioting in the streets. For instance, years ago, when the Greek government passed a law that required the early closing of entertainment venues, Greeks promptly partied all night in the streets forcing the government to back down.
The answer lies partly in the natural stoicism of the British people and their unwillingness to rock the boat. There is anger bubbling beneath the surface but also a sense of apathy and helplessness on which Tony Blair capitalized to lead his country into a war that was deeply unpopular from the get-go.
In 2003, Blair was still popular and largely trusted. His personal charisma was at its zenith. Thanks to his natural boyish charm he was able to get away with dodgy Iraq War dossiers and government spin. He was Teflon man whom critics could not knock down try as they might.
Not so today. A Cabinet coup last year forced his early resignation. Earlier, a microphone inadvertently left switched on during a press conference in Russia exposed the British prime minister as a sycophant of George W. Bush; someone who needs to grovel for White House permission to travel to the Middle East in order to oil State Department diplomacy.
For those of us who live outside Britain’s shores Tony Blair’s legacy will forever be Iraq and the subsequent destabilization of the region. Like Sir Anthony Eden discredited by Suez, Blair will go down in history as an architect of one of Britain’s greatest foreign policy debacles.
For many British people he will be remembered as a leader who betrayed their confidence. His promises of a better Britain came to naught and now few believe anything either he or his party have to say.
Equally damaging to Blair’s reputation is the cash for honors scandal that gave rise to the dubious honor of Blair being the first British prime minister to be questioned by the police in relation to a criminal investigation.
History is yet to be penned and Blair still holds out hope he will be vindicated. It is a vain hope if Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, reflects a majority view. His party has compiled a dossier on mistakes made during the Blair years, which Campbell insists have been deeply damaging to Britain’s interests. As far as he is concerned Blair’s legacy will be one of “war and waste”.
Soon it will be up to Gordon Brown to begin cleaning up the mess but with a looming general election he may never get the chance.
