Today Tony Blair celebrates ten years in office, becoming, after Margaret Thatcher, the second longest-serving British premier of the last century. He is the longest surviving Labour prime minister and the only socialist leader to win three UK elections in a row. He is widely expected to step down in mid-May when one of his key ambitions, the restored Northern Ireland Assembly, gets under way. The field will then be clear for Finance Minister Gordon Brown to be chosen as his successor.
Blair will not be departing triumphantly from the office whose power and influence he has clearly relished. Most colleagues of his Labour Party regard him as a liability and the country as a whole is fed up with his heavily spin-doctored style of politics. The emollient Blair presentation in which he always managed to state his policies as if there were absolutely no sensible alternatives now jars with voters. This Thursday in local UK, Scottish and Welsh legislative elections, it is confidently expected the electorate will deliver a stinging verdict on the Blair legacy.
It will be a sad, even tragic, end for the leadership of a man who many believed began with an honorable agenda to transform his country. The problem was his socialist instincts led him into social re-engineering with a tidal wave of new legislation and initiatives, much of which did not work and quickly seemed mere political window dressing. Then after five years of very un-socialist budgetary discipline, Blair began to pour money into health and education. Repeated reorganizations spawned a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that gobbled up cash while failing to meet government targets. The subsequent job losses among front-line staff rather than bureaucrats have enraged the unions. Meanwhile taxation has risen steadily.
But the greatest failure of the Blair decade has been Iraq. He took Britain to war on the basis of lies, most but not all concocted by the Bush White House. Blair’s people contributed their own falsehoods. Instead of questioning US policy in Iraq, the Blair team enabled the US-dominated war in Iraq by becoming the largest member, after the US of the invading coalition. And instead of feeling sheepish, even ashamed, Blair basks in his position as the US president’s faithful ally. And Blair’s unwavering support for Washington has gone largely unrewarded save for perhaps the four British detainees released from Guantanamo. The US rejected Blair’s suggested push for a Palestinian settlement, ignored most British companies when handing out non-bid reconstruction contracts and declined to cooperate investigating the deaths of British servicemen in US friendly fire incidents.
But to break with Bush would have been to acknowledge the invasion was misbegotten. So, like Bush, Blair has brazened it out. Even in this week when UK forces in Iraq have suffered their highest casualties since 2003, he continues to insist that overthrowing Saddam was “the right thing to do”. Most UK voters know it was not and will tell him as much this week.
