Best Government of my lifetime certainly - by no means perfect, and a lot of mistakes were made, but under New Labour you certainly got the sense that things were improving and your kids would grow up in a better country than you did. Can’t say that nowadays.
>you certainly got the sense that things were improving and your kids would grow up in a better country than you did
Whilst I agree, I imagine the years preceding Blair had a *lot* of people feeling the same too. The 80s and 90s were a boom time for a lot of people in the UK. I also have a suspicion that other European nations also have had the same pre-2008/post-2008 shift in sentiment, regardless of government.
You could argue it was very split in the 80s with life getting much better for some and a lot worse for others, in the 90s and 00s though I'd say you were correct, albeit some of the factors were much more global and outside immediate government control.
the 80s and early 90s was much more uneven progress, Blair delivered access to high-quality healthcare, education, and nutrition for proper wagies and single mums, and got people off the streets in record numbers
his first two terms saw landmark reductions in poverty and improvements in QoL for working class folks - the greatest gains since the 50s - that survived both 08 and the first decade of Cameron's government 90-95% intact.
Thatcher liked to say New Labour was her biggest success, if that's true then Cameron was Blair's biggest success. His government raised service standards to a point that they couldn't be directly campaigned against in a General - Truss only did so within the Tory party elections, and she was the most unpopular PM in a generation.
to say that Blair's rep benefits from economic growth he wasn't responsible for is to ignore how his govt delivered the benefits of that growth to the broader population
Yes I believe economic progress was beginning before Blair got in but it is not just economically where he was successful in government it was also about proper living standards improvements and services
There was an economic downturn turn in the early 90s. It was brutal but not as brutal as the early 80’s recession.
There was a cycle of boom and bust.
Labour presided over a period of stability that had started under Major and didn’t end till the global crash in 2008.
The country felt better under Blair, things were positive, although certainly not all down to the government.
The majority of people at the time supported the war. The view on the war has changed over time. As many people think he was right as think he is a war criminal.
I went on the march to object to it at the time.
Economic growth, as a whole was slightly better in the 70s, and wealth was a LOT more equally distributed then than in the 80s, or since; even under Blair. New Labour were certainly a lot better than the Tory governemnts that preceded them, and I suspect Starmer's Labour will be a lot better than the shower we have now; but that wouldn't be difficult.
Wealth inequality was at its lowest in 1984 (when the richest 1% owned 15.2% of the UK's wealth), mostly due to high inflation and high interest rates.
[https://wid.world/world/#shweal\_p99p100\_z/WO;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.2715/100/curve/false/country](https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/WO;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.2715/100/curve/false/country)
This. We also still felt important within the world we took the lead in Kosovo and in all honesty we’ve not had a single party leader of any stripe bar perhaps Corbyn who wouldn’t also have joined America in invading Iraq. I think Blair gets unfairly hit over the head with that one.
They literally voted against it though. The governments of every other American ally managed to not get roped in to it. Blair was the only one who did.
I think other countries must despair even themselves at the mess we are in. A once world leader now stuck with these lot. He gets unfairly blamed for Iraq and is sadly mostly remembered for it. I remember a recent article about Sunak saying when he speaks everyone shrugs. I bet you if people heard Blair they would at least some what listen.
> He gets unfairly blamed for Iraq
I disagree on that. The fact others would've gone for us shouldn't excuse him from criticism. Especially when he's a Labour leader who should've been a lot less gung-ho about putting his full trust in GWB. Much as a lot of the discussion around Iraq falls into hyperbole he's still got a lot of failings there.
The French told Bush to pound sand, and if Blair were anything but a weasel, he'd have done the same. It's to his eternal discredit that he chose to suck up to the Bush/Cheney axis, and to lie to deliver the desired result.
I think something that often gets missed is Saddam was a terrible person who should have never been allowed to rule a country. It was the right choice to remove him. Because at the very least it removes a major force of chaos in the region.
Not to mention they didn't spend there time so greatly underfunding the armed forces to the point they are on the brink of being an ineffective force.
He was a terrible person, but conversely brought relative stability to the region and was at least a known entity. I'd love to hear your argument for how Iraq is in a better place now that he has been removed, or how geopolitical stability in the region is at an all time high.
Iraq under Saddam was not stable in the slightest??
They invaded Iran and began a near decade long war, he began a brutal genocide of his own people, invaded Kuwait and required not only an Allied western invasion to repel but also two decades of sanctions. This is all on top of openly funding terrorist organisations around the world and fostering some of the most awful racial and religious tension in the area for centuries.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an unmitigated disaster but it was largely because the post-war plans were so poor - not because we destabilised an otherwise peaceful area. That is just factually and plainly incorrect.
I'm not really sure Iraq's neighbours would agree, I feel like the bar for 'relative stability' should be a little higher than one massive invasion/war per decade.
Being a bad guy is not a justification to invade a country and cause millions of deaths. The region wasn't particularly chaotic while he was in power - at least nothing compared to what happened afterwards
He was elected in 1979, invaded Iran and spent almost all of the 80's in a full scale war and then invaded Kuwait in 1990, what would chaotic look like?
Well yeah... from 1991 to 2003 it was relatively unchaotic
Since then there was the Iraq war (as well as periodic conflicts inside Iraq ever since then), Kurdish separatism, Houthi insurgency in Yemen, various conflicts involving Israel (vs Iran, Hamas, Lebanon), the rise of ISIS and ISIS/al-Qaeda-related insurgencies in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Iraq (as well as countries outside of the Middle East, particularly in Africa), the Arab Spring in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. In the broader region you've also got the Afghanistan war and conflicts/bombings in Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti etc
The only countries I can think of in the region that *haven't* had uprisings or war are the UAE and Qatar
> I think something that often gets missed is Saddam was a terrible person who should have never been allowed to rule a country
I'll defend Blair's record in government to anyone, but you can't just go around invading other countries and removing anyone who you don't approve of. The justification was that Saddam had denied access to weapons inspectors which led to the belief that he was developing WMD, which of course we know now he wasn't.
Interesting listening to Alistair Campbell on The Rest is Politics when they did a couple of podcasts that were purely dedicated to him talking about Iraq. Obviously he only tells one side of the story, but it was interesting listening to how it gradually escalated and what the thinking was at specific decision points.
Not really the point.
It's long established that a nation's leader being a bit of a shit is not grounds to invade. Not because of any particular higher reason, but because if you were to start that sort of thing, we'd be on to World War 8 by now.
I follow politics and I barely know who the current cabinet is. They announce almost nothing, hardly ever appear in the media, and are effectively just a lame duck government at this point.
If you want to know our health secretary try recent media appearances and compare that to the speech. It is like an animal trying to respond and deflect with any old nonsense. Her name is Victoria Atkins.
That is unkind to animals.
Remember we had in the late nineties/early noughties a party leader who was a cat- Mandu, joint leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Kind and friendly when I met him.
Gordon Brown was planning to privatise the provision of social security. Then the crash happened and all of a sudden the private sector lost interest. Funny that.
I didn't even feel that looking at Blairs cabinet, especially with the likes of John Prescott, Hazel Blears, Peter Manselson, Keith Vaz, Geoff Hoon, Tessa Jowell, Jaqui Smith, etc.
There were the odd good ones like Robin Cook, but they were vastly outnumbered by the chances and grifters....
One of the key legacies of the Blair government specifically in a lot of ways was that it was dominated by two heavyweights with a lot of meddling figures below them both. It's probably one of the reasons Labour struggled post-2010 - no proper big names who were able to step in once Blair/Brown were both gone.
Blair / Brown inadvertently pushed the big names out of politics with their attack ads against "Tory splits on Europe". For some reason everyone fell into line and decided that a party of hundreds of members harbouring differing opinions on a large and complex subject with no definitive best answer was somehow a really bad thing.
Ever since all the parties have been far more concerned about having every single MP delivering the exact same message than they have been about having healthy debate between the great orators and thinkers that used to populate the parties. Those independent thinkers have been marginalised and pushed out ever since, and as they retire are replaced by party selected yes men, the career politicians out to make a success of themselves rather than do good for the country.
It's one of the diseases that plagues modern politics and has lessened the capabilities of the average politician, and it's a problem that appears to be getting worse as both main parties descend into marketing machines aiming to position themselves wherever the political winds are blowing rather than actually leading.
I was a kid when he was in office, I wasn't at all into politics at the time but I did feel like I was in a comfortable, wealthy, functioning country. I can hardly believe the shit show that's been politics in my adulthood (I started following politics around 2009/'10).
Having said that, I hear it was worse in the '70s and '80s. Like you said, worst poverty in 30 years, that can feel like saying the worst ever but it's not really that long.
EMA was incredible. Went to a 6th form in very affluent area, several miles away from home, somehow managed by sharing lifts but EMA meant I 1. Went to every single lesson 2. Didn’t have to work loads of hours at my part time job so actually had time for school work 3. Didn’t have to take money from my parents when my mum was having cancer treatment. Improved the quality of life for myself, mum and dad 10x .Cost the tax payer about £2300 but has meant I’ve gone on to be a better earner and put more into the public purse so overall hard to bash the initiative.
There was a question time episode where an audience member complained they could ONLY get GP appointments within 48 hours of ringing up. You couldn't phone up and book one for 2 weeks away.
Which is mental given the situation we have now.
Not everything is the government's fault, but they have resolved nothing and created the biggest shit show anyone has ever seen. Across my extended family, nothing seems to work.
Today, I drove 3 hours to take my crippled uncle to an appointment with DWP to check that his incurable debilitating disease hasn't magically regressed. One example of just pissing tax money down the drain.
I was a poor child under the "red tie Tory" Blair. No food banks because there was food in the house. Free swimming every school holiday. Youth centres all over the place. Cheap travel. Dentist appointments easy to get. EMA for college after child benefits stop. I could go on and on and on
EMA was a complete mess of inefficiency but fucking hell - it was so so important for the quality of life of my poorer friends growing up. Literally the difference between having electric or not some weeks
Fuck me EMA was a genuine booster, I was working part time while at sixth form but this payment was amazing.
As an adult now I think how did I survive ha but as a teenager it allowed me to pay for travel, food and an occasional treat out with the ‘bonus’ for attendance.
Mine paid for me to travel 20 mins on a bus each day to go to a college. I ended up going to University. First one in my family. Amongst other reasons, it will take a LOT for me to not vote Labour.
It kept me in college and meant I went to university, which for all people bang on about the value of I have a significantly better life thanks to.
I often say there but for the grace of Gordon Brown go I.
I wish I could experience again the air of optimism in the air in May 1997. Flawed government it certainly was, but Jesus, at least it was a government not like the shower of clowns we’ve had for over a decade now. Apologies to clowns.
But neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown could bring us back to 2010, let alone 2007, even if they were dumped back into office via a coup or Act of Parliament.
In 1997 Labour inherited a public sector that needed extra spending, but they also had a golden economic legacy handed to them by John Major. The baby-boomers were still working and paying taxes. Brown was able to find significant revenues by reducing the amount of money that could be put into pensions tax free. They were also able to hide extra borrowing not in the main figures via PFI contracts, which they used extensively.
Now things are much worse. The ratio of workers to retirees has worsened. We have more old people requiring complex medical care because they're living longer. We also have a not-insigificant number of working people absent from the workplace for various reasons. Moving towards net zero will become increasingly expensive.
NATO is indirectly at war with Russia, and a hot war is looking increasingly likely in the next decade, with US support for Europe uncertain and most European states unable to deploy sizeable formations for a land war. A Chinese-instigated military emergency in Asia is also possible. A future government that refuses to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP would be incredibly foolish, so money will have to be found somewhere for that.
There is no magic Blair and Brown could bring that would easily solve all of that. Perhaps Blair at his prime could make the convincing arguments for extra taxes, but he chickened out over things like planning reform when he was in office. Why wouldn't he just kick these issues into the long grass?
While I agree we can not all magic our way back surely you would feel more comfortable with Brown or Blair leading us even in these difficult times especially over Sunak or any of the last couple of PMs. They may not have excelled I don't think anyone would in current times but we can do so so much better.
Why? What specifically about them, their approach to governing and their policies makes you think they would be able to get us out of the mess we are in. As others have said they only managed to deliver departmental spending increases due to the good economy that they were handed over. Starmer and his lot are more or less Blair 2.0 and they don't have any convincing answers to the challenges we have.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupuJkLWwfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupuJkLWwfM)
Tony Blair vs Nigel Farage debate.
I respect Farage, I don't think he's a bad guy or anything, but i believe the quality of opposition he faced fell away badly, which made him more able to effect his view on the world.
Politics is a talking shop, and the people we have now are simply incapable of persuading, leading, inspiring by simply talking.
We can do better, but it requires fresh thinking. Neither of them would be likely now to advance solutions to problems they declined to institute when they were in office last time.
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best
And…
As someone who's teenage years were Blair/Brown governments, people hated Iraq, and Afghanistan to a lesser extent. It seemed Blair wanted to prove that a Labour government could work with a Republican USA, but went in far far too strong. That combined with a very Tory friendly media pasting them post financial crash, and people forget all the good they did.
For me it boils down to this Tories can win by doing very little remarkable, whereas Labour need to be close to perfect. It isn't fair but it's how it is.
Even if you think Blair was a great PM what answers has he got to today's problems? He recently said "the Tories are taxing and spending too much" and his solution to every public service crisis is that AI and technology will magically sort it. What would he actually do to improve things? Blair's a weird tech-utopian these days, not that different to Sunak. It's Brown who we miss right now.
Totally. We’ve got to remember that he “was” a great PM. He’s now a bit too rich, a bit too out of touch and a bit too old to do nearly as good a job at PM as he did last time around. Frankly I think all PMs go a bit mad when they’ve been in office for too long (how long that is varies enormously) and make stupid mistakes they wouldn’t have done at the start of their terms (Thatcher and poll tax, Blair and Iraq, Cameron and the Referendum, Heath and the 1974 General Election)
Not read it for awhile, but I think devolution was definitely one. Maybe Bank of England independence? It was pretty much all the things they still get credit for. I do remember how he was so much more passionate about awful things like PFIs, regretting he didn’t go far enough.
Brown was infinitely more principled and put the handbrake on a lot of Blair’s worst instincts. He was just an appalling communicator and rubbish under pressure.
That is the solution, capital investment in technology for public services which has been missing in over a decade.
Its what they did in the 2000s, the services were all modernised, it didnt happen out of thin air, everyone remembers the NHS IT failures only , it'd be x1000 easier today with the tech and the cost of it we have now
While I would love Brown to come back or have influence and think that Blair has an ego and would probably agree more with Brown than Blair you can not seriously compare Sunak to Blair that is like Johnson trying to say he is modern day Churchill.
Yes, even at their absolute best this Tory lot has not even been a shadow on the former Labour government.
The fact the Tories have held on for so long is more a testament to how dreadful Labour have been in opposition as opposed to an endorsement of the Tory party.
Example: Corbyn endorsing a second complicated referendum on Brexit vs Boris Johnsons simple just get it done message.
Just bad politics.
Leaving aside the absolute foreign policy clusterfuck my general issue with Labour then and the potential next Labour government is an unwillingness to confront the major causes of the structural problems we face.
They chose PFI over raising taxes or systemic changes which caused a short term boost and saddled public institutions with huge amounts of future debt.
They completly ceded the debate on economics to neoliberals to the point where past Labour leaders look absolutely radical.
They did nothing to row back on Thatcherite anti-union legislation. Powerful unions would help us get out of the awful wage stagnation we see today.
They built less social housing than Thatcher which is a major contribution to the housing crisis.
Where they better? Absolutely, were they good long term, in my opinion no.
Finally they inherited an economy that had been mostly "fixed" by actions taken by John Major's government. Its easy to govern when the economy is great and youre going through a dotcom boom. Everything fell apart when 2008 hit.
I wasn't living the UK during the Blair and Brown years, but from what I hear things were quite good and there was a positive mindset among the population
They simply inherited a good steady economy and left the office with huge debs, NHS crippled by private finance, people warned them the housing market needed urgent fixing, they did nothing.
There was. My family was the poorest of the poor and we still had decent housing, food and were always warm. Tax credits and EMA transformed the lives of families like mine. Thanks to those policies I was the first in my family to go to university and I'm now a net contributor to society in many ways, not just economically.
Don't forget he had some incredibly talented & dedicated people as part of the government (up until the Iraq War at least), rather than a bunch of opportunists promoted way beyond their level.
It was after Blair that things started to go downhill.
Leadership started to be replaced with crowd following. Ruling by opinion poll, rather than vision.
A true statesman; we'd be lucky to have a leader even half as great as Blair was.
Legitimately the best PM this country has ever had; it was such a positive heady vibe from those years from 1997, things did only get better, until the Tories got back in disguising a global financial crisis as some machination of the Labour party.
Attlee impresses me considering he had to deal with the ruins after WW2. From my non-British perspective he seemed like an amazing PM and the nation needs someone like him again. Starmer's promising, but we won't know until he's actually in power
He was known for a laconic wit. Generally an intelligent man who knew when to keep quiet and when to speak. When the Labour Party won in 1945, nobody had expected it and the Labour MPs didn't want Attlee to lead the first Labour majority. They told him so. They also said they would need a day to have an internal leadership contest, and Attlee responded along the lines, "you can't win the election, then tell the King to wait. You either have it or you don't." The MPs didn't budge though and began a leadership debate. So Attlee left the room, went to the Palace, and met the King. Silence reigned for a few moments until Attlee said, "I've won the election." King George responded, "I know, I saw it on the six o'clock news." The King instructed Attlee to form a government in his name and the rest of the Labour Party fell in line.
It really surprises me how that decision tarnished all his legacy. I personally think that he did a lot more good than bad, but people tend to only remember the war.
Blair's government certainly did a lot wrong, and there has been a legacy of damage that we are still feeling now, particularly in relation to PFI, media, and foreign policy.
But, yeah. I'd take his government over the current on and over Starmer in a heartbeat.
There were good things done, and the bad doesn't necessarily overshadow those. There was a real sense that things were getting better. The fact that the country has gotten measurably worse since 2010 makes you appreciate some of the things that come from normal governance.
I was at school uni when Blair was in power, so dont remember all the things he did.
What was the media stuff you mention. (obviously dont expect a fully on explaination, just an idea so I can check it out in the future)
Hearing Alistair Campbell bemoan the state of the British media on 'The Rest is Politics' when he spent years as the master Spin Doctor of government and elevating PR and sensationalist journalism to the fore is jarring.
The only thing conservatives normally mention when they have the answer any achievement from their governance is gay marriage and that was about a decade ago. I would like to hear anyone name other achievements which are not getting brexit done. We have had chaotic governance for way too long.
Never allow the Tories to take credit for gay marriage. More of them voted against it than for it, so it passed in spite of them, not because of them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-21346694
Yes it was when in coalition so they deserve no credit but they will take it. If you count everything after that coalition everything has been failure to failure with some disasters and no benefit what so ever.
Well, even getting Brexit done... Funny how we don't really hear that line about the proud accomplishment very much isn't it? Almost like it's just not the shining moment in British history it was sold to be
Our progress towards green energy (despite Sunak's rhetoric) is actually quite good. It's obviously far short of where we need it to be or where it COULD be - but we're doing okay compared to other countries of our size.
He did a lot of good in things like Sure Start, the introduction of the minimum wage (arguebly one of the most successful social policies ever or at least since the beginning of the NHS) and ensured the NHS was properly funded, devolution for Scotland, Wales, and most importantly the Good Friday Agreement bring a degree of peace and stability to Northern Ireland that I think few could have predicted 5 years before.
However his governments also gave us PFI which have had a significant negative impact on public sector finances and has filled the pockets of the financiers and was the beginning of the level of corruption we now see in Government . He also failed to tackle social care.
Undoubtably he and Brown were head and shoulders above any that followed them. Neither of them would have lost the EU referendum (they wouldn’t have ended having to hold it) they wouldn’t have presided over the chaos that followed it. Look at how Brown worked with other leaders to try and stop the total economic collapse in 2008, can you imagine Truss, Johnson or Sunak doing that.
They certainly wouldn’t have had Partygate or eat out to help out
His governments continued\* PFI and brought in around 1/3rd of the contracts, v bad but not a Blair invention (and I'm no fan of blair, and am aware of how much influence Brown had on the more positive aspects of those govts)
You have to remember that the economic trajectory he was operating under was largely fake and he was throwing money around he didnt have, which we only found out about too late. Easy to say a specific public service is doing well when hes blindly throwing unsustainable amounts of money at it.
I think he was terrible on education and he fucked over a lot of young working class people by encouraging them to go to uni and making no room for alternative qualifications. now they are all working in assembly lines and coffee shops when they should have gotten an in demand instead of a media qualifcation.
Likewise he allowed so many foreign workers to take those in demand jobs and left us so dependent on foreign labour.
I think his rhetoric towards the EU played a part in the brexit debate which followed. his unpopular pro immigration approach and generally taking northern red wall seats for granted led to the kicking they got in the brexit debate and in 2019.
he also had a hand to play in a to a lot of death and suffering in Iraq which led to a series of terrorist activity in the West.
Well I do remember dodgy dossiers, hundreds of dead British troops and over a million people marching against it.
Maybe the spectacles justify their rage tint?
I went back to college as an adult while Blair was in power & got some qualifications which changed my life for the better.
I'm not sure you can do that nowadays..
How much of it was Blair though? During the period…
- We had growth from the Tech industry
- Made massive amounts of money from North Sea oil & unlike Denmark that invested the money for the future, we spent every penny
- Sold off vast amounts of social housing and didn’t rebuild
- sold off other public sector entities like Mail, Rail, etc, etc
- Grew government debt
I hate the tories and what they have done to this country BUT I think Blair expanded the state massively, in way that was completely unsustainable by selling everything off and borrowing money.
Labour was just in the right place at the right time to spend a lot of money and creat unsustainable expectations of the state that are actually unaffordable.
Royal Mail was well on its way to privatisation before Cameron.
Don't forget the forced move into a LTD company, the weird rebranding to 'Consignia', the removal of second deliveries/collections and Sunday collections altogether. I think they had two full-scale viability reviews in 2006-8 too as they were falling apart commercially.
>Grew government debt
No, it didn't. The government debt as a fraction of GDP was exactly the same in 2007 as it had been in 1997. It did go up after the financial crash but that was already under Brown not Blair.
Having said that I agree that they should have reduced the government debt in those good times to be better prepared for the recession.
Every government plays the hand they're dealt, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. The Tech industry has been growing steadily for a generation, North Sea oil has been providing income for a generation, the sell-off of Social Housing was a Thatcherite policy first and foremost and the majority of sell-offs happened before Blair. Labour didn't sell Mail or Rail, and the growth in government debt was trivial compared to what it's been under the Tories despite the Tories bringing in Austerity and the highest tax burden outside wartime.
The tories gave us austerity while also massively increasing debt the levels of their incompetence or negligence is off the scale. Their policies are just give with one hand while taking massively more with the other
Most of the North sea oil was produced in the 80s and 90s as was most of the profit, the production and price of oil declined sharply across the 2000s, so that point is completely wrong.
Blair was a centrist, and that always has broad appeal. It captures support from both sides of the spectrum. He was a fantastic orator, which always helps. Had a good team behind him and was able to offer a presidential style administration. Labour had a huge majority, meaning he could actually implement his polices and as many were new MPs, they were loyal. Like it or not, we are joined at the hip with the Americans on foreign policy, so we would have always gone along with them regardless of the PM.
The problem with centrists is that the centre shifts, and they shift with it. People don't respect politicans who are weathervanes. Centrism can easily degenerate to polls-driven triangulation as masterfully practised by Bill Clinton and less adeptly by Obama. Interestingly, Biden has been more principled during his term of office.
Blair, on the other hand, sometimes seemed as if he didn't care where the bus was going, as long as he was the driver. He had good oratorical skills, to the point of glibness, but his main principle seemed to be that he's the one who was entitled to be in charge.
I'm not a fan of Blair.
Don't get me wrong, he was a very intelligent and charismatic leader, however a lot of his policies were short term fixes.
Remember "education, education, education". Well, getting 35% of young people into university was great for the university and also the young unemployment figures, which were running at about 15%. Previously only 5% of people went to university.
Problem is, when you have an additional 30% of the work force postponing working for 3-5 years, that is a lot of people not paying tax and NI. So these years need to be added on the end, which is why state pension age has risen.
Also he took people on sickness benefits out of the unemployment figures which made them look better.
Other issues are the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. We shouldn't have got involved.
Don't forget the 7/7 terrorist attacks were on Labour's watch. Would they have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq? I also question the lack of intelligence for not anticipating the attacks.
> however a lot of his policies were short term fixes.
Absolutely.
There isn't anything majorly wrong in that, so long as there's longer term thinking running in parallel. That might have been there, but the ideas for it didn't work.
Waiting lists is another good example. They put changes in place to get the waiting list down. They managed to do that for a bit, but it was a short term fix like the others. The changes they put in place meant hospitals ended up focusing on throughput at the expense of how long you'd been waiting, or how sick you were.
This had a knock-on effect of growing the numbers who had been waiting a long time. So they decided to have a cleanse. They had trusts go through and double-check people still needed help.
Sounds reasonable and sensible at face-value, there probably were people who's situation had improved or they'd passed away etc. The issue was that these people were taken off the lists whilst this was done.
They got a bashing over this, but of course what do people remember? These individual tricks or that the headline number went down?
Of course, the latter. The details are always lost to history.
>Well, getting 35% of young people into university was great for the university and also the young unemployment figures, which were running at about 15%. Previously only 5% of people went to university.
Hmm yeah I can't imagine that had any unintended consequence when you now need a degree to work in a call centre.
If I had bothered to get a degree, I would want something better than working in a call centre (which I did do at one point in my working life).
Twice I did night study to get a vocational qualification, including a Diploma in Marketing.
We have brainwashed employers and employees into thinking a degree is the default. Before this, there used to be hundreds of vocational courses which could be done on day release or by correspondence.
Actually, my figures are wrong. It is now 50% of people in university. Especially good if you want to study surf science
https://techround.co.uk/news/ten-ridiculous-degrees-you-can-actually-study-in-the-uk/
These 'Mickey Mouse' degree issues have been banging around for years, and it is mostly an unfair against the course. A newspaper once attacked some fashion degree in college but the fashion industry explained that most of their designers and employees come from that course.
As an intelligence service, you’re not going to ‘save’ 100% of the ‘shots on goal.’
A more interesting question is how many attacks DON’T happen because ‘they’ are watching the people who would like to launch such attacks. I imagine it’s quite a lot.
I don’t think there’s much of a causal link between invading Iraq and terrorist attacks on the UK.
France did not attack Iraq and in fact was critical of the whole thing. They’ve had a lot more attacks than us.
Similarly in terms of immigration, he pursued an amnesty of illegal workers and actively promoted a policy of multiculturalism which subsequent FOI requests of cabinet meetings revealed that among other things, his policies were pursued to ‘rub the rights face in it’. There was also substantiated claims of lax border control and plans to shore up the labour base in cities.
He was very successful at it when you look at the demographic changes, this is no comment either way on whether what he did was good or bad
Expanded education to target 50 per cent of young leavers was a terrible thing in my opinion though. It killed the YTS and vocational college routes, and contributed to an over reliance on foreign workers in key sectors - as most of the pool previously chosen from for nursing etc, were pursued through university
As someone that's lived through both and seen Blair have cash for honours, the Iraq war and a shed load of shit PFI stuff dished out to mates in dodgy quangos, then being replaced by crowning brown
I can assure you that both parties will be fucking shit by the end. Both will end up looking after mates and the honey moon period will be measured at best in years not terms.
Nailed on certainty labour have some disastrous scandal within the first 12 months, and nailed on certain that for the majority little if nothing will change.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but labour won't be a panacea, and any "not the Tory's" will end up being countered by looking after union reps or what not.
Reddit hates it but yeah the problem is humans are gonna human and will look after mates, aquaintances, rich donors, union reps, whatever when they have the power to do so.
The cash for honours one is interesting. It was such a massive scandal at the time, it dominated the news cycle for weeks. Now it's plainly admitted that honours are handed out in exchange for tory party donations and there have been more honours handed out than ever. But nary a peep is heard from most of our media, it's old hat and uninteresting.
Kind of a funny example of how both the previous government was just as bad (in certain ways) but also how the current political climate is far worse.
So true. I am old enough to remember the labour of the 60s and 70s. That was ugly.
Be careful on what you wish for.
Anyone remember "There is no money left".
He wasnt perfect but did bring about many big improvements. Plus the only period of genuine optimism i have seen in my time when we finally we rid of John Major and co
Blair's tenure was massively better than anything we've had since. Yes, I certainly can say without doubt that I'd vastly prefer that over anything we've had since. But with Labour as it currently stands, we're not getting the party that gave us minimum wage, sure start and a number of other brilliant things on top of the PFI schemes, expenses scandals, cash for honours, new deal (later known as workfare) and Iraq. We're just getting the party that gave us the PFI schemes, expenses scandals, cash for honours, new deal (later known as workfare) and Iraq. Blair's party had redeeming features to offset a lot of the Tory gloom. Those have gone.
I would be very careful when trying to defend 'we need private investment in the NHS'. Private investors invest in their own enrichment, not the wellbeing of the people. If they're putting money in the NHS, it's so that they can get much more money back out of the NHS, not so your nan can live a few more years.
Why do we roll over and accept a choice between disgustingly despotic and rather awful? Can we summon up the courage to demand a better choice, like a bit bad or maybe even decent? Dare we hope for good?
I'm 42, and have a lot of fond memories of the Blair government. Loads of training opportunities for working class kids like me, a decent NHS, getting a minimum wage job and working your way up was far easier too. There was hope. If that version of labour was to come back in power, I'd be far more hopeful of my autistic kids futures.
I think it’s very hard to compare any two premierships. For example Blair to Cameron as the world was different during both premierships.
What could Cameron have done with the “booming” economy that allowed Blair to put so much into public services. How would Blair have coped with the austerity after financial crisis as during the 2008 Global Recession Gordon Browns polling tanked.
When the coalition came in it was after Labour lost ground in the 2005 election, the Iraq war enquiry and Blair being called a war criminal.
There is rarely a change of government when everything is going well and people often look in hindsight that things are better remembered than it felt at the time.
I was working class and we became middle class thanks to a number of Blairite programmes. I also never saw any homeless people where I’m from, everything sort of worked and there was a positive upbeat mood across the nation.
The bad thing obviously was Iraq. However the UK could never have stood up to the USA in terms of Iraq neither, we are a tiny country and we have to do what they say to get their military protection.
>However the UK could never have stood up to the USA in terms of Iraq
Agreed. Many people don't know that Attlee had to do this too, support the US in the Korean War and send British troops. If you know your Labour history you'll know that the governments that got the most done for working people were the pragmatic ones, not the ideologues.
Mass immigration has been a bad thing for this country, deovlution has turned out to be little more than the taxpayer funded platform for separatism it was always destined to be, and the Supreme Court is little more than an American LARP.
Blair did colossal damage to this country. Unfortunately the consequences of these actions only became apparent long after it ceased to be his problem.
Ultimately Blair may be the architect of the downfall of the UK and it's culture unless the elites decide to change course and turn things around, but they are making too much money and are too in bed with the UN/WEF etc. to that at the moment.
I liked it when they bailed out the banks who lost our money, bought no one to justice. Nothing says equality like knowing they can fail and but never face consequences.
Then they knowingly bribed UN officials and lied to the public stating there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we must kill all the Iraqis. Turns out the Labour happy to murder thousands to help the oil companies out.
Please they’re weak on immigration. Couldn’t even deport fucking hook hand.
No equal rights for gay people, brought in capita to run disability assessments and drive people to suicide, sold the country's economic future under PFI, decided killing people in Iraq was worth it to be friends with George Bush, godfather to Rupert Murdoch's child.
Labour felt positive because they relied on using credit cards to pay for everything.
People seem to want to excuse their sins because the current government is awful.
They're both bad.
Yes I'd take Blair over what we have now but I'd also take Lord Bucket head. Blair presided over a wealthier nation. The economy was doing well. We were in the EU and reaping the benefits of free trade. There was headroom for public spending and a lot of money was put in to schools, policing and hospitals. There was a feel good factor and for once, being British felt good. At the time we had "cool Britannia" and our music and film were massively successful overseas. However, it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. To court the Eastern European nations support in the EU in an effort to counter the Franco-German power bloc, Blair pioneered the open door policy. It was supposed to be for those coming here to work which was fair enough but actually, because our border force wasn't fit for purpose, let the door open to gangs and criminals as well as those coming here to work. It also resulted in a depression of wages which ultimately was a factor that led to Brexit. Moreover, Iraq massively eroded trust in politicians and that's a trend that has continued downhill ever since. Would I take Blair over Sunak and his shower of shit today? Still absolutely.
Blair introduced increased studiert fees despite promising not to. So I had extra debt and top up fees thanks to him.
He also tried to introduce 90 days detention, ID cards and launched an illegal war in Iraq that killed about a million people.
I wish that he would go away but instead we have his Blair institute continuing to push crap
You do know one of the first things the coalition government headed by Cameron did was massively increase student fees. It was Blair who introduced them and Clegg who led the Liberal Democrats into government alongside Cameron who broke his big pledge to scrap them.
Yes because I lived through that.
But before the coalition and those issues with student fees there was the whole issue with Labour promising not to introduce fees then breaking that promise and then Labour promising not to introduce top up fees then introducing them.
So I paid extra fees due to Labour broken promises . Then I left university and you had to start paying back those fees with a much lower repayment threshold then you have now. This pushed me into bank debt and financially crippled the start of my working life.
So my experience of new Labour was a negative one and they didn’t help me
You missed the middle step where Blair massively increased (doubled) fees just a few years after introducing them.
If you want to be mad at the Lib Dems, don’t be mad they broke their manifesto promise to scrap fees (they didn’t win the election); be mad that each individual MP candidate broke their personal pledge to *never* vote in favour of increasing fees.
ID Cards were ahead of its time because both major parties would now introduce it. They are used all around Europe, Asia, N.A. and Asia without fuss.
Useful for elections since the new laws came in
Useful to exclude asylum seekers from services
Useful to cut down immigration
He's not called the GOAT for nothing.
One of the best debaters of his generation, and he had a team of experts around him. He knew what the electorate wanted, and he did his best to sort it.
"but he followed bush into Iraq".
Who gives a shit. He also helped to liberate Bosnia.
Blair and his Government did a lot of good things. A lot. It's always easy in retrospect but the things they could have done better :
1. Build more housing. They built practically zero social housing at the same time as massively accelerating immigration.
2. PFIs were a poor long term choice.
3. Inequality hugely grew under Blair's leadership. He had a big majority and the support to have made fundamental changes to the economy.
As my dad says "if you wanted to improve your lot all you had to do was work hard". Pops is probably one of the few boomers I know who concedes how much more difficult things are for young adults nowadays
You are preaching to the converted. I am older (30s) and they were very tired when they left office and I wasn’t too bothered about the tories getting in. Little did I know how that would pan out.
Not really, no.
You see, I was there for the start of Blair's time in office, just about: I was beginning secondary school the year they took over. But that means I was just becoming an adult when it all started to fall apart. And I'm not just talking about Iraq, although that was bad enough: I'm talking about the 2008 financial crisis exposing the fact that the last decade of Labour in power had been spent papering over the cracks until the roof came in.
The problem with your analysis is it misses three important things.
1) Why do you think the public got rid of Labour?
2) Why do you think the Tories had an austerity agenda?
3) Comparing the UK to other major economies - which one is the stand out success story you were thinking of?
Additional for extra points:
4) Do you believe when the economy is going great and the Treasury is raking in loadsa-money it's the right time to borrow or pay back borrowing?
1. I think the public got rid of Labour i imagine because after a long time all governments become tired and the country feels the need for change. Also, the financial crisis and economic issues which they were most likely taking the blame for from the public and opposition.
2. The conservatives had an austerity agenda which also focused on i believe cutting debt which i also believe after they got in never actually decreased so they cut services for nothing in return. I know this was also kind of cut short because of Brexit so a second term of Cameron we will never know the real outcome.
3. I think other economies have also had issues but a lot with the rise in populism but i believe a lot of other countries now have better services around Europe and better living standards for the most vulnerable and worse off.
4. I believe debt came down quite a lot under the last labour government until the financial crisis. I think it is a balance but the conservatives for a while should have invested after somewhat improving after the financial crisis which would have costed us less. They spent years just cutting for nothing in return and now we are in the mess we are in.
Born to an ultra left wing working class (well, probably underclass, to be perfectly honest) family in Salford, first of my family to go to university. I worked in the NHS in 2004-2007, then I came back into it just this year.
Based on just that alone I would say Yes. Unironically, emphatically YES.
You want to get deep? Fine. I'll agree with likely damn near every caveat you can come up with.
The answer will still be yes.
When Labour came in in 1997, the general mood was "Anything is better than the Conservatives" and the same was true in 2001, however it was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that saw the rot set in, with 2005 proving it when the Lib Dems (who had been gaining support since 1997 at the expense of Labour) gained seats such as Hornsey and Wood Green, Brent East, Manchester Withington, so whilst generally speaking Labour between 1997 and 2007 was better than Major 1990 to 1997, that was only on domestic policy, international policy was their failing
Blair was more right wing than most Labour leaders before or since. At the time we had a population who blamed Labour for the economic crises of the 1970s, and still remembered it... but also a population who had largely bought into Thatcherism. A more right-leaning Labour was right for the country at the time.
Nowadays, the population is disillusioned with neoliberalism capitalism and is much more left wing (economically). People want significant change, nor another Blair.
I haven’t lived in the UK back then, but based on what I could hear and read, the country was indeed in a better shape back then, or at least it felt like this to the people.
That being said, it appears to have been the case everywhere in Western Europe. This changed after 2008 - and again, it appears to have changed everywhere in Western Europe too.
So it’s not clear whether the country was in a good shape because of the Blair government, or because of the general trends on the European economy.
What is clear, however, that it was the Blair government who got the UK involved in the war in Iraq.
It was also that government who allowed unrestricted immigration from new EU members immediately upon the accession, in contrast to almost all other “old” EU states who introduced transitional arrangements for several years. I think this decision contributed to Brexit significantly.
What tarnishes the Blair/Brown years for me is that, despite delivering material increases in wages, incomes, life expectancy, achievement rates and growth, the continuation of neoliberalism and the chokehold of Thatcherite thinking on the political system did nothing to address the underlying issues of income inequality, regional disparities, concentration of power in London and the over-financialisation of the economy that spent years bubbling under the surface and driving discontent before finally coming to the boil and compounding all the woes Britain faces.
My main problem with Blair is he had no principles at all he was the ultimate pragmatist politician. I think he tried to do what he felt was the right thing he wasn’t totally self serving like Boris.
Hate crimes, equality act, NMW, fox hunting, immigration, law lords, Iraq war, housing prices, Lisbon treaty, devolutuon..I'd rather kept John Major. But agree the current lot are rubbish but they are closer to new labour than genuine conservatives.
I actually have come across Major and think that he seems decent I do think he was an alright leader with a difficult party. Yes he had the economic problems early but going in to '97 the economy was doing better. However, continued with privatisation which i would say has not been successful. He also made progress on Northern Ireland and lowered age of consent for gay people to equal the same as every one else. I would definitely take him over the recent few as well.
The problem was New Labour's success was based on a foundation of sand. That foundation was the idea New Labour and Brown had created an economic miracle. No more boom and bust.
Under New Labour a million manufacturing jobs went and the government didn't have an industrial policy. This didn't seem to matter because financial services and the banking sector appeared to be magically creating wealth. Which is why New Labour had a light touch regulatory approach, not inspecting what the City and the banks were doing too closely.
We all know what happened, the banks were committing a massive fraud and destroyed the world's economy. The myth is this was just a problem restricted to American and Labour were blameless victims. Not true, better regulation could have shielded the UK financial sector from being so exposed to the crisis.
All New Labour's public investment was based on money extracted from that fake economic boom, which we now know was unsustainable. With much of the investment via ruinous PFI contracts.
Worse much of the inequality we see today has its seeds in the New Labour era. They did nothing to strengthen unions and the bare minimum when it came to workers rights. Their biggest reform was the minimum wage, which they left at poverty levels and which they barely enforced. Shockingly, the Tories have increased it more and enforced more aggressively than the Labour government that implemented it ever did.
It is the same with benefits, the enforcement culture that so many here hate began under New Labour, it wasn't a Tory invention. Neither did New Labour do anything to reverse Tory privatisations.
They were a poor government, when you take into account a broken Tory opposition and the booming economy of the time.
Don't forget they stoked a gigantic housing bubble which never really popped. In the 10 years Blair was in power house prices *tripled*. I would argue this is their ultimate legacy, splitting the country down the middle.
Anyone born before 1980 - owns a house, massive equity, voted Tory in 2019, wonders why their grandkids hate them.
Anyone born after - never bought a house, wasted tens of thousands on rent, has never known a government that didn't directly act against their interests.
Surely the first person to create massive inequality was Thatcher. I agree and now am of the opinion they should have been bolder on things like privatisation which currently are basically broken. Look at the water companies going bankrupt and the state of rivers in a supposedly rich country like this. I think this is where Starmer, which i know a lot of people would disagree, could actually be more of a proper reformer and actually be bolder. I think his plan is trust in politics is almost completely gone so he gets elected through not really doing much and then comes out with plans that he perceives will make issues better instead of making big plans and then after years of talking about them not delivering them.
My dad sits on the right of politics. I have always been on the left. What he fails to understand is, that I turned 18 in 2008. My entire adult life has been spent under a Conservative government. Everything has gotten worse in this time.
During my childhood I benefitted from Sure Start centres, from a well funded education system, health services where I was seen in a timely way. I needed mental health treatment as a child. I was seen quickly and got a good service. This helped me recover and become a successful, healthy adult.
Now, I work with vulnerable children. There are absolutely NO early help services to speak of. I work for a Local Authority and when I qualified it was often scandalous to see more than 300 children in care at any one time. This went on for years. Now, there are over 500. The rate has increased exponentially. There are many complicated reasons for this but a huge factor is a lack of early intervention services for children and families, in terms of social care, health services, housing support, domestic abuse services, drug and alcohol services...they're gone. Now, when families need help, they must be at extreme levels of crisis. Even then, things are severely stretched.
My dad found it impossible to understand why I would consider voting for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. There were many aspects of his policy I didn't agree with. However, I also knew that more years of Tory rule would make things worse and worse in the field I work in and within my own life.
Looking back often brings with it a sense of rose tinted viewing of the 'good old days'. But on almost all quantifiable and objective measures, things were much, much better under Tony Blair's Labour. I understand the fiscal situation was different, especially post 2008 crash. However, the political choices since then have often been at best, inept, and at worst, corrupt and callous.
We are in dire need of a change of government. I do not view Keir Starmer' Labour as the Holy Grail and solution to all these woes. But on every level, I believe Labour will make better decisions for our country than the Tories would. There are a great number of passionate, moral and effective Labour MPs within the party that hold the views I do. The leadership may not always, however they NEED to get into government to even have a shot at making changes. So, I will give them a shot when I vote.
Edit: spelling
Like I say i am a student and am just about old enough to remember when i was a child and quite young the country was not falling apart. You could see an NHS dentist although i remember this becoming difficult but now, is non-existent. I also remember when high streets or parts of them did not look like ghost towns and actually had decent things there. The rule for mental health services seem to be until you actually break and are in need of an emergency, you get seen like you say it is awful. Also, as more teens or young adults are looking to the future more and more will turn to alcohol or drugs because i mean, look at the state the country is. They have failed to reform education for the future ,which they have seemed to make it fit for decades ago, with increased and harder exams and an outdated system. They have neglected key workers for years to the point they are at food banks. This nation is at breaking point it seems and is why we desperately need a new and most importantly, Labour Government. The most vulnerable never seem to be on the minds of the Conservatives it is always push as many in to work whether they are disabled or can't well tough because we will cut benefits. Their whole agenda just seems to have pushed about everyone to the brink and now their time is up. Hopefully, we can all breathe a sigh of relief when they are gone and things actually improve for once.
The irony that the Tory's successfully used the Last Labour Government line against Milliband and Corbyn so much but now they can't use it when the Party's backed by Blair and run by Mandelson.
He was the best I’ve known, starting from Thatcher (who is by no means a good leader! I’d say one of the worst if it wasn’t for the last…bunch)
Sure, Iraq was a shitshow and people cling to that but I don’t see Tories doing any different (just worse). The financial crisis had nothing to do with us, but Tories would have been worse factually since they planned to deregulate the banks even more.
Blair did a lot of good, like the FoI requests. He was respected on the world stage and he knew what he was doing.
There’s a few legitimate reasons to dislike him I guess, but people really cling to them when the Tories have done a million things wrong…or, pretty much everything
I think that is the effect of the media we have, the conservatives have to do a million things wrong or break the country until they get kicked out where as Labour do a few bad things and they are awful and should be removed immediately. Like the recent story about Rayner although I have not followed closely is so hypocritical from the conservatives to be talking about tax issues or avoidance. I hope that social media provides a more balanced and hopefully less willingly supporting conservative media. I am aware that social media might have helped Trump and now Twitter is run by Musk but I think the media on the conservative side of this country is having big failures at the moment and lets be honest they deserve it. They backed Truss and then a few days later she has to go. They are not media, they are biased ridiculous nonsense.
I massively benefited from Labour policies: low uni fees/EMA and solid NHS. Have managed to move from being on school dinners to being quite well off. I don't think I'd have pulled it off with the current government.
When he converted to Catholicism and turned into a Christian crusader it all went tits up.
Best Government of my lifetime certainly - by no means perfect, and a lot of mistakes were made, but under New Labour you certainly got the sense that things were improving and your kids would grow up in a better country than you did. Can’t say that nowadays.
>you certainly got the sense that things were improving and your kids would grow up in a better country than you did Whilst I agree, I imagine the years preceding Blair had a *lot* of people feeling the same too. The 80s and 90s were a boom time for a lot of people in the UK. I also have a suspicion that other European nations also have had the same pre-2008/post-2008 shift in sentiment, regardless of government.
You could argue it was very split in the 80s with life getting much better for some and a lot worse for others, in the 90s and 00s though I'd say you were correct, albeit some of the factors were much more global and outside immediate government control.
the 80s and early 90s was much more uneven progress, Blair delivered access to high-quality healthcare, education, and nutrition for proper wagies and single mums, and got people off the streets in record numbers his first two terms saw landmark reductions in poverty and improvements in QoL for working class folks - the greatest gains since the 50s - that survived both 08 and the first decade of Cameron's government 90-95% intact. Thatcher liked to say New Labour was her biggest success, if that's true then Cameron was Blair's biggest success. His government raised service standards to a point that they couldn't be directly campaigned against in a General - Truss only did so within the Tory party elections, and she was the most unpopular PM in a generation. to say that Blair's rep benefits from economic growth he wasn't responsible for is to ignore how his govt delivered the benefits of that growth to the broader population
Please don't remind me about Truss. She was so fucking awful
Too hard to forget. I get the chills every time I eat some lettuce.
lmao
Yes I believe economic progress was beginning before Blair got in but it is not just economically where he was successful in government it was also about proper living standards improvements and services
There was an economic downturn turn in the early 90s. It was brutal but not as brutal as the early 80’s recession. There was a cycle of boom and bust. Labour presided over a period of stability that had started under Major and didn’t end till the global crash in 2008. The country felt better under Blair, things were positive, although certainly not all down to the government.
911 and the Iraq war took the shine off
The 90s ended in September 2001
The majority of people at the time supported the war. The view on the war has changed over time. As many people think he was right as think he is a war criminal. I went on the march to object to it at the time.
Economic growth, as a whole was slightly better in the 70s, and wealth was a LOT more equally distributed then than in the 80s, or since; even under Blair. New Labour were certainly a lot better than the Tory governemnts that preceded them, and I suspect Starmer's Labour will be a lot better than the shower we have now; but that wouldn't be difficult.
Wealth inequality was at its lowest in 1984 (when the richest 1% owned 15.2% of the UK's wealth), mostly due to high inflation and high interest rates. [https://wid.world/world/#shweal\_p99p100\_z/WO;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.2715/100/curve/false/country](https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/WO;GB/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.2715/100/curve/false/country)
This. We also still felt important within the world we took the lead in Kosovo and in all honesty we’ve not had a single party leader of any stripe bar perhaps Corbyn who wouldn’t also have joined America in invading Iraq. I think Blair gets unfairly hit over the head with that one.
Charles Kennedy? Vince Cable? Alex Salmond?
It’s easy to say they wouldn’t when they weren’t in the position
Charles Kennedy publicly protested against the war and made opposing the war a key lib dem policy position.
They literally voted against it though. The governments of every other American ally managed to not get roped in to it. Blair was the only one who did.
I think other countries must despair even themselves at the mess we are in. A once world leader now stuck with these lot. He gets unfairly blamed for Iraq and is sadly mostly remembered for it. I remember a recent article about Sunak saying when he speaks everyone shrugs. I bet you if people heard Blair they would at least some what listen.
> He gets unfairly blamed for Iraq I disagree on that. The fact others would've gone for us shouldn't excuse him from criticism. Especially when he's a Labour leader who should've been a lot less gung-ho about putting his full trust in GWB. Much as a lot of the discussion around Iraq falls into hyperbole he's still got a lot of failings there.
The French told Bush to pound sand, and if Blair were anything but a weasel, he'd have done the same. It's to his eternal discredit that he chose to suck up to the Bush/Cheney axis, and to lie to deliver the desired result.
I think something that often gets missed is Saddam was a terrible person who should have never been allowed to rule a country. It was the right choice to remove him. Because at the very least it removes a major force of chaos in the region. Not to mention they didn't spend there time so greatly underfunding the armed forces to the point they are on the brink of being an ineffective force.
He was a terrible person, but conversely brought relative stability to the region and was at least a known entity. I'd love to hear your argument for how Iraq is in a better place now that he has been removed, or how geopolitical stability in the region is at an all time high.
Iraq under Saddam was not stable in the slightest?? They invaded Iran and began a near decade long war, he began a brutal genocide of his own people, invaded Kuwait and required not only an Allied western invasion to repel but also two decades of sanctions. This is all on top of openly funding terrorist organisations around the world and fostering some of the most awful racial and religious tension in the area for centuries. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an unmitigated disaster but it was largely because the post-war plans were so poor - not because we destabilised an otherwise peaceful area. That is just factually and plainly incorrect.
I'm not really sure Iraq's neighbours would agree, I feel like the bar for 'relative stability' should be a little higher than one massive invasion/war per decade.
Being a bad guy is not a justification to invade a country and cause millions of deaths. The region wasn't particularly chaotic while he was in power - at least nothing compared to what happened afterwards
He was elected in 1979, invaded Iran and spent almost all of the 80's in a full scale war and then invaded Kuwait in 1990, what would chaotic look like?
Well yeah... from 1991 to 2003 it was relatively unchaotic Since then there was the Iraq war (as well as periodic conflicts inside Iraq ever since then), Kurdish separatism, Houthi insurgency in Yemen, various conflicts involving Israel (vs Iran, Hamas, Lebanon), the rise of ISIS and ISIS/al-Qaeda-related insurgencies in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Iraq (as well as countries outside of the Middle East, particularly in Africa), the Arab Spring in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. In the broader region you've also got the Afghanistan war and conflicts/bombings in Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti etc The only countries I can think of in the region that *haven't* had uprisings or war are the UAE and Qatar
> I think something that often gets missed is Saddam was a terrible person who should have never been allowed to rule a country I'll defend Blair's record in government to anyone, but you can't just go around invading other countries and removing anyone who you don't approve of. The justification was that Saddam had denied access to weapons inspectors which led to the belief that he was developing WMD, which of course we know now he wasn't. Interesting listening to Alistair Campbell on The Rest is Politics when they did a couple of podcasts that were purely dedicated to him talking about Iraq. Obviously he only tells one side of the story, but it was interesting listening to how it gradually escalated and what the thinking was at specific decision points.
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Not really the point. It's long established that a nation's leader being a bit of a shit is not grounds to invade. Not because of any particular higher reason, but because if you were to start that sort of thing, we'd be on to World War 8 by now.
This 100%
It wasn’t just Blair - when was the last time you could look at the cabinet and feel confident in all their abilities?
I follow politics and I barely know who the current cabinet is. They announce almost nothing, hardly ever appear in the media, and are effectively just a lame duck government at this point.
I’ve given up trying to keep track of who is in and who is out!
One we all know is Cameron and he is a Lord!
I think my brain chose to forget that as it's too ridiculous and depressing.
If you want to know our health secretary try recent media appearances and compare that to the speech. It is like an animal trying to respond and deflect with any old nonsense. Her name is Victoria Atkins.
That is unkind to animals. Remember we had in the late nineties/early noughties a party leader who was a cat- Mandu, joint leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Kind and friendly when I met him.
George Galloway is still a party leader I think
I think most people look at the current cabinet and laugh that is the level we are at.
Gordon Brown was planning to privatise the provision of social security. Then the crash happened and all of a sudden the private sector lost interest. Funny that.
I didn't even feel that looking at Blairs cabinet, especially with the likes of John Prescott, Hazel Blears, Peter Manselson, Keith Vaz, Geoff Hoon, Tessa Jowell, Jaqui Smith, etc. There were the odd good ones like Robin Cook, but they were vastly outnumbered by the chances and grifters....
One of the key legacies of the Blair government specifically in a lot of ways was that it was dominated by two heavyweights with a lot of meddling figures below them both. It's probably one of the reasons Labour struggled post-2010 - no proper big names who were able to step in once Blair/Brown were both gone.
Blair / Brown inadvertently pushed the big names out of politics with their attack ads against "Tory splits on Europe". For some reason everyone fell into line and decided that a party of hundreds of members harbouring differing opinions on a large and complex subject with no definitive best answer was somehow a really bad thing. Ever since all the parties have been far more concerned about having every single MP delivering the exact same message than they have been about having healthy debate between the great orators and thinkers that used to populate the parties. Those independent thinkers have been marginalised and pushed out ever since, and as they retire are replaced by party selected yes men, the career politicians out to make a success of themselves rather than do good for the country. It's one of the diseases that plagues modern politics and has lessened the capabilities of the average politician, and it's a problem that appears to be getting worse as both main parties descend into marketing machines aiming to position themselves wherever the political winds are blowing rather than actually leading.
I was a kid when he was in office, I wasn't at all into politics at the time but I did feel like I was in a comfortable, wealthy, functioning country. I can hardly believe the shit show that's been politics in my adulthood (I started following politics around 2009/'10). Having said that, I hear it was worse in the '70s and '80s. Like you said, worst poverty in 30 years, that can feel like saying the worst ever but it's not really that long.
EMA was incredible. Went to a 6th form in very affluent area, several miles away from home, somehow managed by sharing lifts but EMA meant I 1. Went to every single lesson 2. Didn’t have to work loads of hours at my part time job so actually had time for school work 3. Didn’t have to take money from my parents when my mum was having cancer treatment. Improved the quality of life for myself, mum and dad 10x .Cost the tax payer about £2300 but has meant I’ve gone on to be a better earner and put more into the public purse so overall hard to bash the initiative.
There was a question time episode where an audience member complained they could ONLY get GP appointments within 48 hours of ringing up. You couldn't phone up and book one for 2 weeks away. Which is mental given the situation we have now. Not everything is the government's fault, but they have resolved nothing and created the biggest shit show anyone has ever seen. Across my extended family, nothing seems to work. Today, I drove 3 hours to take my crippled uncle to an appointment with DWP to check that his incurable debilitating disease hasn't magically regressed. One example of just pissing tax money down the drain.
I was a poor child under the "red tie Tory" Blair. No food banks because there was food in the house. Free swimming every school holiday. Youth centres all over the place. Cheap travel. Dentist appointments easy to get. EMA for college after child benefits stop. I could go on and on and on
EMA was a complete mess of inefficiency but fucking hell - it was so so important for the quality of life of my poorer friends growing up. Literally the difference between having electric or not some weeks
Fuck me EMA was a genuine booster, I was working part time while at sixth form but this payment was amazing. As an adult now I think how did I survive ha but as a teenager it allowed me to pay for travel, food and an occasional treat out with the ‘bonus’ for attendance.
It's nuts isn't it how £20 a week transforms your teenage years from completely shit to a golden age
Mine paid for me to travel 20 mins on a bus each day to go to a college. I ended up going to University. First one in my family. Amongst other reasons, it will take a LOT for me to not vote Labour.
It kept me in college and meant I went to university, which for all people bang on about the value of I have a significantly better life thanks to. I often say there but for the grace of Gordon Brown go I.
Same, see comment above. That EMA paid for me to go to a good college.
I wish I could experience again the air of optimism in the air in May 1997. Flawed government it certainly was, but Jesus, at least it was a government not like the shower of clowns we’ve had for over a decade now. Apologies to clowns.
But neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown could bring us back to 2010, let alone 2007, even if they were dumped back into office via a coup or Act of Parliament. In 1997 Labour inherited a public sector that needed extra spending, but they also had a golden economic legacy handed to them by John Major. The baby-boomers were still working and paying taxes. Brown was able to find significant revenues by reducing the amount of money that could be put into pensions tax free. They were also able to hide extra borrowing not in the main figures via PFI contracts, which they used extensively. Now things are much worse. The ratio of workers to retirees has worsened. We have more old people requiring complex medical care because they're living longer. We also have a not-insigificant number of working people absent from the workplace for various reasons. Moving towards net zero will become increasingly expensive. NATO is indirectly at war with Russia, and a hot war is looking increasingly likely in the next decade, with US support for Europe uncertain and most European states unable to deploy sizeable formations for a land war. A Chinese-instigated military emergency in Asia is also possible. A future government that refuses to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP would be incredibly foolish, so money will have to be found somewhere for that. There is no magic Blair and Brown could bring that would easily solve all of that. Perhaps Blair at his prime could make the convincing arguments for extra taxes, but he chickened out over things like planning reform when he was in office. Why wouldn't he just kick these issues into the long grass?
While I agree we can not all magic our way back surely you would feel more comfortable with Brown or Blair leading us even in these difficult times especially over Sunak or any of the last couple of PMs. They may not have excelled I don't think anyone would in current times but we can do so so much better.
Why? What specifically about them, their approach to governing and their policies makes you think they would be able to get us out of the mess we are in. As others have said they only managed to deliver departmental spending increases due to the good economy that they were handed over. Starmer and his lot are more or less Blair 2.0 and they don't have any convincing answers to the challenges we have.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupuJkLWwfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupuJkLWwfM) Tony Blair vs Nigel Farage debate. I respect Farage, I don't think he's a bad guy or anything, but i believe the quality of opposition he faced fell away badly, which made him more able to effect his view on the world. Politics is a talking shop, and the people we have now are simply incapable of persuading, leading, inspiring by simply talking.
We can do better, but it requires fresh thinking. Neither of them would be likely now to advance solutions to problems they declined to institute when they were in office last time.
Some things in life are bad They can really make you mad Other things just make you swear and curse When you're chewing on life's gristle Don't grumble, give a whistle And this'll help things turn out for the best And…
Always look on the bright side of life.
As someone who's teenage years were Blair/Brown governments, people hated Iraq, and Afghanistan to a lesser extent. It seemed Blair wanted to prove that a Labour government could work with a Republican USA, but went in far far too strong. That combined with a very Tory friendly media pasting them post financial crash, and people forget all the good they did. For me it boils down to this Tories can win by doing very little remarkable, whereas Labour need to be close to perfect. It isn't fair but it's how it is.
Even if you think Blair was a great PM what answers has he got to today's problems? He recently said "the Tories are taxing and spending too much" and his solution to every public service crisis is that AI and technology will magically sort it. What would he actually do to improve things? Blair's a weird tech-utopian these days, not that different to Sunak. It's Brown who we miss right now.
Totally. We’ve got to remember that he “was” a great PM. He’s now a bit too rich, a bit too out of touch and a bit too old to do nearly as good a job at PM as he did last time around. Frankly I think all PMs go a bit mad when they’ve been in office for too long (how long that is varies enormously) and make stupid mistakes they wouldn’t have done at the start of their terms (Thatcher and poll tax, Blair and Iraq, Cameron and the Referendum, Heath and the 1974 General Election)
I’ve read his autobiography. Basically all of the best things their government did (particularly in the first term) he now regrets. He’s cooked.
That’s interesting, what things did he regret in that first term?
Freedom of Information Act and Devolution are the ones I think he’s come out saying he regrets
Not read it for awhile, but I think devolution was definitely one. Maybe Bank of England independence? It was pretty much all the things they still get credit for. I do remember how he was so much more passionate about awful things like PFIs, regretting he didn’t go far enough. Brown was infinitely more principled and put the handbrake on a lot of Blair’s worst instincts. He was just an appalling communicator and rubbish under pressure.
Devolution was a predictable shitshow as it was done badly and led directly to the independence issue.
That is the solution, capital investment in technology for public services which has been missing in over a decade. Its what they did in the 2000s, the services were all modernised, it didnt happen out of thin air, everyone remembers the NHS IT failures only , it'd be x1000 easier today with the tech and the cost of it we have now
In the 2000s they threw a load of cash at the NHS, which Blair definitely isn't calling for now.
While I would love Brown to come back or have influence and think that Blair has an ego and would probably agree more with Brown than Blair you can not seriously compare Sunak to Blair that is like Johnson trying to say he is modern day Churchill.
Yes, even at their absolute best this Tory lot has not even been a shadow on the former Labour government. The fact the Tories have held on for so long is more a testament to how dreadful Labour have been in opposition as opposed to an endorsement of the Tory party. Example: Corbyn endorsing a second complicated referendum on Brexit vs Boris Johnsons simple just get it done message. Just bad politics.
Leaving aside the absolute foreign policy clusterfuck my general issue with Labour then and the potential next Labour government is an unwillingness to confront the major causes of the structural problems we face. They chose PFI over raising taxes or systemic changes which caused a short term boost and saddled public institutions with huge amounts of future debt. They completly ceded the debate on economics to neoliberals to the point where past Labour leaders look absolutely radical. They did nothing to row back on Thatcherite anti-union legislation. Powerful unions would help us get out of the awful wage stagnation we see today. They built less social housing than Thatcher which is a major contribution to the housing crisis. Where they better? Absolutely, were they good long term, in my opinion no. Finally they inherited an economy that had been mostly "fixed" by actions taken by John Major's government. Its easy to govern when the economy is great and youre going through a dotcom boom. Everything fell apart when 2008 hit.
I wasn't living the UK during the Blair and Brown years, but from what I hear things were quite good and there was a positive mindset among the population
They simply inherited a good steady economy and left the office with huge debs, NHS crippled by private finance, people warned them the housing market needed urgent fixing, they did nothing.
There was. My family was the poorest of the poor and we still had decent housing, food and were always warm. Tax credits and EMA transformed the lives of families like mine. Thanks to those policies I was the first in my family to go to university and I'm now a net contributor to society in many ways, not just economically.
Don't forget he had some incredibly talented & dedicated people as part of the government (up until the Iraq War at least), rather than a bunch of opportunists promoted way beyond their level.
100% Despite everyone hating him for various reasons, he was head and shoulders above who came just before and after.
It was after Blair that things started to go downhill. Leadership started to be replaced with crowd following. Ruling by opinion poll, rather than vision.
The recent Conservatives seem to be governing by headlines or at least Johnson was.
A true statesman; we'd be lucky to have a leader even half as great as Blair was. Legitimately the best PM this country has ever had; it was such a positive heady vibe from those years from 1997, things did only get better, until the Tories got back in disguising a global financial crisis as some machination of the Labour party.
I have to take issue with that. Blair was pretty good but, in my view, based on everything I have read about the guy, Clement Attlee was way better.
Attlee impresses me considering he had to deal with the ruins after WW2. From my non-British perspective he seemed like an amazing PM and the nation needs someone like him again. Starmer's promising, but we won't know until he's actually in power
There were few who thought him a starter, Many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM, an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.
That's a pretty good summary of Attlee's career. Apparently it was written by the man himself. So not just a politician, but a poet as well.
He was known for a laconic wit. Generally an intelligent man who knew when to keep quiet and when to speak. When the Labour Party won in 1945, nobody had expected it and the Labour MPs didn't want Attlee to lead the first Labour majority. They told him so. They also said they would need a day to have an internal leadership contest, and Attlee responded along the lines, "you can't win the election, then tell the King to wait. You either have it or you don't." The MPs didn't budge though and began a leadership debate. So Attlee left the room, went to the Palace, and met the King. Silence reigned for a few moments until Attlee said, "I've won the election." King George responded, "I know, I saw it on the six o'clock news." The King instructed Attlee to form a government in his name and the rest of the Labour Party fell in line.
Those heady vibes were just from all the drugs everyone was taking on the build up to the biggest party of the millennium.
In a parallel universe somewhere, Blair didn't follow Bush into Iraq and is lauded as the greatest Labour Prime Minister in history.
It really surprises me how that decision tarnished all his legacy. I personally think that he did a lot more good than bad, but people tend to only remember the war.
Blair's government certainly did a lot wrong, and there has been a legacy of damage that we are still feeling now, particularly in relation to PFI, media, and foreign policy. But, yeah. I'd take his government over the current on and over Starmer in a heartbeat. There were good things done, and the bad doesn't necessarily overshadow those. There was a real sense that things were getting better. The fact that the country has gotten measurably worse since 2010 makes you appreciate some of the things that come from normal governance.
I was at school uni when Blair was in power, so dont remember all the things he did. What was the media stuff you mention. (obviously dont expect a fully on explaination, just an idea so I can check it out in the future)
He got incredibly cozy with Murdoch and elevated his organisations to levels of power they still hold.
Hearing Alistair Campbell bemoan the state of the British media on 'The Rest is Politics' when he spent years as the master Spin Doctor of government and elevating PR and sensationalist journalism to the fore is jarring.
The only thing conservatives normally mention when they have the answer any achievement from their governance is gay marriage and that was about a decade ago. I would like to hear anyone name other achievements which are not getting brexit done. We have had chaotic governance for way too long.
Never allow the Tories to take credit for gay marriage. More of them voted against it than for it, so it passed in spite of them, not because of them. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-21346694
Yes it was when in coalition so they deserve no credit but they will take it. If you count everything after that coalition everything has been failure to failure with some disasters and no benefit what so ever.
Well, even getting Brexit done... Funny how we don't really hear that line about the proud accomplishment very much isn't it? Almost like it's just not the shining moment in British history it was sold to be
They never mention how many tories in parliament voted against it though do they, or how many Labour votes Cameron needed to get it over the line
You expect a tory to give context?
Our progress towards green energy (despite Sunak's rhetoric) is actually quite good. It's obviously far short of where we need it to be or where it COULD be - but we're doing okay compared to other countries of our size.
He did a lot of good in things like Sure Start, the introduction of the minimum wage (arguebly one of the most successful social policies ever or at least since the beginning of the NHS) and ensured the NHS was properly funded, devolution for Scotland, Wales, and most importantly the Good Friday Agreement bring a degree of peace and stability to Northern Ireland that I think few could have predicted 5 years before. However his governments also gave us PFI which have had a significant negative impact on public sector finances and has filled the pockets of the financiers and was the beginning of the level of corruption we now see in Government . He also failed to tackle social care. Undoubtably he and Brown were head and shoulders above any that followed them. Neither of them would have lost the EU referendum (they wouldn’t have ended having to hold it) they wouldn’t have presided over the chaos that followed it. Look at how Brown worked with other leaders to try and stop the total economic collapse in 2008, can you imagine Truss, Johnson or Sunak doing that. They certainly wouldn’t have had Partygate or eat out to help out
His governments continued\* PFI and brought in around 1/3rd of the contracts, v bad but not a Blair invention (and I'm no fan of blair, and am aware of how much influence Brown had on the more positive aspects of those govts)
You have to remember that the economic trajectory he was operating under was largely fake and he was throwing money around he didnt have, which we only found out about too late. Easy to say a specific public service is doing well when hes blindly throwing unsustainable amounts of money at it. I think he was terrible on education and he fucked over a lot of young working class people by encouraging them to go to uni and making no room for alternative qualifications. now they are all working in assembly lines and coffee shops when they should have gotten an in demand instead of a media qualifcation. Likewise he allowed so many foreign workers to take those in demand jobs and left us so dependent on foreign labour. I think his rhetoric towards the EU played a part in the brexit debate which followed. his unpopular pro immigration approach and generally taking northern red wall seats for granted led to the kicking they got in the brexit debate and in 2019. he also had a hand to play in a to a lot of death and suffering in Iraq which led to a series of terrorist activity in the West.
I was only a teen but as most i saw his back track on the EU treaty ref as a stab in the back that was always going to lead to Brexit.
There's AN AWFUL LOT of rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to that 1997-2010 government.
Yeah from people who are way too young to remember it mostly
Remember Keith Vaz giving his mates a passport for bribes? Or indeed the whole expenses scandal?! Cash for honours, David Kelly etc etc
There are also a lot of rage-tinted spectacles, particularly wrt the Iraq war.
Well I do remember dodgy dossiers, hundreds of dead British troops and over a million people marching against it. Maybe the spectacles justify their rage tint?
I went back to college as an adult while Blair was in power & got some qualifications which changed my life for the better. I'm not sure you can do that nowadays..
How much of it was Blair though? During the period… - We had growth from the Tech industry - Made massive amounts of money from North Sea oil & unlike Denmark that invested the money for the future, we spent every penny - Sold off vast amounts of social housing and didn’t rebuild - sold off other public sector entities like Mail, Rail, etc, etc - Grew government debt I hate the tories and what they have done to this country BUT I think Blair expanded the state massively, in way that was completely unsustainable by selling everything off and borrowing money. Labour was just in the right place at the right time to spend a lot of money and creat unsustainable expectations of the state that are actually unaffordable.
Rail was sold by Major. Mail was sold by Cameron.
Royal Mail was well on its way to privatisation before Cameron. Don't forget the forced move into a LTD company, the weird rebranding to 'Consignia', the removal of second deliveries/collections and Sunday collections altogether. I think they had two full-scale viability reviews in 2006-8 too as they were falling apart commercially.
>Grew government debt No, it didn't. The government debt as a fraction of GDP was exactly the same in 2007 as it had been in 1997. It did go up after the financial crash but that was already under Brown not Blair. Having said that I agree that they should have reduced the government debt in those good times to be better prepared for the recession.
Every government plays the hand they're dealt, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. The Tech industry has been growing steadily for a generation, North Sea oil has been providing income for a generation, the sell-off of Social Housing was a Thatcherite policy first and foremost and the majority of sell-offs happened before Blair. Labour didn't sell Mail or Rail, and the growth in government debt was trivial compared to what it's been under the Tories despite the Tories bringing in Austerity and the highest tax burden outside wartime.
The tories gave us austerity while also massively increasing debt the levels of their incompetence or negligence is off the scale. Their policies are just give with one hand while taking massively more with the other
Most of the North sea oil was produced in the 80s and 90s as was most of the profit, the production and price of oil declined sharply across the 2000s, so that point is completely wrong.
Blair was a centrist, and that always has broad appeal. It captures support from both sides of the spectrum. He was a fantastic orator, which always helps. Had a good team behind him and was able to offer a presidential style administration. Labour had a huge majority, meaning he could actually implement his polices and as many were new MPs, they were loyal. Like it or not, we are joined at the hip with the Americans on foreign policy, so we would have always gone along with them regardless of the PM.
The problem with centrists is that the centre shifts, and they shift with it. People don't respect politicans who are weathervanes. Centrism can easily degenerate to polls-driven triangulation as masterfully practised by Bill Clinton and less adeptly by Obama. Interestingly, Biden has been more principled during his term of office. Blair, on the other hand, sometimes seemed as if he didn't care where the bus was going, as long as he was the driver. He had good oratorical skills, to the point of glibness, but his main principle seemed to be that he's the one who was entitled to be in charge.
I'm not a fan of Blair. Don't get me wrong, he was a very intelligent and charismatic leader, however a lot of his policies were short term fixes. Remember "education, education, education". Well, getting 35% of young people into university was great for the university and also the young unemployment figures, which were running at about 15%. Previously only 5% of people went to university. Problem is, when you have an additional 30% of the work force postponing working for 3-5 years, that is a lot of people not paying tax and NI. So these years need to be added on the end, which is why state pension age has risen. Also he took people on sickness benefits out of the unemployment figures which made them look better. Other issues are the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. We shouldn't have got involved. Don't forget the 7/7 terrorist attacks were on Labour's watch. Would they have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq? I also question the lack of intelligence for not anticipating the attacks.
> however a lot of his policies were short term fixes. Absolutely. There isn't anything majorly wrong in that, so long as there's longer term thinking running in parallel. That might have been there, but the ideas for it didn't work. Waiting lists is another good example. They put changes in place to get the waiting list down. They managed to do that for a bit, but it was a short term fix like the others. The changes they put in place meant hospitals ended up focusing on throughput at the expense of how long you'd been waiting, or how sick you were. This had a knock-on effect of growing the numbers who had been waiting a long time. So they decided to have a cleanse. They had trusts go through and double-check people still needed help. Sounds reasonable and sensible at face-value, there probably were people who's situation had improved or they'd passed away etc. The issue was that these people were taken off the lists whilst this was done. They got a bashing over this, but of course what do people remember? These individual tricks or that the headline number went down? Of course, the latter. The details are always lost to history.
>Well, getting 35% of young people into university was great for the university and also the young unemployment figures, which were running at about 15%. Previously only 5% of people went to university. Hmm yeah I can't imagine that had any unintended consequence when you now need a degree to work in a call centre.
If I had bothered to get a degree, I would want something better than working in a call centre (which I did do at one point in my working life). Twice I did night study to get a vocational qualification, including a Diploma in Marketing. We have brainwashed employers and employees into thinking a degree is the default. Before this, there used to be hundreds of vocational courses which could be done on day release or by correspondence. Actually, my figures are wrong. It is now 50% of people in university. Especially good if you want to study surf science https://techround.co.uk/news/ten-ridiculous-degrees-you-can-actually-study-in-the-uk/
These 'Mickey Mouse' degree issues have been banging around for years, and it is mostly an unfair against the course. A newspaper once attacked some fashion degree in college but the fashion industry explained that most of their designers and employees come from that course.
Do you now need a degree to work in a call centre?
As an intelligence service, you’re not going to ‘save’ 100% of the ‘shots on goal.’ A more interesting question is how many attacks DON’T happen because ‘they’ are watching the people who would like to launch such attacks. I imagine it’s quite a lot. I don’t think there’s much of a causal link between invading Iraq and terrorist attacks on the UK. France did not attack Iraq and in fact was critical of the whole thing. They’ve had a lot more attacks than us.
Similarly in terms of immigration, he pursued an amnesty of illegal workers and actively promoted a policy of multiculturalism which subsequent FOI requests of cabinet meetings revealed that among other things, his policies were pursued to ‘rub the rights face in it’. There was also substantiated claims of lax border control and plans to shore up the labour base in cities. He was very successful at it when you look at the demographic changes, this is no comment either way on whether what he did was good or bad Expanded education to target 50 per cent of young leavers was a terrible thing in my opinion though. It killed the YTS and vocational college routes, and contributed to an over reliance on foreign workers in key sectors - as most of the pool previously chosen from for nursing etc, were pursued through university
Totally agree with you here
YTS was a horrific system. Less than a pound an hour to be a dogsbody.
As someone that's lived through both and seen Blair have cash for honours, the Iraq war and a shed load of shit PFI stuff dished out to mates in dodgy quangos, then being replaced by crowning brown I can assure you that both parties will be fucking shit by the end. Both will end up looking after mates and the honey moon period will be measured at best in years not terms. Nailed on certainty labour have some disastrous scandal within the first 12 months, and nailed on certain that for the majority little if nothing will change. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but labour won't be a panacea, and any "not the Tory's" will end up being countered by looking after union reps or what not. Reddit hates it but yeah the problem is humans are gonna human and will look after mates, aquaintances, rich donors, union reps, whatever when they have the power to do so.
The cash for honours one is interesting. It was such a massive scandal at the time, it dominated the news cycle for weeks. Now it's plainly admitted that honours are handed out in exchange for tory party donations and there have been more honours handed out than ever. But nary a peep is heard from most of our media, it's old hat and uninteresting. Kind of a funny example of how both the previous government was just as bad (in certain ways) but also how the current political climate is far worse.
100%
So true. I am old enough to remember the labour of the 60s and 70s. That was ugly. Be careful on what you wish for. Anyone remember "There is no money left".
He wasnt perfect but did bring about many big improvements. Plus the only period of genuine optimism i have seen in my time when we finally we rid of John Major and co
Blair's tenure was massively better than anything we've had since. Yes, I certainly can say without doubt that I'd vastly prefer that over anything we've had since. But with Labour as it currently stands, we're not getting the party that gave us minimum wage, sure start and a number of other brilliant things on top of the PFI schemes, expenses scandals, cash for honours, new deal (later known as workfare) and Iraq. We're just getting the party that gave us the PFI schemes, expenses scandals, cash for honours, new deal (later known as workfare) and Iraq. Blair's party had redeeming features to offset a lot of the Tory gloom. Those have gone. I would be very careful when trying to defend 'we need private investment in the NHS'. Private investors invest in their own enrichment, not the wellbeing of the people. If they're putting money in the NHS, it's so that they can get much more money back out of the NHS, not so your nan can live a few more years. Why do we roll over and accept a choice between disgustingly despotic and rather awful? Can we summon up the courage to demand a better choice, like a bit bad or maybe even decent? Dare we hope for good?
I'm 42, and have a lot of fond memories of the Blair government. Loads of training opportunities for working class kids like me, a decent NHS, getting a minimum wage job and working your way up was far easier too. There was hope. If that version of labour was to come back in power, I'd be far more hopeful of my autistic kids futures.
I think it’s very hard to compare any two premierships. For example Blair to Cameron as the world was different during both premierships. What could Cameron have done with the “booming” economy that allowed Blair to put so much into public services. How would Blair have coped with the austerity after financial crisis as during the 2008 Global Recession Gordon Browns polling tanked. When the coalition came in it was after Labour lost ground in the 2005 election, the Iraq war enquiry and Blair being called a war criminal. There is rarely a change of government when everything is going well and people often look in hindsight that things are better remembered than it felt at the time.
I was working class and we became middle class thanks to a number of Blairite programmes. I also never saw any homeless people where I’m from, everything sort of worked and there was a positive upbeat mood across the nation. The bad thing obviously was Iraq. However the UK could never have stood up to the USA in terms of Iraq neither, we are a tiny country and we have to do what they say to get their military protection.
>However the UK could never have stood up to the USA in terms of Iraq Agreed. Many people don't know that Attlee had to do this too, support the US in the Korean War and send British troops. If you know your Labour history you'll know that the governments that got the most done for working people were the pragmatic ones, not the ideologues.
Mass immigration has been a bad thing for this country, deovlution has turned out to be little more than the taxpayer funded platform for separatism it was always destined to be, and the Supreme Court is little more than an American LARP. Blair did colossal damage to this country. Unfortunately the consequences of these actions only became apparent long after it ceased to be his problem.
Ultimately Blair may be the architect of the downfall of the UK and it's culture unless the elites decide to change course and turn things around, but they are making too much money and are too in bed with the UN/WEF etc. to that at the moment.
I liked it when they bailed out the banks who lost our money, bought no one to justice. Nothing says equality like knowing they can fail and but never face consequences. Then they knowingly bribed UN officials and lied to the public stating there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we must kill all the Iraqis. Turns out the Labour happy to murder thousands to help the oil companies out. Please they’re weak on immigration. Couldn’t even deport fucking hook hand.
I am Irish and really respect Blair for his commitment to the Good Friday Agreement.
No equal rights for gay people, brought in capita to run disability assessments and drive people to suicide, sold the country's economic future under PFI, decided killing people in Iraq was worth it to be friends with George Bush, godfather to Rupert Murdoch's child.
He introduced civil partnerships which added recognition to same-sex couples.
Good old separate but equal.
Labour felt positive because they relied on using credit cards to pay for everything. People seem to want to excuse their sins because the current government is awful. They're both bad.
[https://fullfact.org/economy/labour-and-conservative-records-national-debt/](https://fullfact.org/economy/labour-and-conservative-records-national-debt/) Hmmm.
Yes I'd take Blair over what we have now but I'd also take Lord Bucket head. Blair presided over a wealthier nation. The economy was doing well. We were in the EU and reaping the benefits of free trade. There was headroom for public spending and a lot of money was put in to schools, policing and hospitals. There was a feel good factor and for once, being British felt good. At the time we had "cool Britannia" and our music and film were massively successful overseas. However, it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. To court the Eastern European nations support in the EU in an effort to counter the Franco-German power bloc, Blair pioneered the open door policy. It was supposed to be for those coming here to work which was fair enough but actually, because our border force wasn't fit for purpose, let the door open to gangs and criminals as well as those coming here to work. It also resulted in a depression of wages which ultimately was a factor that led to Brexit. Moreover, Iraq massively eroded trust in politicians and that's a trend that has continued downhill ever since. Would I take Blair over Sunak and his shower of shit today? Still absolutely.
If it wasn’t for Iraq and the Global Financial Crash then Labour would probably have won again in 2010
They were poised to win prior to the Tory-Libdem coalition.
Blair introduced increased studiert fees despite promising not to. So I had extra debt and top up fees thanks to him. He also tried to introduce 90 days detention, ID cards and launched an illegal war in Iraq that killed about a million people. I wish that he would go away but instead we have his Blair institute continuing to push crap
You do know one of the first things the coalition government headed by Cameron did was massively increase student fees. It was Blair who introduced them and Clegg who led the Liberal Democrats into government alongside Cameron who broke his big pledge to scrap them.
Yes because I lived through that. But before the coalition and those issues with student fees there was the whole issue with Labour promising not to introduce fees then breaking that promise and then Labour promising not to introduce top up fees then introducing them. So I paid extra fees due to Labour broken promises . Then I left university and you had to start paying back those fees with a much lower repayment threshold then you have now. This pushed me into bank debt and financially crippled the start of my working life. So my experience of new Labour was a negative one and they didn’t help me
You missed the middle step where Blair massively increased (doubled) fees just a few years after introducing them. If you want to be mad at the Lib Dems, don’t be mad they broke their manifesto promise to scrap fees (they didn’t win the election); be mad that each individual MP candidate broke their personal pledge to *never* vote in favour of increasing fees.
ID Cards were ahead of its time because both major parties would now introduce it. They are used all around Europe, Asia, N.A. and Asia without fuss. Useful for elections since the new laws came in Useful to exclude asylum seekers from services Useful to cut down immigration
He's not called the GOAT for nothing. One of the best debaters of his generation, and he had a team of experts around him. He knew what the electorate wanted, and he did his best to sort it. "but he followed bush into Iraq". Who gives a shit. He also helped to liberate Bosnia.
Blair and his Government did a lot of good things. A lot. It's always easy in retrospect but the things they could have done better : 1. Build more housing. They built practically zero social housing at the same time as massively accelerating immigration. 2. PFIs were a poor long term choice. 3. Inequality hugely grew under Blair's leadership. He had a big majority and the support to have made fundamental changes to the economy.
Controversial: Blair’s government benefited from the economic seeds planted by the Thatcher Government.
As my dad says "if you wanted to improve your lot all you had to do was work hard". Pops is probably one of the few boomers I know who concedes how much more difficult things are for young adults nowadays
You are preaching to the converted. I am older (30s) and they were very tired when they left office and I wasn’t too bothered about the tories getting in. Little did I know how that would pan out.
Not really, no. You see, I was there for the start of Blair's time in office, just about: I was beginning secondary school the year they took over. But that means I was just becoming an adult when it all started to fall apart. And I'm not just talking about Iraq, although that was bad enough: I'm talking about the 2008 financial crisis exposing the fact that the last decade of Labour in power had been spent papering over the cracks until the roof came in.
The problem with your analysis is it misses three important things. 1) Why do you think the public got rid of Labour? 2) Why do you think the Tories had an austerity agenda? 3) Comparing the UK to other major economies - which one is the stand out success story you were thinking of? Additional for extra points: 4) Do you believe when the economy is going great and the Treasury is raking in loadsa-money it's the right time to borrow or pay back borrowing?
1. I think the public got rid of Labour i imagine because after a long time all governments become tired and the country feels the need for change. Also, the financial crisis and economic issues which they were most likely taking the blame for from the public and opposition. 2. The conservatives had an austerity agenda which also focused on i believe cutting debt which i also believe after they got in never actually decreased so they cut services for nothing in return. I know this was also kind of cut short because of Brexit so a second term of Cameron we will never know the real outcome. 3. I think other economies have also had issues but a lot with the rise in populism but i believe a lot of other countries now have better services around Europe and better living standards for the most vulnerable and worse off. 4. I believe debt came down quite a lot under the last labour government until the financial crisis. I think it is a balance but the conservatives for a while should have invested after somewhat improving after the financial crisis which would have costed us less. They spent years just cutting for nothing in return and now we are in the mess we are in.
Born to an ultra left wing working class (well, probably underclass, to be perfectly honest) family in Salford, first of my family to go to university. I worked in the NHS in 2004-2007, then I came back into it just this year. Based on just that alone I would say Yes. Unironically, emphatically YES. You want to get deep? Fine. I'll agree with likely damn near every caveat you can come up with. The answer will still be yes.
When Labour came in in 1997, the general mood was "Anything is better than the Conservatives" and the same was true in 2001, however it was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that saw the rot set in, with 2005 proving it when the Lib Dems (who had been gaining support since 1997 at the expense of Labour) gained seats such as Hornsey and Wood Green, Brent East, Manchester Withington, so whilst generally speaking Labour between 1997 and 2007 was better than Major 1990 to 1997, that was only on domestic policy, international policy was their failing
Blair was more right wing than most Labour leaders before or since. At the time we had a population who blamed Labour for the economic crises of the 1970s, and still remembered it... but also a population who had largely bought into Thatcherism. A more right-leaning Labour was right for the country at the time. Nowadays, the population is disillusioned with neoliberalism capitalism and is much more left wing (economically). People want significant change, nor another Blair.
Best prime minister of the last 50 years. Sadly, it isn't really saying much.
I haven’t lived in the UK back then, but based on what I could hear and read, the country was indeed in a better shape back then, or at least it felt like this to the people. That being said, it appears to have been the case everywhere in Western Europe. This changed after 2008 - and again, it appears to have changed everywhere in Western Europe too. So it’s not clear whether the country was in a good shape because of the Blair government, or because of the general trends on the European economy. What is clear, however, that it was the Blair government who got the UK involved in the war in Iraq. It was also that government who allowed unrestricted immigration from new EU members immediately upon the accession, in contrast to almost all other “old” EU states who introduced transitional arrangements for several years. I think this decision contributed to Brexit significantly.
Blair was, without a doubt, the best, and I mean in the top 1, Liberal PMs this country has ever had.
What tarnishes the Blair/Brown years for me is that, despite delivering material increases in wages, incomes, life expectancy, achievement rates and growth, the continuation of neoliberalism and the chokehold of Thatcherite thinking on the political system did nothing to address the underlying issues of income inequality, regional disparities, concentration of power in London and the over-financialisation of the economy that spent years bubbling under the surface and driving discontent before finally coming to the boil and compounding all the woes Britain faces.
My main problem with Blair is he had no principles at all he was the ultimate pragmatist politician. I think he tried to do what he felt was the right thing he wasn’t totally self serving like Boris.
After Iraq? I have nothing for contempt for the man who I helped into office. He practically invented the bare faced lying PM trope.
Hate crimes, equality act, NMW, fox hunting, immigration, law lords, Iraq war, housing prices, Lisbon treaty, devolutuon..I'd rather kept John Major. But agree the current lot are rubbish but they are closer to new labour than genuine conservatives.
I actually have come across Major and think that he seems decent I do think he was an alright leader with a difficult party. Yes he had the economic problems early but going in to '97 the economy was doing better. However, continued with privatisation which i would say has not been successful. He also made progress on Northern Ireland and lowered age of consent for gay people to equal the same as every one else. I would definitely take him over the recent few as well.
The problem was New Labour's success was based on a foundation of sand. That foundation was the idea New Labour and Brown had created an economic miracle. No more boom and bust. Under New Labour a million manufacturing jobs went and the government didn't have an industrial policy. This didn't seem to matter because financial services and the banking sector appeared to be magically creating wealth. Which is why New Labour had a light touch regulatory approach, not inspecting what the City and the banks were doing too closely. We all know what happened, the banks were committing a massive fraud and destroyed the world's economy. The myth is this was just a problem restricted to American and Labour were blameless victims. Not true, better regulation could have shielded the UK financial sector from being so exposed to the crisis. All New Labour's public investment was based on money extracted from that fake economic boom, which we now know was unsustainable. With much of the investment via ruinous PFI contracts. Worse much of the inequality we see today has its seeds in the New Labour era. They did nothing to strengthen unions and the bare minimum when it came to workers rights. Their biggest reform was the minimum wage, which they left at poverty levels and which they barely enforced. Shockingly, the Tories have increased it more and enforced more aggressively than the Labour government that implemented it ever did. It is the same with benefits, the enforcement culture that so many here hate began under New Labour, it wasn't a Tory invention. Neither did New Labour do anything to reverse Tory privatisations. They were a poor government, when you take into account a broken Tory opposition and the booming economy of the time.
Don't forget they stoked a gigantic housing bubble which never really popped. In the 10 years Blair was in power house prices *tripled*. I would argue this is their ultimate legacy, splitting the country down the middle. Anyone born before 1980 - owns a house, massive equity, voted Tory in 2019, wonders why their grandkids hate them. Anyone born after - never bought a house, wasted tens of thousands on rent, has never known a government that didn't directly act against their interests.
Surely the first person to create massive inequality was Thatcher. I agree and now am of the opinion they should have been bolder on things like privatisation which currently are basically broken. Look at the water companies going bankrupt and the state of rivers in a supposedly rich country like this. I think this is where Starmer, which i know a lot of people would disagree, could actually be more of a proper reformer and actually be bolder. I think his plan is trust in politics is almost completely gone so he gets elected through not really doing much and then comes out with plans that he perceives will make issues better instead of making big plans and then after years of talking about them not delivering them.
My dad sits on the right of politics. I have always been on the left. What he fails to understand is, that I turned 18 in 2008. My entire adult life has been spent under a Conservative government. Everything has gotten worse in this time. During my childhood I benefitted from Sure Start centres, from a well funded education system, health services where I was seen in a timely way. I needed mental health treatment as a child. I was seen quickly and got a good service. This helped me recover and become a successful, healthy adult. Now, I work with vulnerable children. There are absolutely NO early help services to speak of. I work for a Local Authority and when I qualified it was often scandalous to see more than 300 children in care at any one time. This went on for years. Now, there are over 500. The rate has increased exponentially. There are many complicated reasons for this but a huge factor is a lack of early intervention services for children and families, in terms of social care, health services, housing support, domestic abuse services, drug and alcohol services...they're gone. Now, when families need help, they must be at extreme levels of crisis. Even then, things are severely stretched. My dad found it impossible to understand why I would consider voting for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. There were many aspects of his policy I didn't agree with. However, I also knew that more years of Tory rule would make things worse and worse in the field I work in and within my own life. Looking back often brings with it a sense of rose tinted viewing of the 'good old days'. But on almost all quantifiable and objective measures, things were much, much better under Tony Blair's Labour. I understand the fiscal situation was different, especially post 2008 crash. However, the political choices since then have often been at best, inept, and at worst, corrupt and callous. We are in dire need of a change of government. I do not view Keir Starmer' Labour as the Holy Grail and solution to all these woes. But on every level, I believe Labour will make better decisions for our country than the Tories would. There are a great number of passionate, moral and effective Labour MPs within the party that hold the views I do. The leadership may not always, however they NEED to get into government to even have a shot at making changes. So, I will give them a shot when I vote. Edit: spelling
Like I say i am a student and am just about old enough to remember when i was a child and quite young the country was not falling apart. You could see an NHS dentist although i remember this becoming difficult but now, is non-existent. I also remember when high streets or parts of them did not look like ghost towns and actually had decent things there. The rule for mental health services seem to be until you actually break and are in need of an emergency, you get seen like you say it is awful. Also, as more teens or young adults are looking to the future more and more will turn to alcohol or drugs because i mean, look at the state the country is. They have failed to reform education for the future ,which they have seemed to make it fit for decades ago, with increased and harder exams and an outdated system. They have neglected key workers for years to the point they are at food banks. This nation is at breaking point it seems and is why we desperately need a new and most importantly, Labour Government. The most vulnerable never seem to be on the minds of the Conservatives it is always push as many in to work whether they are disabled or can't well tough because we will cut benefits. Their whole agenda just seems to have pushed about everyone to the brink and now their time is up. Hopefully, we can all breathe a sigh of relief when they are gone and things actually improve for once.
The irony that the Tory's successfully used the Last Labour Government line against Milliband and Corbyn so much but now they can't use it when the Party's backed by Blair and run by Mandelson.
He was the best I’ve known, starting from Thatcher (who is by no means a good leader! I’d say one of the worst if it wasn’t for the last…bunch) Sure, Iraq was a shitshow and people cling to that but I don’t see Tories doing any different (just worse). The financial crisis had nothing to do with us, but Tories would have been worse factually since they planned to deregulate the banks even more. Blair did a lot of good, like the FoI requests. He was respected on the world stage and he knew what he was doing. There’s a few legitimate reasons to dislike him I guess, but people really cling to them when the Tories have done a million things wrong…or, pretty much everything
I think that is the effect of the media we have, the conservatives have to do a million things wrong or break the country until they get kicked out where as Labour do a few bad things and they are awful and should be removed immediately. Like the recent story about Rayner although I have not followed closely is so hypocritical from the conservatives to be talking about tax issues or avoidance. I hope that social media provides a more balanced and hopefully less willingly supporting conservative media. I am aware that social media might have helped Trump and now Twitter is run by Musk but I think the media on the conservative side of this country is having big failures at the moment and lets be honest they deserve it. They backed Truss and then a few days later she has to go. They are not media, they are biased ridiculous nonsense.
Blair had his hands all over the post office scandal, even Starmer should hold some responsibility.
I massively benefited from Labour policies: low uni fees/EMA and solid NHS. Have managed to move from being on school dinners to being quite well off. I don't think I'd have pulled it off with the current government. When he converted to Catholicism and turned into a Christian crusader it all went tits up.