Speaker: So farewell then, Tony Blair
79 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 Newer→ Last
-
WH: you've bought it too. I despair.
Let me spell it out: Blair versus Far Left NEVER HAPPENED. Actually to some degree Blair was on that left - he supported unilateral nuclear disarmameent when Labour's social democrats did not.
Blair versus social democrats, liberals, moderates is a long-running debate and IS HAPPENING NOW.
Sorry to shout, but the thesis of the original post is false. To accept it is to give up on any electable liberal or centre-left alternative. And many democracies have shown that not to be the case - including NZ.
-
If there's been a crucial failing that's ruined Blair's premiership it hasn't been on his part. It's on the part of his electorate...
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another? -
No doubt (well, possibly a little doubt) Bush would have invaded anyway,
Well, the Brits had no doubts about US aggressive unilateralism and wanted to control it.
I'm in no way trying to be glib here, but there's an argument in Italian right wing circles that Mussolini went to war with the intent of moderating Hitler's excesses, and it makes the exact same amount of sense to me. In any event, if the effect is to shift the assessment of Blair's main piece of foreign policy from "criminal" to "delusional", it doesn't do much to enhance the historical stature of the man.
-
WH,
Hey Stephen,
I accept that Blair's record is far from perfect. I always found his relationship with George Bush... difficult to accept. Despite what I have already said, I understand why Blair's critics feel the way they do.
On the general subject of the media's role in politics, I tend to agree with Blair/Kettle (I couldn't say whether the Independent was an appropriate example for Blair to use). One only has to read the Herald to see the force in this criticism.
-
I too, am rather disappointed in the quality of this Speaker. Long on style and short (if not subzero) on substance. Hardly a sentence goes by without an overstated or underreasoned claim. If I wanted this, I'd read the Herald, not PA.
-
A great piece of writing.
I'm not sure how exactly much Blair was involved in the show down with Labour's socialist dinosaurs (but he did campaign successfully against Claus IV - the policy of socialisation of industry) but he, with the help of Brown and others, did make Labour electable.
I read the editor of The Independent's reply to Blair. I'm not too sure what to make of Blair's statements but in my opinion The Independent, although having some fine writers, has turned into a very shouty crusading tabloid with lots of stridently opinionated comment and very little dispassionate analysis. The Guardian does better.
What I noticed about all this was the "won't Brown be sooo much better than Blair" theme. I can't see how Brown is all that different from Blair (which is good in my opinion) and it's also setting Brown up for the same complaints of selling out all those “hopes and dreams”.
-
You may not have noticed...
Well, Don, I'm going to call Coddingstonswallop on most of your post. Sorry, but I think it's rather dishonest to lump all critics of Blair in with the Militant Tendency or the Colonel Blimps on the right. And, FFS, when does the statute of limitations run out on blaming the other lot for everything you do wrong? I know the answer for Blair and Helen Clark is 'never', but really...
-
A great piece of writing.
Apart from the factual vacuum when it comes to Iraq and the Cold War....
-
Well, Don, I'm going to call Coddingstonswallop on most of your post. Sorry, but I think it's rather dishonest to lump all critics of Blair in with the Militant Tendency or the Colonel Blimps on the right.
Second that.
The mandate given to Blair was for a third way. There is a genuine debate to be had about whether Blair ever really delivered that third way. By dichotomising the issue and caricaturing anything left of Blair you let yourself down.
-
...and the slippery rhetoric abounds:
If there's been a crucial failing that's ruined Blair's premiership it hasn't been on his part. It's on the part of his electorate, who have been consistently unable to surmount key intellectual obstacles when considering him – those obstacles being the perceived awfulness of Thatcher when they elected him in 1997 and the Baghdad insurgency as he leaves office in 2007. Blair has no control over either and shouldn't be criticised for them.
Blair may not have control of the insurgency in Iraq now, but he certainly had some influence at some point that he could have used in a way that would have made the present not as bad. Of course he had no control over the perceived awfulness of Thatcher, but he did have control...
-
If, heaven forbid, you still have nothing better to do with your time, you can question the wisdom and efficacy of the invasion of Iraq
... because that's a mere trifle that we grownups wouldn't concern ourselves with.
... Petulant, adolescent, you’re-not-my-real-Dad anti-Americanism...
Who is this patronising git?
... their foreign policy worked. So might Bush’s. So might Blair’s.
Monkeys might fly out my butt too. Arguing for a possibility that a thing might work because an unrelated thing worked before? Give me a break.
This article is a wonderful piece of rhetoric, but that's all it is.
-
merc,
It's not an article, it's an Amazonian butterfly.
-
WH,
By dichotomising the issue and caricaturing anything left of Blair you let yourself down.
Fair point. I thought I had noticed that the most vitriolic criticism of Blair seems to comes from the left of the left, but this is by no means universally true. And its prolly a little simplistic/reductionistic.
I would give this argument more weight if voters were breaking for the Lib Dems and the Greens rather than the Conservatives and National though.
-
If Blair was concerned about the media, I'm surprised he relaxed rules around media ownership, no doubt completely unrelated to his endorsement by Murdoch's UK organs such as the Sun.
Step back from there: anyone claiming to be concerned about the state of public discource and hiring Alistair Campbell as his spinmeister ought to explode from hypocrisy.
But no, apparently the real problem with the British media are the few remaining indepentendly owned papers. All that pesky reporting on BAE corruption, Iraq, and so on is the very height of mucky, irresponsible journalism.
-
Blair may not have control of the insurgency in Iraq now, but he certainly had some influence at some point that he could have used in a way that would have made the present not as bad.
Such as willfully ignoring and disregarding the repeated advice given to him prior to the war.
Or dropping the ball in the disaster that was the post invasion.
To walk away and say "we didn't know and we could never have predicted" is both utterly dishonest and the last refuge.
-
This article is a wonderful piece of rhetoric, but that's all it is.
Wonderful? Really? I would go as far as to say Idiot Savant was wasting his Brecht on this one.
-
Well, I thought it was a fine example of its type. I could be wrong. But if I caused you to make that wonderful pun, then I don't repent at all.
-
Well, Don, I'm going to call Coddingstonswallop on most of your post
Well, gee thanks Craig, considering I was correcting your inaccurate portrait on devolution vs centralisation I find that a little rich.
If you read my posts you will realise:
1. I don't like Blair
2. I fundamentally disagreed with the whole Iraq venture
3. I can still appreciate the policies of the Blair led Labour party and see what affect they have had and still have in Britain and the rest of the world.How many other countries are championing Kyoto, debt relief, and end to EU subsidies, reform of international institutions?
These policies are long term, ambitious and still have a long way to run before achieving anything like their lofty goals. But denigrating them just because they have a Blair label is nuts IMNSHO :-)
-
Blair just delivered a speech about the British media, which was also interesting.
Was it ever... though I've got to admit the response from Independent editor Simon Kelner is every bit as lprecious and disingenuous in my view. The Independent is no more - but no less, complicit in the culture of New Labour spin as anyone else, and it would be nice if someone in the British media had the moral courage to own up. Otherwise, I feel another cry of 'Coddingtonswallop!' coming on.
-
Well, gee thanks Craig, considering I was correcting your inaccurate portrait on devolution vs centralisation I find that a little rich.
Don: I don't see how I can portray something - accurately or otherwise - I didn't actually mention and don't actually have much interest or specialist knowedge of. Hey, I was thinking about Blair's clear pattern of ignoring or getting rid of apolitical civil servants and replacing them with political appointees, the far from healthy absence of open debate either in Parliament or within the Labour party itself, a nasty culture of spin and smear Blair has the bare-faced cheek to complain about now, etc.
If saying all of the above creep me out makes me a militant Scarillite, where does one collect one's red flag and attractive cloth cap? No, I don't think Tony Blair is Satan incarnate - and Iraq certainly isn't the only issue in the world - but let's not put the man up for secular sainthood quite yet.
-
3. I can still appreciate the policies of the Blair led Labour party and see what affect they have had and still have in Britain and the rest of the world.
ASBOs? The removal of double jeopordy protection? An extension of the ability of the police to incarcerate without trial beyond the powers Thatcher granted during the height of the IRA bombings in London? The mass killings in Iraq? Covering up corruption by BAE? Cash for honours?
How's the legacy of that most delicate of euphemisms, "extraordinary rendition", coming along? RIPA? Comuplsory IDs?
The problem with New Labour is the same as the problem with the Neoconservatives: their connection with their Marxists roots remains less in a concern for social justice, and more in a desire for power, for control, and for the untrammelled exercise of power for the good of the state. It is no wonder Blair gets along so well with his Republican contemporaries.
-
WH,
their connection with their Marxists roots remains less in a concern for social justice, and more in a desire for power, for control, and for the untrammelled exercise of power for the good of the state.
To the extent to which one can generalise about such things, it seems more likely that the UK Labour Party has in fact retained its concern for social justice and that you and it just disagree about what the concept requires.
Notwithstanding that:
1. Mistakes have clearly been made.
2. This is just my opinion. -
They've forgotten the outcome of the '80s as well. After all, Reagan and Thatcher won the Cold War. Stupid as it sounded at the time, their foreign policy worked. So might Bush's. So might Blair's.
This is a piss-take, right?
Wahahahaha!!!
Such cunning use of dark irony!
Aaahhh, y'not joking? Oh. I see.Here's a few more screamers, then:
- A war criminal is still a war criminal, whether he is "elected" or not (I thought we figured that one out at Nuremberg). Even Blair's best mate, Lord Goldsmith, thought he was a war criminal, and had to cover it up.
- "the outcome of the '80s" was 11 September 2001. duh. And Saddam Hussein. duh. ad infinitum.
- Bush and Blair's criminal foreign policy working? Of course it's working. duh. Projection of racist power and massive enrichment of criminal corporate henchmen. Working like a treat, actually. -
I wouldn't normally reply to stuff like this - it's too time consuming, but you've really got me rarked up (which I expect was the point).
You referred to one British TV import. Allow me to refer to another:
'What a load of old SHIT!' - Katherine Tate.
I'm a pom and I'm 35. I've been living in NZ since 2004.
This means that I grew up under Thatcher, and have spent roughly 50/50 of the politically aware part of my life firstly under the Tories and then under NuLab. This doesn't qualify me as some sort of expert, but does give me the first-hand experience you seem to be completely lacking.
"Blair's core supporters did not elect him to run a country. They elected him to give the miners their jobs back, blow a raspberry at Ronald Reagan, tear down the tower-block flats and secede the Malvinas to Argentina. He was elected to nullify the 1980s, to make it as though Thatcherism had never been."
Wrong. In so, so many ways.
1) Blairs core supporters are NOT the electorate at large. Sociaist Worker may have elected him to do that, but they are a minority of blowhards who would have trouble filling the back room of a pub if they were giving away free beer. And everyone - everyone - in the UK knows it. People DID NOT vote for any of those things. People are what wins or loses an election, not political wonks or swivel-eyed fundamentalists.
2) The electorate at large voted in a Labour government (or rather, kicked out a Tory Govt) in 1997 because they were sick, sick, sick of sleaze and corruption. Sick, sick, sick of fat tory faces stuck in the trough when they were having trouble paying the bills. Remember Martin Bell? You don't seem to have touched on that anywhere in your troll.
A monkey in a suit could have won the 1997 election from the tories.
3) The electorate were also slowly waking up to the fact that the Thatcher/Tory reforms - i.e. sorting out the unions and getting rid of 'dead weight' - had cut everything so close to the bone that the marrow was leaking out.
Leaving Iraq and N. Ireland aside, there are essentially three thing that the British electorate cares about:
1) The NHS/Health System
2) Public transport - the railways and the tube
3) SchoolsPeople expected and WANTED Blair to grab those three things by the scruff of the neck and smack them into shape. If he'd stood up on 2nd May 1997 and said 'Right. The NHS is stuffed, the railways are stuffed, and the schools are stuffed. We need more money to sort it out. I'm raising taxes to pay for it all', there wouldn't have been a peep. Not a peep.
Peoples attitudes/thoughts since 1997 have been something like this:
1997 - Yes! He's in/they're out!
1998 - I'm sure he'll get started soon.
1999 - Any time you're ready, Tony...
2000 - Erm, Tony? The railways? The tube? Schools? The NHS?
2001 - He's privatising what? Didn't we kick the last lot out for doing that?
2002 - We're invading who? Are you sure this is a good idea, Tony?
2003 - Now we're invading Iraq? Erm, hold on, you haven't quite convinced me of this...
2004 - How about less evangelising and self-righteousness and more sorting out the stuff we elected you for, cockmunch.
2005 - Oh, for fucks sake.
2006 - Piss off Tony.As a mate of mine summed it up in 2001 - 'We elected you to CHANGE THINGS, you morons, not KEEP THEM EXACTLY THE SAME!'
Think I'm wrong? My dad has voted Tory as long as I've been alive. Up to 1997. It took me a while to realise he voted Tory because he had to live through the last lot - unions run wild, three day week, power cuts, mountains of rubbish piling up in the parks where me and my sis were supposed to be playing because the binmen were on strike.
Last time we got talking about politics, he nearly blew a fuse talking about the 'wasted opportunity' of 1997 - pretty much exactly as I have outlined above.
And I haven't even touched on Iraq, or the missed opportunity to reign in Murdoch, or the curtailing of civil liberties, or PPP, or any one of a dozen other key points of the last ten years.
-
So making Tony a Kiwi citizen and asking him to run for PM here isn't an option?
Post your response…
This topic is closed.