While I understand and respect that there can be differences of opinion I have to say that it grieves me that so many people, especially conservatives, think Mr Blair was a great leader.

In my opinion Mr Blair was not a ‘leader’; he was a smooth talking, smiling and effective communicator with controlling tendencies and possibly having a lust for power. He regularly showed himself to be devoid of wisdom and that he had limited knowledge of anything outside law and politics. He surrounded himself with others from the same narrow fields and who were equally devoid of wisdom and understanding. His government team proposed many, many policies that could only have been taken seriously in a comedic satire TV series. Many of those proposals were laughed into oblivion, but some became law.

In government he did not lead, he dictated. He undermined the role of the cabinet (the group of senior ministers). His approach to solving problems invariably involved more government control and more legislation. His government started the process of introducing compulsory ID cards for all people, reduced civil liberties, and generally adopted a far more authoritarian approach to governance. It was under Mr Blair that the UK government introduced indefinite detention without trial (eventually overturned by the courts), and that a political protestor doing nothing more offensive than heckling was arrested at the labour party conference using newly introduced, ill conceived and widely criticised “anti-terrorism” laws. Mr Blair also subscribed fully to the “war on terror”; like many other people he apparently lacked the wisdom to understand that it is impossible to wage war against an emotion. He completely failed to recognise that the conflict was ideological and that the enemy was not terror (an emotion) or terrorism (a tactic) but simply Islam in all of its forms.

His government rode roughshod over the democratic process and consistently ignored public opinion.

In the first few years of his government he and his colleagues did much to bring the whole political process into greater disrepute with their attempt to manage the news, stifle debate and generally treat governance as game to be played between themselves and journalists. “Spin” is a word that will forever be associated with Mr Blair and his colleages. In many cases that “spin” was outright deliberate deceit in order to push through destructive legislation that would never be accepted if debated openly.

Mr Blair was consistently in favour of greater integration with Europe, despite massive public opposition. In this, as in many other things, his attitude was always something along the lines of “I know best what is good for you”.

As has been noted earlier in this thread, he failed completely to do anything about Islamic immigration. Indeed he encouraged it, having utterly failed to understand either Islam in isolation, its ideological relationship to the ideas and principles of the free world, or the impact on UK society of attempting to accomodate people who had no intention of integrating. Mr Blair proclaimed that he read the Koran each night and had found Islam to be a peaceful religion. His wife (also a lawyer) was involved in a major case where she was supporting Muslims in the separationist dreams. Mr Blair was also a major supporter for the Turkish bid to join the EU, in the never explained belief that bringing a predominantly Muslim nation into the EU would somehow be a good thing.

In Britain the Church of England still has some connection with government and hence Mr Blair had the opportunity to influence the choice of leader. His preference was the present Mr Rowan Williams, a man who is certainly an intellectual but, like Mr Blair, hardly a leader or a uniter.

Economically he was naive and had no background in commerce, manufacturing or production. He left Mr Gordon Brown (now Prime Minister) in charge of finance for ten years even though they had a very poor working relationship, sometimes not even speaking. Mr Brown’s widely touted and lauded economic prowess and success is considered by some to be principally a matter of luck (he held the reigns at a time when the world economy was stable and low cost imports allowed Britons to live affluently, cheaply). In any case, even ignoring the recent turbulence, the UK economy is not looking strong in the long term and Mr Brown made several well known major mistakes.

The government of Mr Blair brought the United Kingdom closer to dissolution with the establishment of regional assemblies for Scotland, Ulster and Wales. Instead of increasing harmony, he managed to magnify the divisions and extend the fracture lines.

Some things did improve during the years that Mr Blair was in office, but not all of those improvements are directly attributable to government policy or action. Many things that the government intended to focus on have shown no meaningful improvement at all.

His government attained power in the first place and then retained through a further two elections, not because of their own brilliance but because the principal opposition party (the Conservative Party) threw itself into a orgy of self-destructive infighting that has left it unfit for any useful purpose for over a decade.

Mr Blair resigned after ten years at the top. My own view is that he was getting tired of the job and also realised that things would only get worse. By leaving at that moment he got himself the distinction of holding office for a full decade but assured that he would not be in charge to get the blame when things strated unravelling, thus giving hinself a chance at having a ‘legacy’ that might help him get some senior political job elsewhere (in the EU or the UN). Please note however that this is merely speculation on my part.

Mr Blair obviously has some good points and was far from being a Stalin or a Mao. However I cannot even for one moment think that this self-serving egotist was a good leader, or even a useful ruler. He knew how to play and win the game of politics, but I do not believe that the UK is better or stronger for his tenure at the top. His policies were consistently guided by socialist ideology and a desire to stay in control of everything, rather than any true understanding of society. A great many Britons are still in a state of shock, despair and disbelief about how much damage was either deliberately done, or allowed to occur, to the social fabric and legal structure of the nation in the Blair years (and continuing now under Mr Brown).

YiZhangZhe on September 20, 2008 at 5:49 PM

Oh … Humble and embarrassed apologies for the double (long) post. The first didn’t appear and I thought it had been rejected because of links so I edited and resubmitted. Please delete the first, if possible.

YiZhangZhe on September 20, 2008 at 6:02 PM