Tony Blair runs out of Steam
January 30th, 2007 by Stephen
Prime Minister Tony Blair has denied he is running out of steam as he faces his final months in office, insisting: “I want to finish what I have started”.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6307541.stm
Well what Blair started with was a government stressing its commitment to education (but failing to stop rampant A Level grade inflation, and with little ground being made in actually pushing our children up the education league tables); Labour was committed to saving the health service - the service that nearly collapsed last year and started the year laying off thousands of staff; They were also committed to an ethical foreign policy - and now live with the reputation of being the first government to deliberately abandon an ethical foreign policy.
But never mind, because the one issue that defined Labour over John Major’s bickering and grandstanding Tories was the sleaze issue. At least the new Labour party would avoid all that cash for questions style sleaze.
Well, that is until they offered honours for unaccountable party loans. With the arrest of one of Bliars most senior aids, and the prospect that he too will soon be interviewed under caution (which, frankly, would have already happened if he wasn’t the PM) - it is time for this lame duck to step down and let the law catch up with him.
Blairs time in office has the same legacy as John Major’s. Failing public services, crippling levels of personal debt, poor pension provision, sleaze and corruption, poor investment in educashun (and poor returns on the investment).
Indeed we have worse: a deputy prime minister (who between affairs) gets driven 100 yards in a car to deliver speaches on climate change, criminalisation of more and more people, wholesale destruction of civil liberties and fundamental rights, constitutional vandelism that never materialised into any positive constitutional change!
Although to be fair, devolution was a great success. Maybe Blair should have left after one term (like he promised Gordon Brown). But as it is, the only thing history will really remember Blair for is his disasterous foreign policy in Iraq.
