Good Riddance To PM BLiar

'The face of Mr Blair should be reviled rather than respected', said one blogger after hearing the news about the British Prime Minister's long-overdue departure date. The-Latest brings you some more juicy quotes from the blogosphere.

He is a man who has spun and lied his way through 10 years of pretty unflattering policies and decisions. Yes the economy has managed to trundle along quite nicely, but this has been the case for most open economies. Beyond this, we have witnessed the growth in the state coupled with increasingly intrusive powers, and a large section of the media that seem to unquestioningly accept whatever Blair and his cronies say.

It is high time that the BBC and others took a long hard look at themselves and understood that it is their duty to scrutinise and question everything that comes out of the government. Unfortunately, too often, this government has shot the messenger and carried on as before.

I will not remember Blair or the Blair years fondly. In fact I expect to be able to forget him as soon as he goes.

What goes around comes round. I can clearly remember people saying that Margaret Thatcher said that her legacy was Tony Blair. Tony Blair hijacked her policies and David Cameron is continuing them. Wake up Old Labour, New Labour took over where Margaret Thatcher left off.

Kevin

Despite what some people say Tony Bliar has done so many great things for this country, he will be truly missed.

Louise

The idea that people needed Blair, or indeed anyone else, to "speak for them" on Africa (a campaign, hijacked from NGOs by the government and then promises that were never delivered) or on the 11 September attacks is just nonsense. What people needed Blair to do was to make up for the grinding years of Tory rule with something different - but instead we had more of the same. PFI, an obsession with markets, slavish devotion to US international policy and a fundamental disregard for civil liberties (often written off an obsession of the chattering classes, but becoming a more general unease as the government becomes ever more authoritarian). Things, apparently, could only get better. But mainly, they remained unchanged.

Blair a 'unique' politician? Put next to Thatcher, Clinton - or Gordon Brown - that's hard to justify. Another neo-liberal who stuck around, within a centre-ground that has shifted well to the right and offered less and less choice between political parties? That's a verdict that many people are likely to share.

Dotun

It might be worth comparing the state of the country in 1979 to 1997 (the same digits but in a different order - spooky).
Margaret Thatcher inherited a mess and her time was taken up by reacting to serious events that affected Britain directly. The Falklands war was a foreign country invading a British territory where people hold British passports, a friend of mine in the British army was from the Falklands.

I can't remember why we went to war in Serbia or Afghanistan and we went to war in Iraq over a lie told by the Prime Minister. The miner's strike had been coming throughout the 1970s; I can't imagine what would have happened if Blair had been in power then and don't try and believe the strike would not have happened because there were over 120,000 miners in 1979 in a very inefficent and heavily subsidised dinosaur of an industry.

When Maggie left power her legacy appeared to be the Poll Tax and sleeze but as time moves on that has died down and she is being credited with modernising Britain and moving us away from restrictive working practices that plagued us for so long in the 1960s and 1970s. So whatever people are saying about Blair today will change as time moves.

Blair inherited a thriving economy, a massive majority and a huge amount of goodwill. Perhaps he needed some real events to create a real legacy, and before anybody mentions Northern Ireland remember it was John Major who started the process.
I don't believe Blair has a legacy other than the fact that apart from Iraq he didn't really mess things up. His problem was he was in too comfortable a position for too long to do anything really valuable.

Chris Willis

It's an interesting list, but why oh why does he vainly seek to dominate the news agenda for another seven weeks, in tandem with a tokenistic leadership 'contest' that's hogged the headlines for years already. Going on and on is exactly what Blair wants to do - in his own 'statesmanlike' way - seven more weeks of legacy spin. God save us. If you want to alienate your electorate, this is a great way to achieve it. This will backfire.

McGellie

Tony Blair - the spend and smile prime minister, to be replaced by Gordon Brown, the spend prime minsiter.
The smug face of Mr Blair should be reviled rather than respected.

This is a man who has spun and lied his way through ten years of pretty unflattering policies and decisions. Yes the economy has managed to trundle along quite nicely, but this has been the case for most open economies. Beyond this, we have witnessed the growth in the state coupled with increasingly intrusive powers, and a large section of the media that seem to unquestioningly accept whatever Blair and his cronies say.

It is high time that the BBC and others took a long hard look at themselves and understood that it is their duty to scrutinise and question everything that comes out of the government. Unfortunately, too often, this government has shot the messenger and carried on as before.

I will not remember Blair or the Blair years fondly. In fact I expect to be able to forget him as soon as he goes.

Rob

I lament the many armchair political commentators that will inevitably flood this comment box with short-sighted tirades about Iraq, which was a decision which we should judge based soley on whether he believed he was doing the right thing, which he inarguably did. Blair has changed the political landscape and ushered in a new era of accountability in government which New Labour may not always have lived up to, but which simply did not exist under Conservative rule. How easy it is to forget the misery of life in this country under the Tories. This country has never had a statesman like Blair, including Churchill, and I've never felt more proud of my Prime Minister.

Matt Parker