'Have We Heard The Last of Tony Blair?'
By Aaron Goldstein (06/21/07)
When I arrived in Great Britain in January 1995 there was a palatable excitement in the air. There was a sense that a change was coming. At this point, the Tories had governed Britain for more than fifteen years but the end appeared to be in sight. The Tories under John Major were on their last legs. While Major himself was perceived as a decent fellow he had inherited a Tory party in disarray after the ouster of Margaret Thatcher five years earlier. The excitement centered around the new leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair.
Upon my arrival, Blair had been on the job for barely six months. He had ascended to the Labour Party leadership under the most of tragic of circumstances. His predecessor, John Smith, died suddenly of a heart attack in May 1994. Many believed that Blair would eventually become party leader but certainly no one envisioned it happening to him at the age of 41. To this day, there are those who wonder if Smith could have taken Labour to power in a general election. Smith had begun to change the Labour Party’s image when he brought about changes about how decisions were made at Labour Party Conferences. Policy would now be determined by “one member, one vote” as opposed to the trade unions being allotted a block of votes and thus dominating the proceedings. This initiative helped broaden Labour’s appeal to the voting public.
Given Smith’s popularity and the untimely circumstances of his death, Blair was eager to put his own stamp on the Labour Party which had lost four consecutive general elections to the Tories. During my semester in Britain, Blair made a point of overhauling Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution. Clause Four was the provision, written in 1918 by Fabian Society co-founder Sidney Webb, that called for “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” This was understood by many to mean large scale nationalization. Blair sought to modernize the party’s image with the electorate. When Labour had last been in the power in the late 1970’s under James Callaghan its image one was of a government that run (or more aptly not run) by trade unions. The enduring legacy of the Callaghan Administration was during the “winter of discontent” in 1978 and 1979 when strikes crippled the country. Many Britons remember uncollected garbage piling up on streets and in parks as well as being unable to bury their loved ones as the labor stoppage included gravediggers. This as much as any event led to the election of Margaret Thatcher in May 1979.
Not surprisingly, Blair faced ardent left-wing opposition from the likes of long serving MP Tony Benn and former National Union of Mineworkers President Arthur Scargill, both of whom were considered symbols of “Old Labour”. Needless to say, Blair prevailed. Thus gave birth to “New Labour” and such mantras as “wealth for the many, not just the few” and “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.”
Despite this excitement, many in Labour were hedging their bets. Labour had been on the opposition benches for so long there was an element in the party that did not believe the British electorate would ever give Labour a majority at Westminster. This was best exemplified by Labour Party activists who favored proportional representation over Britain’s first past the post system. But in 1997 when Blair and Labour won the most lopsided election in Britain since 1832 (when the Tories opposed the Reform Laws), Labour support for proportional representation in the House of Commons dried up faster than Kelly Clarkson’s summer tour.
Blair embarked upon the most significant governmental reforms in Britain since the Reform Laws with the establishment of regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales as well as the abolition of hereditary peerages in the House of Lords. The unintended consequences of these undertakings has been the fomenting of Scottish nationalism and cash for peerages scandal in which prominent Labour supporters were awarded seats in the House of Lords after making substantial donations to the Labour Party. Nonetheless, one cannot underestimate the significance of these reforms to the governance of Britain.
In 1995, few could have imagined that Tony Blair would win three consecutive majority governments much less be the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in British history. Even fewer could have imagine that Blair would have inextricably linked with George W. Bush. In those days, Blair was to Labour what Bill Clinton was to the Democratic Party. Both men moved their parties to the center and appeal to the middle classes thus enabling them to win elections they had previously lost.
But after September 11, 2001, Blair became President Bush’s staunchest ally in the world. His government would supply troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq. Britain has also been vigorous in uncovering and breaking up terrorist plots such as the one the last summer that would have resulted in ten airliners being blown up simultaneously over the Atlantic Ocean. Yet these endeavors have been widely skewered by the British public and for his trouble Blair has been derided as President Bush’s “poodle.”
The final straw might have come last year during last summer’s war in Lebanon when Blair’s cabinet colleagues openly criticized him for not calling for a ceasefire and not criticizing Israel’s military response. Now Blair himself has not always seen eye to eye with Israel. Blair was eager to meet with the likes of the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but would snub the likes of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. However, in Britain, Blair is considered to be ardently pro-Israeli largely on the account of his long standing association with the parliamentary group Labour Friends of Israel, in particular his association with Lord Levy, who served as Blair’s Middle East envoy for the past five years and was later implicated in the cash for peerages scandal. For the far left of the Labour Party, Blair’s support of Israel, while nowhere near as strong as President Bush’s, was sufficient enough to hasten his departure from office.
In examining his time as Britain’s Prime Minister one must ask if Tony Blair has left 10 Downing Street a better place than he found it? While Blair has been as outspoken against Islamic fundamentalism as President Bush it has festered in Great Britain during his decade in power. To be fair to Blair, Muslims represent a greater proportion of the population in Britain than in the United States. Thus the political power of Muslims in Britain was already considerable before Blair ascended to power.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the London Tube on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 commuters and injured another 700 people just going about their business, Blair responded by striking a committee to “combat extremism.” That is sure to strike fear in the hearts of those who would plan another such attack. Amongst those named to the committee were Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, who once praised Osama bin Laden as “a freedom fighter.” Also appointed was Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan who questioned whether bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the first place. What would have possessed Blair to appoint people of such dubious pedigrees? What makes Blair think extremists will want to stop extremism?
The state of affairs in Britain is such now that educators in British schools have decided not to teach the Holocaust to their students for fear of offending Muslim students who believe the Holocaust did not happen. Next British educators will decide to omit WWII from the curricula altogether. While this cannot be entirely laid at the door of 10 Downing Street, if Blair is serious about combating extremism and preventing another attack on Britain from homegrown terrorists combating extremism in the public schools would be very good place to start. If British teachers are going to be intimidated by Muslims who might threaten to burn down schools because they assign their pupils to read Elie Wiesel’s Night then heaven help us all.
Let’s also not forget the Blair government’s tepid response to the kidnapping of 15 British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters. The Iranians engaged in an act of war. If the Iranians had done such a thing while Madame Thatcher was in office she would have placed her heel so far up Ahmadinejad’s behind she would know what he had for breakfast. But Blair characterized his government’s approach to the crisis as “firm but calm – not negotiating but not confronting either.” In other words, he admitted to doing nothing to protect his citizenry. What kind of confidence does it inspire when Blair states he is unwilling to confront a foreign power when they seize their military personnel? Government’s only obligation to its people is to protect them from internal and external threats to their security. If Gordon Brown and his successors at 10 Downing intend going down this road paved by Blair and choose to placate dictators we might very soon see the last of Great Britain. Nearly eight centuries of common law and democratic rule gone before you know it.
However, we won’t be seeing the last of Tony Blair. President Bush has indicated that he would like to appoint Blair as a special envoy to the Middle East once he leaves office presumably to broker an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has already begun campaigning for Blair to become the new President of the European Union in 2009. Whatever the case, at only 54, Blair is not likely to leave public life anytime soon.
As for his time as Britain’s Prime Minister, Blair ought to be appreciated for standing up for the War on Terror when many world leaders deny any such thing exists. But Blair ought to be scrutinized for his willingness to overlook terrorism in his own backyard. Blair should to be praised for his willingness to send his forces into Afghanistan and Iraq even when it has been unpopular to do so. But Blair should also be taken to task for not being willing to stand up to tyrannies when directly confronted as was the case with the fifteen British Royal Navy and Marines kidnapped by Iran.
Although Tony Blair will soon move out of 10 Downing Street he will not be moving off the world stage. After a short intermission, Act III of the life of Tony Blair will soon begin.
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