Tony Blair: the disaster continues

I remember when I first saw Tony Blair on television. It was in the early 1990s and he was the shadow employment spokesman. The most striking thing about him was the smile. He seemed to be permanently smiling. Tony Blair is not smiling now: the world he sought to build is turning to dust. The latest example is the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This has prompted Blair to write a piece on his website condemning President Biden and calling for “ international co-operation ” (whatever that means). While the present crisis is the most visible example of Blair ’ s failed legacy, it is only one of many.

The most famous is the invasion of Iraq. I remember at the time the then Prime Minister Blair said not to judge its success in a few months or a few years, but over the long term. It has been over 18 years and we can safely say it was a total disaster. One fact alone illustrates this: there are now reported to be half the number of doctors and nurses in Iraq that there were in 2003. The wider implication of the Iraq disaster was that it prevented any further western boots on the ground. The Libya fiasco was done with air power and when Cameron tried to bomb Syria in 2013, the House of Commons told him to get lost.

Blair ’ s biggest legacy is not Iraq, but rather Brexit. Since we joined the then Common Market in 1973, a decision affirmed in the 1975 referendum, there had always been large majorities to stay in the European Union, as it became. This changed with the accession of the states of Eastern Europe in 2004. The key thing Blair did was to open the UK to their workers immediately, unlike Germany or France, which opted for transition arrangements. Only Sweden and Ireland did the same thing. This meant that millions of hard-working, mainly young Poles, Lithuanians and Hungarians came to the UK, rather than Germany or the Netherlands. This was good for Blair ’ s barrister friends in Islington, where cheap nannies became abundant, but bad for shop workers in Lincolnshire. Those low-paid workers faced a decade of having their wages suppressed. Then came the financial crisis, which Blair ’ s policies helped bring about. Those workers saw the bankers bailed out, while they faced the austerity that came after. Brexit was their — perfectly rational — revenge. For the Stoke lorry driver just being paid a bonus to join a new haulage firm , Brexit is turning out rather well.

Tony Blair, the man who promised to take Britain to the heart of Europe, was as much a godfather of Brexit as Cameron, Farage or Cummings.

Blair’s reverse Midas touch infected his own party. By bringing on a legion of very well-connected, but not very able Blairites to control the Labour Party, such as David Miliband — a man who could not even beat his nerdy younger brother to become Labour leader — he doomed it to be taken over by the hard Left in 2015. Jeremy Corbyn was the anti-Blair in every sense (he had a beard after all) and his election was a total rejection of everything Blair stood for. Corbyn’s lacklustre performance during the Brexit campaign must have driven Blair to tears.  In the current Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer is rapidly emerging as an acolyte of Blair and Blairism. He will soon find that it probably dooms him too at the next election. A policy of not increasing corporation tax rates and increasing overseas aid is not going to win back many Red Wall seats.

Still : on a positive note for the Blair family, Cherie is joining the campaign for the admittance of female members of the Garrick Club. All I would say to Mrs Blair is : don ’ t get Tony involved in the campaign or it might be 2071 before they let in the first woman member.