New Labour was, in Peter Mandelson’s words, “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, and cared little for how they did so. Thatcher had rolled back the state and liberalised the British economy in the 1980s. The glib embrace of globalisation - “you might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer” - left our economy unbalanced, unfair and unready for severe shocks.īlair was, even more than Thatcher, the archetypal ultra-liberal politician. The deregulation of the banking industry left us exposed to the worst of the financial crash. Asymmetric devolution has fuelled separatism and undermined good government and democratic fairness. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, fought at great cost in blood and gold, were disastrous and ended up weakening Britain and America on the world stage. From gay rights to tackling racism, Blair helped to make Britain a country more at ease with itself. If there is a simple way of describing the positive side of Blair’s legacy, it is that he achieved what his predecessor, Sir John Major, had promised. But they were also driven and shaped by politicians. The changes we have experienced since the 1990s were driven by deep shifts in the world economy and technologies, intellectual trends and the attitudes of younger generations. Its economy was very different too: manufacturing accounted for almost one in five jobs compared, these days, to less than one in 10. Its social liberalism was yet to emerge: the age of consent was older for gay people, and civil partnerships, not to mention marriages between gay people, were still unthinkable. In the 1990s, Britain was a unitary state, with no devolved government in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Not everything was different when he became prime minister - England lost the Ashes and had almost won the European Championships, while Britain was run by a Tory government battling Brussels and allegations of sleaze - but there is no denying he transformed the country. Whatever his errors and sins - and we will soon turn to them - if Britain cannot honour a 10-year prime minister, the only leader to have won an election for Labour in almost half a century, then who among the top ranks of public service can we honour?įor there is no doubt that Blair, along with Margaret Thatcher, is one of the two figures to dominate the past five decades of British politics. More than 150,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the knighthood should be reversed, and one can only imagine the campaign being hastily arranged in Kirkcaldy to award Gordon Brown the same title as his bitter rival.īut the howls of rage are misplaced.
His decision to accept a knighthood from the Queen, announced over the weekend, has driven critics from Left to Right into spasms of outrage. His allies push Labour to return to the Blairite modernising handbook. Yet for a man written off as a relic more than 16 years ago, Labour’s last prime minister still looms large in British public life.įor the past two years, his policy institute has researched ways through the pandemic. Tony Blair was, in David Cameron’s famous line, “the future once”.
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