(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Obviously, the answer to that question is ‘no’. So why did I ask it? Because on Saturday, that was the questioned posed by the man himself in an interview- and he had a slightly different answer.
As my readers will have no doubt noticed after nine months of my blogging, I am firmly on the left of Britain’s Labour Party. I never fell into the ‘Blairite’ and ‘Brownite‘ camps which came to dominate New Labour for the duration of its existence, because both figures were too centrist for my liking. The whole question of my views on their project to convert Labour from a democratic socialist movement to a glossy, socially progressive but neo-liberal institution is of limited usefulness because I only became properly politically aware towards the end of the Brown government. I didn’t have a vote in the 1994 leadership election, the last one for 16 years. Anyway, what is the point of running a blog if not to share your views on matters of little importance?
Before proceeding to discuss Tony Blair’s preposterous claim, I want to briefly examine his political style and achievements. I have long held the view that, though the centrist drift seen in Labour most acutely between 1992 and 2010 was not to my taste, I can see why Blair was anxious to appeal to a politically cautious middle class. Post-war socialism was no longer viable for the simple reason that the working class who demanded it no longer existed (or was much smaller, at least). As with the Left across the western world, they had become so successful at increasing living standards and improving the prospects of the working population that the policies the Left stood for diminished in importance. Why should a working-class voter support high tax rates on the well-off when social mobility was so well-established that it might be their family that paid 83% income tax one day? Why support nationalised industry when it could be replaced with a nation of small shareholders in productive private firms?
Of course, the catch in this was that, with the expansion of the unfettered free market and shrinkage of the state, the structures which promoted social mobility were eroded as inequality soared. And this is something which a socialist Prime Minister would have tackled effectively, as opposed to Tony Blair who patched it up. New Labour’s solution to low wages was not to pressure employers to pay more, or to empower trade unions to do so. They introduced Tax Credits instead. It was wonderful that Labour did improve the lives of so many by raising their incomes, but the problem is that the next Tory government can come along and cut them, as we have witnessed.
If Tony Blair continued as Prime Minister into the 2010 election, he would have not only lost as badly as Gordon Brown, but he would have led the party to a catastrophic defeat, and quite possible into third place. Blair built his leadership on public relations and pragmatism- in short Blairism was a ‘brand’. And, as any advertising executive knows, the key test of a brand’s viablity is its sales after the initial buzz surrounding its launch fades. Could this fading brand have survived the wrath of the public after its failure to prevent the banking scandal? And as we saw, Blair’s performance matched that of other leaders, and declined sharply after the first term. By 2010, he’d have found his Poll Tax policy, and it would have been worse for him than the Iraq War.
Blair did well in a number of ways during a long tenure in Downing Street. In many other ways, he did badly. But by 2007, it was definitely time for him to go. Let’s just leave it at that.
