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 Blair’s Bittersweet ExitPosted on May 11, 2007By E.J. Dionne WASHINGTON—British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s announcement that he’s stepping down won’t quell the anger felt on so much of the antiwar left. But my own reaction is a deep sadness that he tarnished a formidable legacy. As Blair exits, beleaguered by the unpopularity of the war in Iraq he championed, it’s almost impossible to remember the excitement and energy he called forth 10 years ago when he and his Labor Party won their landslide victory. The mid-1990s were a joyful time to be on a center-left that seemed to be leaving the old conservatism in the dust. Blair and Bill Clinton represented a charmed and charming reformist future that would take us on a Third Way “beyond”—a big word at the time—both the “old left” and the “new right.” Surprisingly, London and Washington were replacing Stockholm and Paris as epicenters of the democratic left. The word “socialism” was out, but “community” was in. “Collectivism” was replaced by the smoother word, “solidarity.” Everything about Blair’s project was “new” (he relabeled his venerable party “New Labor”) and “modern” (a word used so much that New Labor started to sound like a Scandinavian furniture store). Labor’s 1997 pop campaign anthem, “Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream, was cloying to some. But as the astonishing returns rolled in on May 1, the lyrics blaring at New Labor’s victory celebration seemed perfectly appropriate both to the exhaustion of British conservatism and to the sense of hope Blair inspired. Advertisement The caution of Blair and his top economics minister, Gordon Brown (his almost certain successor), reflected their determination that New Labor would not repeat Old Labor’s mistakes. Blair won a landslide re-election in June 2001. But the rather low turnout showed that while the voters were more or less satisfied, they were no longer rapturous. He won again in 2005, but with a majority reduced by disaffection over Iraq. At its best, Blairism, like Clintonism, was always a brilliant balancing act. Here is a classic Blair sentence that appeared in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece published Sept. 27, 1998: “A false opposition was set up between rights and responsibilities, between compassion and ambition, between the public and private sectors, between an enterprise economy and the attack on poverty and exclusion.” With the Third Way, you could have it all. And Blair and Clinton were right in seeing that clearing away those false choices was a necessary precondition to routing their conservative adversaries. But there were times when Blair seemed to embody Joan Baez’s brilliant reference to the man who was so good with words and at keeping things vague. In the best one-line critique of his style of politics, American economist Jeff Faux wrote in 1999 that “the Third Way has become so wide that it is more like a political parking lot than a highway to anywhere in particular.” Still, it’s an attractive parking lot. A survey taken by The Independent of London last month—in the teeth of the unpopularity of Blair’s Iraq policies—found 61 percent saying he had been a good prime minister. It’s a fair judgment. But the same poll found that 69 percent thought Iraq would be Blair’s legacy, and there’s the rub. Oh, how so many of his American friends wish that he had been able to restrain President Bush and had not bought into this war. “Is the prime minister really the president’s poodle, slavishly willing to jump through any hoops at the request of the White House?” asked a writer for London’s Daily Mail. What makes that quotation interesting is that it’s from a critique of Blair’s support for Clinton’s policies toward Iraq, published in December 1998. Say what you will, there is a kind of consistency in Blair’s pro-American interventionism. On so many other issues, Blair asked the right questions, and my hunch is that even critics to his left will find themselves building on what he achieved. For their part, Britain’s Conservatives, in an effort to be (yes) “new” and “modern,” have embraced their own version of Blairism. We may be done with Blair, but his influence will long outlive his tenure, and the war he embraced. E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is postchat(at symbol)aol.com. © 2007, Washington Post Writers Group Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By kevin99999, May 15, 2007 at 2:24 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
To me, Blair’s only legacy that it is okay to lie to the public to wage war and kill hundreds of thousands of people. He should be tried for crimes humanity and brought to justice rather than have a cushy retirement.
Report thisBy carlito paquito, May 14, 2007 at 11:00 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Blair’s Bittersweet Exit? why not? he used it long enough for Bush’s entrance. KY Anyone?
Report thisBy Max Shields, May 14, 2007 at 12:32 am #
#69450 by richard locicero on 5/11 at 4:12 pm
“Finally, can we stop the nonsense about Clinton? Check the numbers: Lowest poverty rates since LBJ. Lowest minority unmployment on record, first rise in real wages in two decades with the largest increase at the bottom. I didnt like his welfare reform either but how about some facts for a change?”
__________________________________________________
Yes, but how does that square with the fact that during Clinton’s terms over 1 million Iraqi’s were killed due to the extreme US sanctions - many were children; and the bombing raids that terrorized the area. Then Somalia and the unchecked invasion of the Balkins - MSM was more interested in one Monica Lewinski.
Granted Clinton’s not alone in his duplicity - some decent domestic metrics but with the snap of a finger countless non-Americans are destroyed. Those deaths mean something - and may be, just may be, when we put these ledgers together we need to remind ourselves that human life - any human life - cannot be balanced against a domestic accounting of wages for said period.
Report thisBy cann4ing, May 13, 2007 at 1:04 pm #
re comment #69700 by RAE. Absolutely right, Blair is no dummy. Long ago he lined up a position on the Board of the Carlyle Group, alongside George H.W. Bush. He only has to leave office to take it. The revolving door between government and the corporate sector swings all the way over to the U.K.
Report thisBy RAE, May 13, 2007 at 12:42 pm #
Blair’s no dummy - he can read the writing on the wall. He’s smart enough to get out of the way BEFORE it comes crashing down on his head in contrast to his friend, GWB, who will still be standing there mouthing the words when it happens.
Report thisBy Skruff, May 13, 2007 at 11:39 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
“The mid-1990s were a joyful time to be on a center-left that seemed to be leaving the old conservatism in the dust. Blair and Bill Clinton represented a charmed and charming reformist future that would take us on a Third Way beyonda big word at the timeboth the old left and the new right. Surprisingly, London and Washington were replacing Stockholm and Paris as epicenters of the democratic left.”
It is hard to respond to this tripe without using the words meaning Male bovine’s excrement.
Clinton was the proverbal “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” a shill to get the capitalist pigs to the trough without causing a worker’s revolt. His welfare reform, war in central europe, and sell out to China (MFN status) leave him well to the right of “center left” and as a 1960’s survivor, I must essay “The left has left” Blair sold out “Labor’s Heritage” as surely as the Democrats sold their soul when they embraced the DLC idology of southern folks like Gore, Edwards, Nunn, and Graham.
Clinton at least was honest when as Governor, he pulled the death penalty switch on a man too retarded to know right from wrong. He changed the laws in Arkansas to allow his friendly contributers at Tyson to dump chicken waste into the White Water river. He gave the union workers in Arkansas a slap to the cheek when he made his state a “Right to work” enviornment, and he stole the Caucus vote here in Maine from the true winner (Jerry Brown) as surely as Bush stole Florida.
The current administration is not the whole problem, and the left will never get out of their deep hole until they recognize this.
Report thisBy Tim, May 13, 2007 at 10:05 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
. I also experienced the so-called left’s complicity in turning our world into a neo-corporate domain. My case in point was when Conservatives started my country down the road towards the privatization of our fisheries and when the Liberals took power they simply put the pedal to the metal and stomped on it.
===========================
Liberals are in no way part of the left and they never were. Liberals have always favored crony capitalism.
Report thisBy davr, May 13, 2007 at 5:11 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
I really, really liked Blair until he got his nose stuck in Wienerboys ass.
Report thisBy Scott, May 12, 2007 at 3:16 pm #
I agree with Ernest Canning. I also experienced the so-called left’s complicity in turning our world into a neo-corporate domain. My case in point was when Conservatives started my country down the road towards the privatization of our fisheries and when the Liberals took power they simply put the pedal to the metal and stomped on it.
Blair is a war criminal like Bush and sad to say my country is now on the ‘evildoers’ hit list too. I hope they pick a right wing target when they do hit us but the ironic thing is they’re also basically conservatives and since stupid is as stupid does how will they know the difference?
The right wing is not a place its a direction on a journey that’s forever just getting under way.
Report thisBy cann4ing, May 12, 2007 at 1:24 pm #
The fact that E.J. Dionne could cite Jeff Faux, author of “The Global Class War” and still describe what Clinton and Blair did as a “brilliant” balancing act reveals that Dionne is but a disengenous mouthpiece for the ruling class.
What Dionne describes as “brilliant” was, in fact, a betrayal of the middle and working classes when Clinton, with no protest from the British lap dog, linked up with Reagan and Bush to ram through the neoliberal policies embodied in NAFTA and the WTO, devices that permitted multi-national corporations to outsource America’s manufacturing base in an endless search for below subsistance foreign labor, a process that has left a vulnerable work force within this country to be Wal-Mart-ized, in a spiraling race to the bottom.
Though the method was different—application of a devastating, 13-year U.N. economic sanctions regime that began during the Bush I tenure and which was responsible for the deaths of approximately 500,000 Iraqi children as opposed to invasion and occupation—the goal of the Clinton/Blair combine in Iraq was the same as the Bush/Blair tandum, regime change in Iraq leading to control of that nation’s oil and the neoliberal domination of that nation’s previously state-owned economy.
Dionne’s so-called “Third Way” is nothing more than a more subtle but nonetheless devastating means of extending imperial control to the benefit of a small number of ruling elite at the expense of working men and women everwhere.
Report thisBy Verne Arnold, May 12, 2007 at 7:08 am #
This article is far too kind to the legacy of Blair. The author must have forgotten the lies about WMD and the stolen masters thesis from a college student to justify the lies. All done with knowledge and fore-thought by Blair and his cronies.
More Brits marched in the streets against the Iraqi war, than ever before in the history of England.
Even Hitler had some good qualities, at least that’s what I’ve heard.
Let’s not get all teary eyed over a squandered legacy…he did it to himself.
Report thisBy THOMAS BILLIS, May 11, 2007 at 9:17 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
LBJ will be remembered for Vietnam and Blair will be remembered for Iraq.I make Blairs involvement in Iraq doubly worse then ours because the British had been involved in the Middle East before.They knew what type of place it is and the pitfalls.It is not like their previous occupation of Iraq was anything close to successful.They do have history books in England don’t they?
Report thisI have always beleived that Blair was too smart not to know the problems that would be faced in Iraq.The mitigating factor was that he had alwys found much success in going along with the American position when Clinton was President and that this would continue.His big misatke was in not realizing early on that George W Bush was and is a moron.
Good luck to the new President of France Sarkozy who states he is looking to forge a friendship with the Bush administration.Look around Europe Mr Sarkozy see how being close to this administration has worked out for different heads of state.
By richard locicero, May 11, 2007 at 8:12 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
I’m not going to defend Blair as his slavish devotion to “Democratizing” the world with a gun has been a disaster but I think some thought should be given to his social policies. He introduced a minimum wage (much higher than here by the way) and did make deep dents in both poverty and youth unemployment. He was the one who made it possible for their to be a Scottish Government by putting thru theconstitutional changes that gave Edingburgh a parliament after three hundred years and he modernized the Lords, no mean feat.
Alsa, his allergy to aything that looked like “Socialism” led him into insane “Public-Private” partnerships. The Tories Privatised the railroads but he did nothing to correct the fiasco until so many accidents forced his hand. He clashed with Ken Livingstone over the funding of the Underground and rejected the mechanism of “Red Ken’s” transit Czar - Rudy Guiliani’s old MTA Chief. Imagine that! Rudy was more progressive than Tony! And so it went. In the end he had no friends. And his “Bridge” between the EU and the US was a joke. Markel (and now Sarkosy) certainly don’t look to Britain as the mediator and they’re not interested in Anglo-American wars anyway.
Finally, can we stop the nonsense about Clinton? Check the numbers: Lowest poverty rates since LBJ. Lowest minority unmployment on record, first rise in real wages in two decades with the largest increase at the bottom. I didn’t like his welfare reform either but how about some facts for a change?
Report thisBy mediamouse.org, May 11, 2007 at 6:37 pm #
Tariq Ali, admittedly much further to the left than the author of this article, has a considerably different take on Blair’s time as prime minister, arguing that the so-called “third way” been devestating for poor people in Britain:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1531215
Based on Ali’s comments, it seems like a similar situation to the United States, where Clinton’s “friendlier face” on harsh policies such as welfare reform and the scaling back of social programs masked their reality while the news media reported that things were becoming “more prosperous.” Of course, they ignored the question of who exactly was prospering and who wasn’t prospering, but such is the way with a media system that promotes the interests of corporations and the wealthy.
Report thisBy writerman, May 11, 2007 at 6:35 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Like all the best and most effective confidence tricksters, Blair actually appears to believe his own lies, and it’s liars like him that are the most dangerous, especially for the rest of us!
He is a man without honour or a concience. Why isn’t he ashamed at the terrible destruction he has rained down on Iraq? The man keeps smiling when he should hang his head in profound shame.
All his political allies in Europe were the most rightwing leaders he could find. Blair was never a soicialist or even a social-democrat, Blair is a conservative, really a neo-conservative.
Blair is self-delusional in the extreme. He promised the world - then he blew it up!
Report thisBy QuyTran, May 11, 2007 at 12:49 pm #
Since he became Bush’s poodle, Blair was no more a “Mr. Nice Guy”. Sorry for his party having a such member like him.
Report thisBy Fadel Abdallah, May 11, 2007 at 12:43 pm #
Good riddance!
Report thisI can hardly wait till the end of June when this evil hypocrite Blair would cease to be an actor on the world scene. He has too much innocent blood on his hands, but he’s a little smarter than his evil American counterpart, Bush, for exiting the scene before his term is over.