What a bizarre feeling. I am right this minute remembering being in a GCSE PE lesson in 1990 when a tecaher came in and said "she's gone". Of course, this time round Blair has largely got it "his way" and gone of his own accord. Enoch Powell said that all political careers end in failure, has Blair's? That is a question that will be dished out to politics undergraduates in the years to come I think.
Many on the Left will of course say that it hasn't ended in failure at all. We hear it all the time, low interest rates, low inflation, employment up, record growth. The spin is easy to cut through of course, inflation rising, interest rates rising, youth unemployemnt higher than in 1997. But let's not fogret the sleaze.
Blair has precided over a Government that has been defined by pure sleaze and the total breakdown of ministerial repsonsibility. Today people don't resign, instead they just "draw a line under it". If they do eventually get sacked they most often get another job a few months later.
But let's think of the failures. Pension funds raided and plundered, tax credit fiascos, SureStart failure, massive erosion of civil liberties, ID cards, a crumbling debt ridden NHS. Oh wait, hang on a second, most of those things are the fault of the guy who will take the Crown.
4 comments:
Peter hain was interviewed by the beeb this morning and said that Britain was a much more democratic and free place than 10 years ago.
the spin cycle is for ever.
Let us see if it looks so rosy if the CPS manage to wind themselves into a prosecution.
I like the spin cycle analogy !
Your last paragraph is a gem! And is Blair a failure? Surely he thinks so. Was there just a creeping element of understanding that he needs to start defending himself against his detractors, perhaps by the brief assumption of a false humility? And the 'putting down power' bit from a man who wanted to do anything but....yes, he knows he's failed. Right again Enoch.
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