DaveO wrote:
Describing Tony Blair as average politically is ridiculous. He was the most politically shrewd politician we have had for decades. That doesn't mean everything he did was brilliant or correct - his decisions on Iraq finished him off IMO (something gets them all in the end) but as a politician he is light years ahead of anyone on either front bench at the moment. The only people that scared him were the likes of Robin Cook.
If you take out of the equation his disastrous ventures into foreign policy, I thought Blair's domestic politics were the most in touch with mainstream UK opinion of any major politician I can remember, hence him winning three elections including two huge landslides. A lot of his views on responsibilities as well as rights, rule of law and order, 'hand up rather than hand out' on welfare, would have been broadly shared by the public and the business community liked the fact that he was essentially pro business and didn't interfere with them or tax them too highly. Blair was Labour leader for 13 years and in all that time the Tories were never in the ball game, even at the height of his unpopularity over the Iraq war and tuition fees in 2003-2004, it was only when people saw that Blair was going to be handing over the reins in his last 18 months, that Labour's dominance dropped, and that was a very messy succession that IMO sowed the seeds of Labour's defeat in 2010.
The biggest handicap he had was having Brown in the Treasury and his cabal of allies effectively pursuing a different agenda to his. I think if Blair had kept his nose out of foreign policy and had a 'Blairite' Chancellor (eg had Darling been in No.11 from 1997 rather than Brown) I think Blair could have managed a fourth term in office, or at least a Blairite successor like David Miliband would have won the fourth term for Labour.
However the flipside of that is with a Blairite Chancellor and no policy distractions we might have gone into the Euro.
