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The End Of Tony Blair Show

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 5/7/2007

With little less than a few weeks to go before leaving office, Prime Minister Tony Blair of England is wondering how he would like best to be remembered. Many Britons admire him as a statesman and a fluent political speaker, but Mr. Blair, still vigorous at the end of the term, probably seeks more than dull respectability.

At home, he wants to see marked improvement in the lives of his people through efficient economy and well-funded schools, hospitals, and abroad to persuade Britain ’s fight against the terrorism under the American umbrella. Neither task is going to be easy, however.

“His ability to re-shape the welfare state, for example, has been severely limited. Abroad, it has been harder to contemplate other interventions, for example to stop mass slaughter in Darfur, in Sudan ,” as reported by the Economist.

According to the speculations, within weeks Britain will have a new prime minister, Gordon Brown and this will mark an end of the decade of Tony Blair show in Britain .

It looks like only yesterday, but a decade has passed when Mr. Blair has walked into Downing Street as the youngest prime minister since 1812, and kicked off his Prime Ministerial role with ambitions plans for the reform of health care, education and other everyday primary essentials through efficient liberal and market based economy.

Some of these reforms have failed or need rethinking. So far, more has been promised than delivered.

Leave the domestic policies alone for a while. Moreover, critics say, more than being the Prime Minister of Britain, Mr. Blair has been the foreign minister of America , too lenient to America in the view of some.

“He has provided America with unconditional military help in Iraq and Afghanistan , but by doing so, Mr. Blair has lost much of his support back home,” according to the critics.

But optimists have another view. The optimist’s view is that Britain and America , now united by a common enemy in the form of terrorism, will pay less heed to their long list of disputes.

Mr. Blair was always with America after the 2001 terrorist attack saying all democracies must unite, and Britain would “not rest until this evil is driven from our world,” according to the Economist. But the critics has always doubted his intentions, no matter how true they might be, they say, this is done with the intention of winning the next election.

During the end of his tenure, what stained his reputation is this fact: He was accused of misdirecting the voters.

The accusation is hefty and the suspicion that Mr. Blair misled voters over Iraq has become an accusation of the first degree that has been impossible to ignore after the ever deteriorating condition of Iraq .

Nonetheless, all has not been murky for Blair. He had successfully campaigned militarily to end wars in Kosovo and Sierra Leone , and not a single right minded person can forget his commitment for the democracy and his fight against the terrorism, to make the world a safer place.

He can also boast of few other successes during his tenure. The Bank of England won its independence during his term and as quoted by the Economist, Mr Blair already had one of his most striking achievements under his belt, having changed his party from being a creature with some old and embarrassing socialist tics to one that professed to favor free trade, markets and wealth creation

But nonetheless, his departure from Downing Street will be murky because the Labor party is losing its consensus in Britain .

“The SNP has surged to historic victory over Labour and become the Scottish Parliament's largest party on a gloomy final election day for Tony Blair,” according to the BBC report.

Observers say, Mr. Blair would have liked to end his tenure in a high note but the wind is sailing against him. Yet, for all his mistakes, pro- American policies, and disappointments, no one can say he was a bad Prime Minister. Above all, he has played a vital role in creating a consensus against the terrorist and their terror networks.

Britain has gained more than lost during his tenure. How far will the Blair legacy lead Britain is yet to be seen? But the way Britons think about terrorism, extremists and about the safety of its borders is a lot different from what it was a few years ago.

However, Britons new found admiration for Gordon Brown is galling for the Conservatives. But they can hardly criticize their opponents for loyalty to Mr. Blair as Mr. Brown and their own David Cameron, both sponge political ideologies heavily from Mr. Blair.