So the media noticed this thread finally :wink:
Report in the Guardian
All eyes on London today.
As I write TB has just left Downing St. after cabinet at which he announced his resignation.
Now flying to Co Durham to his Sedgefield constituency where he will speak to local Labour Party members and then to the media circus. (Literally a flying circus helicopters flying behind up to Sedgefield).
So the great man is finally going. It presages 7 weeks of "hand over" whilst the Labour party elect or appoint a new leader, which we all know will be Gordon Brown. The exact mechanism for this has yet to be decided.
I am genuinely quite moved to realise Blair is actually going, as opposed to saying he will not continue for ever. The Blair years have something of a Greek tragedy about them. Hubris nemesis....so I heard someone say.
I've always said Blair will go down as one as the great PMs. And the Labour govt has real achievements to be proud of, the outstanding peace deal in Northern Ireland being one. This country is wealthier, with full employment, low inflation, 600,000 children lifted out of poverty. 1m pensioners similiarly helped. Massive investments in health and education, which are now showing results. Above all Blair and Brown have laid a basis for stability and growth...and London has be come the World City. (Not that Londoners can afford to live there...I actually live outside)
Internationally Blair/Brown has been at the forefront of moves to end third world debt, help for Africa and facing up to the reality of climate change.
He's sorted out (using the military) Sierra Leone and Kosovo.
AND YET ALL THIS WILL BE OVERSHADOWED BY THE CATASTROPHE OF IRAQ
That is how Prime Minister Mr W M D Blair will be remembered.
It seems quite a long time....9th Nov 2005, when I started this thread...
Announcement due from Trimdon Labour Club at 12 noon.
Announcing his resignation plans just now ...
It'll be a very long time before you have another leader who equals Tony Blair. This is a sad day and he will be missed. I imagine the speaking fees he'll soon be commanding will be staggering, even by world-class standards.
... he will stand down on 27 June.
How Blair will be remembered
He said several times words to effect of
"hand on heart I did what I thought was right for the country"
"I might have been wrong, but I was and am sincere"
He also talked about blow back in Iraq. Christianne Anapour of CNN picked up on that, said it was remarkable that he said that.
But in a way saying you did what you thought was right is meaningless. Is anyone going to say "I knew it was wrong, but I went ahead anyway"
Jackie Ashley in the Guardian makes the point that she still doesnt know Blair any better than when she was at university with him. Its that sincerity thing, blair is a master of it....or is he just a sincerely decent chap?
Alastair Campbell (former press secretary for Blair) just said on the day of 9/11 Blair was making notes...Afghanistan...Saddam WMD Iraq...
It seems Blair was part of the Project for a New American Century from the beginning.
He said one thing I found really quiet embarrassing. That Britain is the greatest country on earth and the British are special people...that the rest of the world knows it, and we do too in our hearts. Glad thats clear.
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
if only bush would follow suit....
Walter Hinteler wrote:Steve 41oo wrote:He said one thing I found really quiet embarrassing. That Britain is the greatest country on earth and the British are special people...that the rest of the world knows it, and we do too in our hearts. Glad thats clear.
In today's Guardian
Thanks walter
You are saving me a fortune on newspapers
I was talking with a friend in the pub last night about Blair's legacy. He absolutely hates the guy and is glad he's going. Leaving aside the obvious point that on substantial matters it will be no different under Brown, I found myself saying "yeah but if it wasnt for Iraq.."..and went on to list quite a number of the governments achievements. This morning I listened to a programme called The Reunion. It was between survivors of the Brighton bombing (when the IRA tried to kill Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet)....and amazingly Patrick Mckee (sp?) the IRA man who actually blew them up. He served 13 years out of a 35 year sentence before release under the Good Friday peace agreement. It was very moving.
All my adult life I have lived with the threat, sometimes real, sometimes forgotten for long periods, but always there in the background, of the political violence that spilled out from Northern Ireland. And now its finally over. That for me is the greatest achievement of Tony Blair, and if he had done NOTHING else he deserves our thanks.
Blair's departure: The view from Baghdad
Blair's departure: The view from Baghdad
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 11 May 2007
Independent UK
Iraq may be seen in Britain as Tony Blair's nemesis but Iraqis yesterday greeted his departure with utter indifference. Asked what they thought about it, most simply shrugged their shoulders and looked surprised at being asked the question. Others said they saw him as a surrogate for President Bush.
It is easy to see why Mr Blair is not regarded with more affection in Iraq. On 8 April 2003, just before the fall of Saddam Hussein, British troops distributed a leaflet in Arabic containing a message from him to Iraqis. It promised "a peaceful, prosperous Iraq which will run by and for the Iraqi people".
Iraqis are all too aware this never happened. Four years after the letter, Iraq is perhaps the least peaceful country in the world. Baghdad is gripped by terror. On a quiet day yesterday police picked up 21 bodies of murdered men. Nobody knows how many corpses lie at the bottom of the river or in shallow graves in the desert.
It is not just the economy that is in turmoil. Much of the population is close to malnutrition with 54 per cent of the population living on less than one dollar a day, of whom 15 per cent seek to survive on just 5 cents.
Some 60 per cent of people are unemployed. Of the 34,000 doctors in Iraq in 2003, 12,000 have fled the country and 2,000 have been killed, according to the United Nations.
Mr Blair has also failed in Iraqi eyes to fulfil his other promise that the country would be run by Iraqis. A poll this spring showed that 59 per cent of them believe that Iraq is controlled by the US and only 34 per cent think it is being run by the Iraqi government.
In Britain criticism of Mr Blair has mainly revolved around the decision to go to war, the "dodgy" dossier and the absence of the weapons of mass destruction. This has been to his advantage. He has repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and does not regret removing him.
Many Iraqis would agree. They did not fight for Saddam - not even the supposedly super-loyal Special Republican Guards - and most were glad to see the end of his disastrous rule. But within a month of the supposed end of the war, Blair went along with what was essentially a US decision to remain in occupation of the country and remake Iraq as it wanted. It was from this decision that all the present disasters flowed.
Mr Blair never gave a sense of knowing much about Iraq when he invaded it or learning anything over the past four years. His speeches and statements about it were often puerile.
The first year after the fall of Saddam saw a thorough-going occupation. The second offered nominal Iraqi independence under unelected pro-Western Iraqis.
The elections of 2005 saw the triumph of the Shia religious parties to the dismay of the American and British embassies. Ever since they have sought to neuter their influence.
It has always been difficult to know how much of his own propaganda Mr Blair actually believed. Again and again he would say that much of Iraq was at peace, the press was exaggerating its miseries and progress was being made.
He had the great advantage that these placid provinces were in reality so dangerous that no reporter could go there to refute the Prime Minister's claims.
No successful political or military policy could be based on the nonsense that Mr Blair repeatedly spoke about Iraq.
He said that the insurgency was isolated when from an early stage in the war it had wide support among the Sunni community. By March this year, 78 per cent of Iraqis opposed the presence of US and British forces according to a wide-ranging poll.
There was a further ugly consequence to this. In Afghanistan al-Qa'ida had little support. Its numbers were so small that, for its promotional videos showing its fighters in action, it had to hire local tribesmen by the day. In the first months of the occupation of Iraq, al-Qa'ida for the first time found a sympathetic environment in which to grow.
The "terrorism" that Mr Blair was so regularly to denounce incubated and flourished in conditions that he helped create.
Iraq exposed not only Mr Blair's weaknesses but Britain's. It has been strange over the past four years for me to return to London from Baghdad wondering if people really knew what was happening in Iraq.
I found almost immediately that, from taxi driver to general and senior civil servant, they knew all about the mistakes made in Iraq but they were also resigned to the fact that they could do nothing about them.
Mr Blair is not unique among prime ministers in making catastrophic errors in the Middle East.
It was said that Lloyd George could remain prime minister for life as the architect of victory in 1918 but four years later he was forced to resign after trying to go to war with Turkey.
In 1956, Anthony Eden disastrously invaded Egypt claiming, in words echoed by Blair almost half a century later, that Nasser was a threat to the Middle East.
Lloyd George and Eden were swiftly evicted from Downing Street. Mr Blair clung on. It is this that makes his legacy in Iraq so poisonous.
For four years he has nailed British colours to a failed US policy over which Britain has no significant influence. He has advertised a humiliating British dependency on Washington without gaining any advantages.
As for Iraqis, despite all his rhetoric about rescuing them from Saddam, he has been surprisingly indifferent to their fate.
"The Queen has been left "exasperated and frustrated" at the legacy of Tony Blair's 10 years in power, friends have disclosed."
On the frontpage ...
.... and pages 8 and 9 of today's Sunday Telegraph:
Revealed: Queen's dismay at Blair legacy
Well if the Queen didnt get on with Tony...I'm sure she'll have a ball with Gordon.
Another deceit?
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2108858,00.html
why could he not be honest about his religious beliefs?
why did he take mass in a catholic church until the Archbishop of Westminster told him to stop
I dont mind him converting. I do mind Blair pretending that he was something he was not i.e ecumenical.
Guardian, pages 2-3
And it's "
New Labour, new era", says the Independent today
