jebus
07/09/2006, 1:26 PM
'Tony Blair will today bow to pressure and make a declaration about when he will step down, but will stop short of naming an exact departure date.
Downing Street confirmed that the prime minister would use a visit to a north London school between 2pm and 3pm to speak about the end of his premiership.
The leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, today became the most senior cabinet minister to suggest that the prime minister would leave in May, two years after his historic third election victory, but warned that Labour was on the edge of an "abyss".'
I think Blair will be gone by Christmas, and he won't get his year long lap of honour that some of his supporters have been hankering after, the writing has been on that wall for quite some time now. But what do we think his legacy will be once he has stepped down? Will he be remembered as a good PM or a bad PM? obviously (as with all PMs) he won't remembered well for the first decade after his departure, the Iraq War, the fox hunting debacle, not fulfilling his party's medical promises will all be remembered more than his commitment to third world aid, picking the country up after the Thatcher/Major years and turning the British economy around. But in the long term what do we think his legacy will look like?
Personally I think his legacy will always be stained by the Iraq War/ Spin/ WMDs/the Hutton Inquiry and everything that went with supporting the Bush Adminstration (incidentally I'd be interested to hear what Blair thinks about Bush's admission of holding/torture cells around the world). I think Blair's New Labour made a lot of good promises in their first term, and followed through on a lot of them in the second term, but sometimes it felt like they were dragging their heels towards what they promised, rather than fighting tooth and nail to get it. The perfect example of this is New Labour's commitment to outlawing fox hunting. Their intentions were good, and they eventually reached their goal, but they could have argued with the House of Lords over the hold-ups more, and they could still be doing a better job of actually enforcing the law. So sadly for Tony I think his period in office will be looked back on as a time when Labour could have got it so right, came close to doing so, but were held back by their own bickering and new found conservatism
Downing Street confirmed that the prime minister would use a visit to a north London school between 2pm and 3pm to speak about the end of his premiership.
The leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, today became the most senior cabinet minister to suggest that the prime minister would leave in May, two years after his historic third election victory, but warned that Labour was on the edge of an "abyss".'
I think Blair will be gone by Christmas, and he won't get his year long lap of honour that some of his supporters have been hankering after, the writing has been on that wall for quite some time now. But what do we think his legacy will be once he has stepped down? Will he be remembered as a good PM or a bad PM? obviously (as with all PMs) he won't remembered well for the first decade after his departure, the Iraq War, the fox hunting debacle, not fulfilling his party's medical promises will all be remembered more than his commitment to third world aid, picking the country up after the Thatcher/Major years and turning the British economy around. But in the long term what do we think his legacy will look like?
Personally I think his legacy will always be stained by the Iraq War/ Spin/ WMDs/the Hutton Inquiry and everything that went with supporting the Bush Adminstration (incidentally I'd be interested to hear what Blair thinks about Bush's admission of holding/torture cells around the world). I think Blair's New Labour made a lot of good promises in their first term, and followed through on a lot of them in the second term, but sometimes it felt like they were dragging their heels towards what they promised, rather than fighting tooth and nail to get it. The perfect example of this is New Labour's commitment to outlawing fox hunting. Their intentions were good, and they eventually reached their goal, but they could have argued with the House of Lords over the hold-ups more, and they could still be doing a better job of actually enforcing the law. So sadly for Tony I think his period in office will be looked back on as a time when Labour could have got it so right, came close to doing so, but were held back by their own bickering and new found conservatism