- Tue Apr 21, 2020 11:40 am
#606309
Just a note in passing that when I kicked off this thread 8 (yes, 8!) years ago, I did so on the basis of a report of Blair opining that going after "bankers" for their role in precipitating the global economic crisis was basically wrong. I was angered by what I saw then as his crass intervention, so much that I originally gave the thread the intemperate title "Jeebus, Tony, why don't you just FUCK OFF?". It's since been changed to something less gratuitously offensive.
However, it's instructive to consider the contrast between then and now. Now, I invariably welcome Tony Blair's interventions wholeheartedly, as, particularly during the recently-emerged-from nightmare of the Corbyn years, he was and is usually almost the sole political figure talking any kind of sense - on Brexit, and now the government response to the viral outbreak of Covid 19.
I was never a "Blairite". I did not vote for him to be leader, was uneasy about some of the stuff he did in government, and vehemently opposed his decision to get the UK embroiled in GW Bush's insane Iraq invasion. But you know what? With the insane waste of Corbyn's half-decade at the head of the party, and without really shifting my basic political principles or position at all, I seem, much like Roy Hattersley, to have become one.
"The opportunity to serve our country. That is all we ask." John Smith, Leader of the Labour Party, 10 May 1994.