History > 2007 > UK > Politics > Prime Minister Tony Blair (III)

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The Independent on Sunday

6.5.2007

Tony Blair

Defiant Blair arrives in S Africa

Thursday May 31, 2007 6:33 AM
Press Association
The Guardian


Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in South Africa on his farewell tour of the region.

He left Sierra Leone after launching a passionate defence of his policy on Africa - and attacking the "cynicism" of those who dubbed his trip to the continent a vanity expedition.

Speaking at Lungi airport, Sierra Leone, after talks with the country's President Ahmad Kabbah and Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleas, he said: "However ferocious the challenges are in this part of Africa it's better to intervene and try to make a difference than stay out and try to cope with the consequences at a later time."

Asked head on about criticism of his visit, Mr Blair replied: "What I would say to cynics about Africa is just get across the balanced picture. Five years ago this country was being taken over by a gang of gangsters who were killing innocent people, raping women, despoiling the country.

"But today we have a situation where in three months time we will have an election. I don't say that is perfection, but I say it's a darned sight better than it was before.

"All I'm saying to cynics back home is if we care it might make a difference and making a difference is what politics should be about."

At Mahera village, Mr Blair was made an honorary paramount chief in honour of Britain's contribution to ending the bloodshed which has scarred the country.

He told the crowd of excited villagers and local dignitaries, "It's wonderful to be with you here today in Sierra Leone and it's a particular honour to be made an honorary paramount chief - thank you very much indeed."

He also led calls for a strengthened African Union peacekeeping force to intervene in the continent's conflicts with a 50 million dollar (£25 million) reserve fund from the EU.

He said: "Yes it's Africa's responsibility for peacekeeping, but we in the West have a responsibility to fund it, to help to train the force and with logistics. If we do not do that, the impact is faced not just here but in the wider world."

    Defiant Blair arrives in S Africa, G, 31.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6672821,00.html

2.45pm update

Blair arrives in Libya with praise for Gadafy

Tuesday May 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Will Woodward, chief political correspondent

Tony Blair today kicked off his farewell tour of Africa by praising the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gadafy, as a man he found "very easy" to deal with and one who had always kept his word to him.

Speaking to reporters on the plane en route to Libya, the prime minister said they spoke several times a year, and had a "relationship of trust" on first-name terms.

That would have been "unthinkable" 10 years ago, he said, when relations between the two countries were at their lowest ebb following the murder of police constable Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984, and the Lockerbie bomb in December 1988.

"He's very easy to deal with. To be fair to him there's nothing that I've ever agreed with him should be done that hasn't happened. That's important," Mr Blair said.

In March 2004 Mr Blair became the first British prime minister for 61 years to visit Libya. He stayed just four hours then. But this visit will be the first time he has ever stayed in the country. It is being backed up by an announcement from oil giant BP that it will resume investment in Libya.

He was greeted with a red-carpet welcome in Tripoli before switching to another plane.Mr Blair later landed at Sirte, having made the 35 minute flight aboard a chartered Libyan jet. He was then heading off for his talks with Col Gadafy.

Mr Blair will also travel to Sierra Leone and South Africa - both places where he believes his policy has helped make a difference - during his final major tour as prime minister.

But he said he was confident that the engagement with Africa would continue once he is replaced by Gordon Brown next month.

"This is a policy that unquestionably has been through the government from the very beginning," he said.

He smiled ruefully at further questions about his future; this was something he would remain interested in, he said.

The tour was designed to keep Africa and climate change uppermost on the agenda for next week's G8 summit in Germany, but also to "underline the fact that the interventionist agenda for Africa is not only right, it's the only agenda that works".

Specifically on Darfur, the prime minister said the US president, George Bush, would be proposing a new UN resolution on the crisis shortly. But that too showed progress. A few years ago, he said, nothing would have happened about Darfur. "Now something has happened [but] it's not enough."

The Fletcher case - for which no one has ever been prosecuted - would be raised in the meeting between him and Col Gadafy, Mr Blair said. They would also discuss combating al-Qaida and wider African issues.

"It is a very good relationship," Mr Blair said. "Obviously it's come from a situation where Libya was treated as an outcast in the international community.

"The fact is we need Libya's help in combating terrorism and there is a fantastic commercial opportunity in Libya. But the relationship is important for the development of Africa as well.

"We've gone from a situation where 10 years ago it would have been unthinkable for us even to be here in a situation where the relationship is a good one."

Mr Blair said Libya's promise to abandon its programme of producing weapons of mass destruction - a deal brokered by Britain - had been difficult for Libya.

But Libya's example could show the way for other countries.

Asked if there was an example for Iran, which held historic face-to-face talks with the US in Baghdad yesterday, the prime minister said: "There's always the opportunity for people to have a different relationship.

"What Libya does show is that it is possible to go from a situation where Libya was an outcast in the international community to one in which the relationship is transformed and changed."

But that required Col Gadafy to show and honour commitments, Mr Blair said. "If that hadn't happened, our relationship wouldn't have changed."

    Blair arrives in Libya with praise for Gadafy, G, 29.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2090250,00.html

A decade of Blair

has left society

more segregated, fearful and divided

He could have played midwife
to a confident, inclusive, hybrid sense of Britishness,
but sought to strangle it at birth

Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Gary Younge

Just a few days before Labour swept to power in 1997, Tony Blair was visiting a health centre in Brentford when a Sikh man approached him and asked: "What about us Asians?" Had Blair stopped to listen, as my colleague Jonathan Freedland did, he would have learned that the man was concerned about a possible EU directive that would have stopped him from wearing his turban under his motorbike helmet. If ever there was an ideal opportunity to triangulate, this was it. So long as the turban did not violate British safety laws, why should the EU interfere? With racial sensitivity he nods to the left, with a well-placed jab at Europe he nods to the right. But Blair had an entirely different audience in mind. "You're part of Britain," he snapped. "We'll treat you the same as everyone else."

Racial and ethnic diversity has always been less of a problem for most of Britain than it has for Blair. What most of us long regarded as a source of cultural strength, the New Labour leadership has always deemed an electoral weakness. Driven by crude majoritarian impulses, this government has not only refused to lead a more hopeful, progressive national conversation about race, it has refused to even follow the one that was available.

Margaret Hodge's comments last week followed by Ofcom's rebuke of Channel 4 for its code breaches in Big Brother illustrate just how far New Labour had sunk. Presented with the racist views voiced by Jade Goody, our popular culture pilloried them while our political culture panders to them.

The polarising effects of terrorism and war accelerated the regression to atavistic notions of Britishness and race. But they didn't start it. As Blair leaves office he has the curious distinction of having realigned the level of public racial discourse with his own - by lowering it. This was no accident. The pressure came not from voters but within New Labour, which for all its bravado was always an essentially defensive project. Emerging from 18 years of electoral defeat, it identified itself not by what it could be but by what it would no longer be - namely old Labour. Race and immigration were regarded as achille's heels of the old.

But while the spin doctors were still working from a playbook written in the 70s, the rest of the country had moved on. Thanks primarily to demographic drift and cultural engagement, the number of those willing or able to imagine Britain without non-white people had dwindled. Labour's first term saw Chris Ofili and Steve McQueen win the Turner Prize, White Teeth win the Whitbread, Ali G emerge as a comic force, and the number of non-white MPs double.

The issues of race (the colour of people) and immigration (the movement of people) were decoupling. Britishness was losing its synonymity with whiteness and its antithesis to blackness. Racism had not disappeared; but it was no longer the electorally potent force it had once been either. In 1997, the BNP had no council seats. According to a Mori poll six weeks before the election, the country ranked race and immigration the 12th most important issue - just below inflation and above BSE.

So from the outset, the potential existed for New Labour to play midwife to a confident, inclusive, hybrid sense of Britishness. Instead, it sought to strangle it at birth. Less than a month before polling day, Peter Mandelson unleashed Fitz the bulldog on to a party political broadcast. "The Labour party is the patriotic party," he explained. "[The bulldog] is an animal with a strong sense of history and tradition. The bulldog is a metaphor for Britain." For a party seeking to present itself as a modernising force, this was a curious choice of metaphor. The bulldog signified the land of John Bull and empire, not Kelly Holmes and Little Britain.

Shortly before the last election, Blair promised tougher asylum and immigration legislation against the backdrop of the white cliffs of Dover. Had he stood again, we might well have witnessed a walkabout down the Old Kent Road flanked by a Pearly King and Queen to the soundtrack of Chas and Dave. These anachronistic symbols belied chequered legislative and political achievements. The Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the resultant Macpherson report and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act were particularly high watermarks; the asylum bill, ID cards and loyalty pledges were particularly low.

New Labour understood that racism was bad; it just never quite grasped that anti-racism was good. Progressive initiatives were overshadowed and undermined by crude rhetoric. In the days following Le Pen's election success, David Blunkett echoed Thatcher's fears of being "swamped" by non-English speaking immigrants; Ruth Kelly spoke up for "white Britons [who] see the shops and restaurants in their town centres changing [and] do not feel comfortable". Peter Hain blamed "a minority of [isolationist] Muslims for [leaving themselves] open to targeting by racists and Nazis".

Over the decade, the ethnicity of the scapegoated "other" kept changing. At different moments the focus shifted from asylum seekers to Gypsies to Muslims to eastern Europeans. The basis for the fear changed too: from drugs to jihad, from race to religion, from crime to culture. Often the scapegoats were in fact white. Indeed, the only thing that has remained constant was the need for an "other".

As ever, this "other" was most useful in helping the powerful define themselves. In a period of globalisation, devolution and post-colonial decline, defining contemporary Britishness went from parlour game to profitable industry. Those most keen to define us were most likely to violate the principles by which they defined us. Even as they shot innocent young men on the tube and at home, or tortured them abroad, they told us we were a "tolerant", "welcoming", "law-abiding people", who championed "fair play". "Liberals" who once argued for integration now demanded assimilation; those who had called for assimilation now made the case for exclusion. Debates about race became a race to the bottom.

None of this denies the daunting challenges this government has faced. Immigration has escalated massively and there are finite public resources. The trouble is that New Labour contributed in no small part to these developments. Specifically, it backed EU expansion - a good move, but with consequences and clearly without adequate preparation. More generally, the neoliberal policies it has supported at home and abroad created a vulnerable low-paid workforce that feels threatened by those seeking asylum from poverty and war.

Which brings us to Iraq, where Blair helped create far more asylum seekers than he ever took in. The overwhelming majority of Britons opposed the war and terrorism. We have ended up with both - expanding the market for Islamophobia and jihad, and returning the myth of the west's civilising mission to an ever degrading public discussion.

And so it was that as Blair's term draws to a close, the popular proved too weak to resist the reactionary overtures of the political. Race and immigration are now key issues facing the nation, and the BNP has 56 councillors. Schools are more segregated, and society more fearful and divided. Popular culture took Jade Goody down. But the politicians who embrace her agenda have risen to new depths.

    A decade of Blair has left society more segregated, fearful and divided, G, 28.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2089683,00.html

3.15pm update

Former KGB spy

faces Litvinenko murder charge

· Andrei Lugovoi says he is innocent
· Tony Blair calls for full cooperation from Russia
· Russia refuses to meet extradition request

Tuesday May 22, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Ros Taylor and Luke Harding in Moscow

Andrei Lugovoi, one of the Russian men who met Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill with polonium poisoning, should be charged with his murder, the Crown Prosecution Service recommended today.

The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, said he had instructed CPS lawyers to seek the early extradition of Mr Lugovoi from Moscow to Britain to stand trial "for this extraordinarily grave crime".

"I have today concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning," Sir Ken said this morning. "I have further concluded that a prosecution of this case would clearly be in the public interest."

Mr Lugovoi said he was innocent of the murder of Mr Litvinenko and that the decision to charge him was politically motivated.

"I consider that this decision to be political, I did not kill Litvinenko, I have no relation to his death and I can only express well-founded distrust for the so-called basis of proof collected by British judicial officials," Mr Lugovoi was quoted as saying by the news agency RIA-Novosti.

The Russian prosecutor general's office said it would not extradite Mr Lugovoi.

"Under Russian law, a citizen of the Russian Federation cannot be handed over to a foreign country," an office spokeswoman, Marina Gridneva, told the Russian news agency Interfax.

The announcement came after the Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said she had told him she expected Moscow's "full cooperation" in Britain's efforts to extradite Mr Lugovoi.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, later added his voice to the calls for Mr Lugovoi to be extradited.

Mr Blair's spokesman said the case was being taken very seriously and stressed that the UK would "not in any way shy away" from trying to ensure justice prevailed. However, the prime minister's spokesman would not be drawn on the government's reaction if Russia refused to hand over Mr Lugovoi.

"Let us deal first of all with the legal process," he said. "Let the legal process take its course. Nobody should be under any doubt as to the seriousness with which we are taking this case.

"Obviously we have political and economic connections with Russia, and Russia clearly plays an important role in international affairs.

"There are major issues, such as Iran, Kosovo and climate change, where we have to have - given the nature of the world today - serious dialogue with Russia.

"However, what that doesn't in any way obviate is the need for the international rule of law to be respected and we will not in any way shy away from trying to ensure that that happens in a case such as this. That is the basis on which we proceed."

Asked if the government was concerned that tensions might threaten supplies of energy from Russia to the UK, the spokesman said: "There are international obligations which any international contract imposes on both sides and it is in everybody's interest that both parties to those obligations fulfil them.

"That's the basis on which international investment and international confidence are based and I'm sure everybody is aware of that."

Mr Lugovoi has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder of Mr Litvinenko, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin's regime who lived in exile in north London with his family.

Mr Litvinenko's widow, Marina, welcomed the decision to charge Mr Lugovoi.

"I am now very anxious to see that justice is really done and that Mr Lugovoi is extradited and brought to trial in a UK court," she said.

Mrs Litvinenko will meet the Russian ambassador today, at his request.

Mr Litvinenko died in hospital on November 23, having ingested a fatal dose of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 three weeks earlier. On the day he fell ill, Mr Litvinenko had met Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun at the Pine bar of the Millennium hotel in Mayfair, London, before lunching with an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Traces of polonium-210 were later found at both locations.

A number of staff at the Millennium hotel were also contaminated with polonium-210. Traces of the substance were found at several offices and hotels Mr Lugovoi visited in the capital, and also on board a British Airways plane in which he travelled. He was treated for suspected radiation poisoning in Russia.

On his return to Moscow, 41-year-old Mr Lugovoi called a press conference to deny any involvement in Mr Litvinenko's murder, citing the fact that his wife and children had also been contaminated with polonium-210. "To think that I would handle the stuff and put them at risk is ludicrous," he said. "Someone is trying to set me up. But I can't understand who. Or why."

He said he gave "exhaustive answers" to Scotland Yard detectives who met him in Moscow late last year.

The Russian constitution protects citizens from forcible extradition, although there had been suggestions that the Kremlin might be prepared to hand over Mr Lugovoi in exchange for Boris Berezovsky, another opponent of the Putin regime who lives in exile in London. However, UK courts have ruled that Mr Berezovsky, an oligarch who fell out with Mr Putin, could not expect a fair trial in Russia.

Mr Lugovoi was a KGB platoon commander and bodyguard before moving into private security. He was head of security at a TV company jointly owned by Mr Berezovsky, and set up Pershin, a company specialising in security, soft drinks and wine.

Mr Berezovsky told the BBC in February that Mr Litvinenko had blamed Mr Lugovoi for poisoning him. In a statement he dictated from his deathbed, Mr Litvinenko said Mr Putin might "succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life".

    Former KGB spy faces Litvinenko murder charge, G, 22.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2085363,00.html

Brown's vision for a nuclear Britain

· Chancellor faces backlash over energy
· Hundreds more wind farms proposed

Sunday May 20, 2007
The Observer
Nicholas Watt, Oliver Morgan and Robin McKie

Gordon Brown is to face down sceptics in his party and give the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations, which will be built across the country.

In a move immediately condemned by environmental organisations, the Prime Minister-elect will give the green light to the plans that will show that he is backing Tony Blair's support of the nuclear industry.

Boosted by a new poll, which shows Brown pulling ahead of David Cameron on the issue of competence to run the country, the Chancellor will signal his support this week for a dramatic renewal of the nuclear power programme that will see the building of up to eight new stations, possibly within 15 years.

Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, who is a close Brown ally, is understood to have been told that the Chancellor will offer his unequivocal backing for the government's energy white paper, to be published on Wednesday.

Darling will make clear that Britain will have to embark on a major renewal of nuclear power if it is to guarantee power supplies while delivering a 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. 'This is a really urgent problem,' Darling told The Observer

A major push to harness wave power and build hundreds of new wind farms - many of which will be based offshore - are also likely to be approved. 'A mix of energy supply is right,' Darling said of his plans to boost low-carbon energy, particularly offshore projects where there are fewer planning hurdles.

Although Darling insisted that no formal decisions had been made, it is clear that nuclear and wind will provide a significant part of future energy needs. He said: 'The global demand for energy is going up. We've got to come to a decision one or way or another this year. If you didn't do anything [then in 10 to 15 years] you'd come perilously close on very cold days or very hot days to seeing interruptions in supply.'

Greenpeace last night condemned his plans. A spokesman said: 'Reaching for nuclear power to solve climate change is like taking up smoking to lose weight. Is it a simple answer? Yes. Is it an effective answer to the climate change crisis? Absolutely not.'

Brown was given a taste of a potential rebellion by his own MPs last night when a former environment minister expressed unease. Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, said: 'Nuclear may or may not have a role to play in the new energy mix. My worry is that this will direct resources and investment away from new low-carbon technology, growth in renewables and energy efficiency. I am not sure nuclear is the best investment at this moment.'

Most of the new nuclear plants are likely to be built on the sites of ageing power stations. 'It is more likely than not that they would be on existing sites,' Darling said. 'However, that does not mean every existing site is appropriate. Because of advances in technology I suspect you'd probably need fewer sites than you would in the olden times.'

Darling said Britain was in a 'race against time' to shore up its energy supplies because nuclear power plants, which currently generate 19 per cent of electricity, are due to be phased out. By 2020, if nothing is done, the figure will fall to 7 per cent.

Alongside this, many of the largest coal plants will have to be closed to comply with European Union regulations. Officials judge that without a significant new power station building programme this combination of coal and nuclear closures will force Britain to rely on environmentally unfriendly gas-fired power stations and imports from unstable regions such as the Middle East and Russia for up to 90 per cent of its energy.

A strong opponent of nuclear power when he was first elected to Parliament 20 years ago, Darling says he now believes that Britain has no option but to remain nuclear. 'I respect the views of someone who says they don't want nuclear in any circumstances whatsoever. Fair enough. Right, tell me what the alternative is. If there was an easy answer that had low carbon, no cost, no eyesores somebody would have found it. '

A new Ipsos MORI poll gives Brown a clear lead in competence at running the economy and Britain's public services. A majority of people, 54 per cent, believes Brown is better placed to run the economy, compared with 27 per cent for Cameron.

    Brown's vision for a nuclear Britain, O, 20.5.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2084016,00.html

Number 10 hiding blood scandal facts

Inquiry finds the truth on shredding was withheld
after infected transfusions killed 1,700 patients

Sunday May 20, 2007
The Observer
Jo Revill, Whitehall editor

An independent public inquiry into how thousands of haemophiliacs contracted HIV or hepatitis C from contaminated blood discovered last night that Downing Street is withholding crucial information about how hundreds of relevant documents were shredded.

More than 1,700 patients died and many more are now terminally ill as a result of one of the biggest medical disasters of recent times, when haemophiliacs were given infected blood clotting products during the late Seventies and early Eighties. The products came from American prisoners who were allowed to sell their blood even though there were fears about the risks of contamination.

But it has since emerged that many of the files detailing the scandal were shredded by civil servants in the Nineties. This week, the second hearing of the contaminated blood inquiry, chaired by the former Solicitor-General, Lord Archer of Sandwell, will ask why the results of an internal inquiry into the destruction of crucial files are being withheld.

Jenny Willott, Liberal Democrat MP for Cardiff Central, has discovered that Downing Street is holding back the report, carried out by the Department of Health in 2000, when Alan Milburn was Health Secretary. Some of the destroyed documents detailed meetings between the blood transfusion service, health boards, government officials and consultants during the Seventies and Eighties. The records also contained information on when precisely the government became aware of the risks from imported blood and what measures were taken to warn patients.

The Haemophilia Society said last night that Downing Street's decision was 'incomprehensible, given the public interest'. In 1989, the society brought legal action on behalf of thousands of patients who had become infected with HIV after being given the clotting product Factor 8. Haemophilia is a rare hereditary condition in which the blood does not clot properly. British doctors used the American products despite some senior scientists knowing that there was a risk. Compensation was then agreed with the Tory government in 1990 and thousands of patients received one-off payments of between £21,000 and £80,000.

However, it then transpired that hundreds of documents relating to the case were shredded, allegedly by accident, by junior civil servants. It is now known that there were two separate instances of documents being destroyed, or mislaid, at some point between 1990 and 1998. Some copies of documents had been made by a solicitor's firm, and these were returned to the government, but others are thought to have been lost forever. The total number of destroyed documents is not known. In 2000, the Department of Health held the audit but it was never published.

An email from the Department of Health passed to The Observer revealed that an official has confirmed that the audit has been withheld at the request of no 10. Yesterday, it remained unclear why Downing Street had blocked moves to put it into the public domain. The Observer was still awaiting a reply last night from No 10 officials about the reasons for the lack of disclosure.

Willott said: 'We discovered that this internal audit had happened through the Freedom of Information Act, and asked to see a copy of it. We now find that No 10 have withheld it. That raises the very big question about whether there is incriminating evidence in there.

'We were always told that the documents were shredded by mistake by a junior civil servant. It is very important that we know because it's hard to hold an inquiry when you are not getting the full picture. There are thousands of people living with the results of this terrible disaster who deserve to know the truth.'

One of them is Gareth Lewis, chairman of the campaign group Tainted Blood, and a trustee of the society, who became infected with HIV and Hepatitis C in 1984.

'I'm 48 years old, and I've lived with this nightmare for more than two decades,' he said. 'I find it very hard to understand why a government minister would not want to know the whole truth about this, and not want us to know. I have been to 98 funerals of haemophiliacs who have died as a result of receiving contaminated blood. We really owe it to them to be open and honest about what went wrong.'

    Number 10 hiding blood scandal facts, O, 20.5.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2083842,00.html

Amid the bombs,

Blair remains upbeat on farewell tour in Iraq

Relaxed PM uses unannounced visit to pay emotional tribute to British troops as fighting continues

Sunday May 20, 2007
The Observer
Jamie Doward in Baghdad

From the serenity of the White House Rose Garden to the chaos of Baghdad and Basra the Tony Blair farewell tour rolled into Iraq yesterday with the Prime Minister insistent that good progress was being made in bringing stability to the country.

His comments came only a few hours after a mortar bomb had fallen in the protected green zone near the British embassy and in a weekend when eight American soldiers were killed and 43 Iraqi civilians were found murdered.

And when Blair flew into Iraq on a Hercules air transport, the plane had descended sharply to minimise its landing time. Similar precautions were taken when he was transferred to his helicopter which fired flares when close to landing to draw potential missiles. Incoming fire could be heard only five minutes before he touched down.

The British army headquarters in Basra also came under mortar attack minutes after Blair paid an emotional farewell tribute to British troops. There were not believed to be any injuries and Blair was in no danger.

British soldiers serving in Iraq were joined by troops from Denmark, Lithuania, Australia and the US to have tea with the PM. As he worked his way around the mess tables, careful to shake everyone's hand, Blair was clearly more at ease than earlier in the day in Baghdad when he had been grilled by a journalist.

'This is my last chance to thank you for the work you have done,' Blair said. 'Sometimes the impression is completely negative but what you have done here is absolutely remarkable.'

The PM contrasted the situation in Basra with that of Baghdad, plagued by sectarian violence and al-Qaeda. 'When you go out and talk to the majority of people here they tell you they want to live in peace.'

He concluded that the fighting in Iraq had global consequences. 'What you are doing has implications for Iraq and also for the wider world. If we don't sort this region out then there is, in my view, a very troubled and difficult future for the world ahead of us.'

The 200-odd servicemen and women gave him rousing applause. Outside it was an exhausting 40 degrees under leaden skies.

In what was his seventh and, probably, final visit to Iraq as Prime Minister, Blair re-emphasised Britain's commitment to the country. 'I've no doubt at all that Britain will remain steadfast in its support for the Iraqi people. The policy I introduced is a policy for the whole of the government. Even when I leave office I'm sure that will continue.'

But Blair's address at this unannounced visit was not so much a valediction as a remembrance of things past with the Prime Minister forced to acknowledge continuing difficulties in the country. 'There are mortar attacks and terrorist attacks happening every day; that's the reality,' Blair said. 'The question is what are you going to do about it? We don't give in to them.'

Earlier in the day, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and black and grey striped tie, a stern-faced Blair had walked up a covered red carpet to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's palace where the two men then held private talks. His talk of progress was met with scepticism by some of his audience who have experienced the seemingly intractable problems confronting postwar Iraq at first hand.

But President Jalal Talabani said there had been improvements in the security situation with the number of car bombs decreasing in recent weeks. 'The eastern part of Baghdad is completely liberated,' Talabani said. 'And in the western part we have made good progress.'

On Thursday a meeting of foreign ministers representing Muslim countries called on international troops to pull out of Iraq as soon as possible.

And last week the respected international relations think-tank, Chatham House, issued a report warning Iraq was on the brink of collapse and that there was no longer any guarantee that it would survive as a single state.

    Amid the bombs, Blair remains upbeat on farewell tour in Iraq, O, 20.5.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2084032,00.html

'I do not regret

close relationship with Bush'

· I would take the same position again
· There is still work to do for the common good

Friday May 18, 2007
Guardian
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Tony Blair insisted yesterday he had no regrets over the decision to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with America over the invasion of Iraq as George Bush conceded that this support may have cost the prime minister his job.

During their final official meeting at the White House, the pair who led their countries into war defended each other's reputations and claimed there was still much work to do together "for the common good".

"My attitude is this: This man here is the prime minister. We've got a lot of work to do until he finishes. He's going to sprint to the wire," said Mr Bush. "He's going to finish the job that people want him to do. And I'm going to work with him too. This was no farewell deal. This was how can we continue to work together for the common good."

Mr Bush winked at a British reporter who had asked whether the president was responsible for Mr Blair's resignation. "I haven't polled the Labour conference, but ... could be."

He added: "The question is, am I to blame for his leaving? I don't know."

The visit had all the trimmings of consequence: the prime ministerial plane touching down at Andrews air force base, the crowded official agenda, the press conference at the White House - even the faint sound of protesters at the gates.

But for all the efforts of British and US officials to turn the talk towards climate change and trade, Mr Blair and Mr Bush and everyone on the folding chairs in the White House rose garden knew that this was the end. It was the last time the two men would stand at their twin podiums, shoulder to shoulder in the war against terror. Last night was the last they would spend sitting out on the Truman balcony talking about, Mr Bush said, world affairs. It was Mr Blair's first - indeed only - sleep-over at the White House. Both men struggled valiantly to describe this last encounter as a working meeting. But the sentiment kept seeping back in, as they exchanged repeated sidelong glances, and copious praise. Mr Bush said he honoured Mr Blair and described him as a man of courage.

Mr Blair denied harbouring any regrets for his decision to support Mr Bush in the war on Iraq. "It's not about us remaining true to the course that we've set out because of the alliance with America," he said. "It's about us remaining steadfast because what we are fighting, the enemy we are fighting, is an enemy that is aiming its destruction at our way of life."

The president, for his part, said he had unfinished business with Mr Blair. "No question about it, he is the right man to be talking to. And, yes, we can get a lot done," Mr Bush said when asked if Mr Blair had already in effect been made obsolete.

With his friend smiling broadly by his side, Mr Bush went on to accuse those who would shift the locus of power to Mr Brown of trying to do a tap dance on Mr Blair's grave. "You don't understand how effective Blair is, I guess, because when we're in a room with world leaders and he speaks, people listen," the president said. "This guy is a very strong, respected leader, and he's absolutely the right guy for me to be dealing with."

Mr Bush also said yesterday he considered climate change "a serious issue", and acknowledged the humiliation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But there was little more to show for it.

"Will I miss working with Tony Blair?" he said. "You bet I will. Absolutely."

    'I do not regret close relationship with Bush', G, 18.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2082679,00.html

5.15pm update

UK will remain 'steadfast' US ally,

says Blair

Thursday May 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Hélène Mulholland

Tony Blair used his last joint press conference with the US president, George Bush, to assert that Britain would remain a "staunch and steadfast" ally of America after he steps down next month.

As the two leaders paid their respective tributes to each other, the prime minister said Britain would continue to stand by the US in fighting extremism around the globe.

His comments reflected Gordon Brown's pledge earlier today to continue Britain's close working relationship with the US president despite the controversy it has caused since the invasion of Iraq four years ago.

Mr Blair said the fight against al-Qaida and insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was about fighting the enemy who was attempting to destroy "our way of life".

"I believe we will remain staunch and steadfast allies against terrorism in Iraq, and in Afghanistan," he said. "The harder they fight the more determined we must be to fight back."

Mr Blair praised the US president for his "strong leadership" before turning to the political closeness of the two countries nurtured during his tenure.

He said: "I believe the relationship between the US and Britain is a relationship in the interest of our two countries and in the interest of peace and stability over the wider world.

"Sometimes it is a controversial relationship - at least over in my country - but I have never doubted its importance and I never doubted it is based on shared principles and values."

Mr Blair also stood by his close working relationship with Mr Bush.

"I am proud of the relationship we have had, I am proud of the alliance of the two countries," he added. "I would create the same alliance again."

His comments following a glowing testimony from Mr Bush, who described the British prime minister as a "clear and strategic thinker".

But he surprised journalists when asked if he was to blame for Mr Blair's decision to quit office mid-term through a third Labour government.

Looking perplexed, Mr Bush said: " I don't know. I really don't know."

Mr Blair arrived at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington yesterday, before having a private dinner with Mr Bush last night.

The two leaders congregated in the White House rose garden this afternoon to summarise the nature of their discussions last night and earlier today, which covered a range of issues including Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, climate change and energy security.

The US president said of Mr Blair: "We have discussed a lot of issues and it dawned on me once again what a clear and strategic thinker he is.

"Somebody asked me how do you define your relationship? It is candid, it is open and I appreciate his ability to see beyond the horizon. That is the kind of leadership the world needs."

Mr Bush congratulated the prime minister over the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland as he outlined his own commitment to finding a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

    UK will remain 'steadfast' US ally, says Blair, G, 17.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2081773,00.html

4.45pm update

Brown promises new priorities

as he accepts leadership

Thursday May 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Deborah Summers and Matthew Tempest

Gordon Brown promised today to lead a "new government with new priorities" as he accepted the Labour party's nomination and became prime minister-in-waiting.

The chancellor said that his "passion was education" but that his "immediate priority" on taking office on June 27 would be the NHS.

And he revealed that he would put forward proposals for a renewed constitutional settlement by the time of this autumn's Queen's speech.

In Washington, Tony Blair congratulated Mr Brown, while the US president, George Bush, described him as a "good fellow".

In a brief speech in the City of London after Labour's nomination procedure closed, Mr Brown joked that it was "almost embarrassing to have so much support", after receiving 313 nominations from fellow Labour MPs.

He said: "I will strive to earn your trust - not just in foreign policy, but in schools and hospitals" - a tacit admission of the damage Iraq had done to the Labour government.

Mr Brown also promised a listening tour of Britain during the next six weeks' hustings, saying he wanted to reach out to "communities beyond Westminster".

"The conversation with our country is just beginning."

He promised a "different type of politics", with "open and honest dialogue".

Although he announced no new major policy departures - no so-called "rabbits out of the hat" - Mr Brown did point to the challenge of housing, as well as health and education on the domestic agenda.

A more relaxed looking chancellor took questions from reporters after his acceptance speech, with his campaign manager Jack Straw in the wings.

Mr Brown said that finding a way forward in the Middle East peace process would be a foreign policy priority. On Iraq he admitted: "We cannot deny there was a big division in public opinion," but pointed to reduced British troop presence there, the withdrawal from three provinces and obligations to the UN and a democratically elected Iraqi government.

The chancellor reminded his audience that he joined Labour first as a teenager, and today felt "truly humbled" to be elected leader.

He said "As a teenager, I chose this party because of its values - values I grew up with and knew.

"I am honoured that this party has chosen me."

Mr Brown said that he was "conscious that there is no higher calling than to lead and to serve your country".

And he promised: "To those who feel that the political system doesn't listen and doesn't care, to those who somehow feel powerless and have lost faith, to those who feel Westminster is a distant place and politics all too often a spectator sport, I will strive to earn your trust - to earn your trust not just in foreign policy, but in our schools and our hospitals and our public services and to respond to your concerns."

Although there was little detail of Mr Brown's plans for when he takes office, he promised a Whitehall shake-up if necessary, and hinted at more devolved government, suggesting petitions from local communities and the right to recall senior civil servants to explain their actions.

Pushed by a reporter to praise George Bush, Mr Brown said merely that the relationship between a British PM and a US president "must be a very strong one".

He stressed the US/UK's "shared values" but stopped short of praising Mr Bush personally.

Mr Brown refused to back any of the four men and two women running for the post of deputy Labour leader.

John McDonnell, a leftwing challenger, dropped out of the contest to replace Tony Blair last night after failing to muster the 45 nominations required to enter the contest.

But despite the lack of any rival, Mr Brown will still have to take part in a series of Labour hustings, alongside the six deputy leadership candidates.

In a quick response, David Cameron, the Conservative leader, called for an end to the "ludicrous" position of the "caretaker government".

"We need a new government now, we don't need some long goodbye, and they should act to end the uncertainty," he said.

Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour backbencher, has demanded that Mr Brown join Mr Blair at next month's European summit to discuss the future of the failed EU constitution, and a G8 meeting of the world's richest industrialised nations in Germany.

Mr Mackinlay has tabled a written question saying: "It's simply wrong that the man who is going to have to deal with the consequences of the EU summit isn't the one who is going to be calling the shots. The UK would be substantially disadvantaged."

Sir Winston Churchill took Clement Attlee with him to the Potsdam Conference in 1945, even though he had not yet handed over power to the Labour leader, recalled Mr Mackinlay. There is speculation that Mr Brown may indeed accompany Mr Blair.

Under Labour party rules, once Mr Brown is anointed at the special leadership conference in Manchester on June 24, he will have to wait another three days, until June 27, when Mr Blair tenders his resignation to the Queen, before he finally becomes prime minister.

    Brown promises new priorities as he accepts leadership, NYT, 17.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2081980,00.html

Leading article:

Why Tony Blair should go now

Gordon Brown secures Labour leadership,
but Britain faces a six-week wait for its new PM

Published: 17 May 2007
The Independent

Gordon Brown's confirmation yesterday as the sole candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party after his only rival threw in the towel means that he will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. John McDonnell withdrew from the contest when it became clear that he could not muster the 45 nominations necessary to mount a challenge.

We would have preferred a full-blooded contest to decide Labour's next leader. Even a half-hearted contest in which the other participant was a token, left-wing challenger such as John McDonnell, would have been healthier for the party and the country than a coronation for Mr Brown. But the plain fact is that the Labour Party has been unable to put forward even a single challenger. And that raises an inescapable question: what are we waiting for?

A contest would have been an opportunity for Mr Brown to set out his policy stall to the British people. It would have been an opportunity for the Chancellor to tour the country listening to the concerns of the British public. It would have been a chance for us to evaluate the character of a still rather enigmatic man. But all that is irrelevant now. Mr Brown will be moving into 10 Downing Street.

In the event of a contest, there would have been a reason for Tony Blair to stay on as Prime Minister until a new leader had been formally chosen. But that reason has disappeared. Rather than waiting until 27 June to make the trip from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation, Mr Blair should hand over power to Mr Brown immediately.

It serves the interests of no one for Mr Blair to delay. It is hardly as if there is no important government business that needs to be transacted over the coming weeks. There will be two international summits at which important decisions over the future of Britain will be taken - a future in which, let us remember, Mr Blair will play no direct part. At the EU summit in Brussels, an agreement is likely to be forged over the future of the EU constitution. Then, at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm the heads of state of all the world's richest countries will discuss acommon approach to climate change. Britain's new Prime Minister should represent us in both.

Mr Blair's supporters will no doubt argue their man must stay on over the coming weeks to put the final seal on his political legacy. But nothing that Mr Blair can accomplish between now and the end of June will change history's verdict on his premiership. Moreover, we cannot allow the country's future to be held hostage by the self-indulgence of one man. In truth, there has been too much of that already.

Mr Blair's trip to Washington today to say goodbye to his friend George Bush will seem like an appropriate point to many to bring down the curtain.

Looking back, Mr Blair should have announced his resignation at last year's Labour Party conference in Manchester in which he made his last brilliant speech, bidding farewell to the activists he led to electoral success three times.

He would have gone out on a high "with the crowd wanting more" as a leaked Downing Street memo had it. But instead he decided to push on.

We were treated to a second farewell last week in a self-centred speech in his Sedgefield constituency. Already, this seems to be one of the longest goodbyes in political history. But still we have to wait six weeks before he leaves office. Meanwhile, Mr Brown will be in power, but not yet in office.

There is nothing that Mr Blair can achieve for the good of the country by hanging on to office for these final weeks. It would be pure political vanity for him to attempt to stay on now. Mr Blair should go - and he should go now.

    Leading article: Why Tony Blair should go now, I, 17.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2553899.ece

Leading article:

This special relationship

is looking rather jaded

Published: 17 May 2007
The Independent

Those were the days - days of barbecues and jeans, days of country walks and Colgate, days of informality and innocence. How distant they seem now. Six years on from that first, cheery Bush-Blair summit at Camp David, the special relationship has a tired and tarnished look. The two leaders meet now in largely formal settings, in business suits and beneath flags. Isolated in their own countries, older - and perhaps a little wiser - they stick together for comfort.

In travelling to Washington to make his farewells, Tony Blair has underlined the change. How long ago is it that London was a US President's natural staging post on his way to and from the rest of the world? Since Iraq started to go wrong, Mr Bush has done Mr Blair the courtesy of preferring Warsaw or Berlin. An alliance whose closeness was once the envy of other Europeans had become just too much of a political liability in Britain.

We know at once too much (thanks to our former ambassador in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer) and too little (because Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's former ambassador to the UN, has not been allowed to publish his memoirs) about the discussions that led to the invasion of Iraq. There is still controversy about whose zeal to remove Saddam Hussein was the greater, although Britain's inferior power and the assumption that Mr Blair was the follower not the leader saddled him with the damaging soubriquet "Bush's poodle".

Nor do we know for certain, even now, whether Iraq's supposed weapons were the real reason for the US and British military action, or just a pretext whose legality could be fudged. And it will be for historians to judge, in the end, whether it was the invasion itself, or the failure to prepare for the aftermath, that constituted the fatal error. Those who supported the war naturally prefer the latter judgement; we incline to the former.

What is not contestable is that the war in Iraq has proved a catastrophic miscalculation that has blighted the reputations of both leaders. It casts its pall over almost anything else they might have achieved. It is telling that a theme of Mr Blair's day in Washington will be the agreement on power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Africa and climate change will also feature, but not Iraq - our most significant and costly joint enterprise. Nor will Mr Blair be passing by Capitol Hill to pick up his Congressional medal, associated as it is with his support for Mr Bush over Iraq.

But it is not only the personal reputations of both leaders that have been damaged. That elusive "special relationship" has suffered, too, at both the political and the popular level. The awkwardness was all too apparent in Gordon Brown's recent visit to the White House. Already Prime Minister in waiting, he needed to be acknowledged as such in Washington, but could not afford to be seen paying court to George Bush. The solution was the "drop-by" - a furtive, off-camera encounter that was a sad comment on what the Bush-Blair alliance has done for bilateral relations.

That power in Washington is now divided between a discredited Republican White House and a Congress controlled by Democrats should make it easier for Mr Brown to deal with the US without seeming to kow-tow to Mr Bush. The legacy of transatlantic relations Mr Blair bequeaths, however, must be very far from the one he intended. In return for helping to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mr Blair hoped that Mr Bush would commit the US to bringing peace to the Middle East and that, between them, they would leave the world a better place. The mayhem that has been unleashed across the region is proof of the arrogance of their misjudgement and a measure of how far they failed.

    Leading article: This special relationship is looking rather jaded, I, 17.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2553900.ece

Johann Hari:

Blair's legacy

lies in the Baghdad morgue

As one who made an equally foolish misjudgement,
I've some insight on how his thinking went so wrong

Published: 14 May 2007
The Independent

As the crowd clapped along to the old back-to-the-Nineties tune of "Things Can Only Get Better" in Trimdon Labour Club, awaiting Tony Blair's swansong, there was a bleaker postscript to the Blair years piling up half a world away.

In Baghdad morgue, these days they separate out the hundreds of Shia bodies and Sunni bodies that are dumped on them every day. It's easy to do: the Shia have been beheaded, while the Sunnis have been tortured to death with power-drills.

I phoned an Iraqi friend in Baghdad whose family was murdered by Saddam. Like me, she supported the war because she thought anything - even an Anglo-American invasion headed by Bush - would be better than Saddam and his sons slaughtering onto the far horizon.

"Oh, is Blair going?" she said acidly. "You know, I'm more worried about the three bodies at the bottom of my street that have been there for a week now. I'm more worried about how I'm going to get through the next day without being killed. I'm really not thinking about Tony Blair. Not ever again."

How did Blair's story end here, with 650,000 dead Iraqis, according to a medical report described by Blair's own scientific advisors as "close to best practice"? As somebody who made an equally foolish misjudgement on Iraq, albeit for very different reasons, I think I have some insight on how Blair's thinking went so wrong.

Tony Blair came to office with very few views about foreign policy. In his Trimdon farewell sonata, he admitted he "came to political maturity at the end of the Cold War". The Cold War defrosted just three years before he became Labour leader.

So his formative foreign policy experience - the place where his whole mindset was smelted - was Kosovo. Like everyone who followed the news, he had been aware throughout the 1990s that the Milosevician forces of Serbian nationalism had been ravaging the Balkans, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians. The world had offered nothing but a passive shrug. In 1997, with fears that the violence would begin again, Blair had a naive, noble desire to stop Serbian ultra-nationalism in its bloody tracks.

So he did something messy. He coaxed Bill Clinton into acting and started a bombing campaign with an unclear mission, no mandate from the UN until after it had begun, and no plain end in sight. The only core to this action was Blair's belief that Something Must Be Done.

And it sort-of worked. The Albanian refugees got to go home, Milosevic was toppled just months later, and Blair was welcomed on the streets of Kosovo as a liberator-hero. There are messy after-details we rarely discuss: the more than 100,000 Serbs who have been ethnically cleansed have not returned home. But the Balkans are still a somewhat-better place than if Milsoevic had continued unhindered and unhinged.

From this example, Blair inferred a string of general principles, where he proposed to use British military might to stem the oppressions of tyrants. He got an opportunity to flex this belief system in 2000, when he ordered British troops to stop a gang of hand-chopping thugs from seizing power in Sierra Leone. Babies there are still named Tony Blair in thanks.

When it became clear the Bush administration was priming for a show-down with Saddam Hussein, Blair thought his Kosovo approach would work again. Don't worry too much about legality or the UN - it will end with cheers on the streets of Baghdad. The WMD lies were slathered on top, another motive to do The Right Thing.

Where was the flaw? It was in his analysis of American power. In a terrible misjudgement, he projected his own broadly good motives on to an American state with very different purposes, tied to geopolitics and corporate influence. As Dick Cheney said at the time of the 1990-91 Gulf War, "We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil."

But Blair knew suprisingly little about American power and its purposes. In a conversation with John Snow, he revealed he had never heard of Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratic leader of Iran who was toppled by the CIA in 1953 because he wanted to control his own country's oil supplies. As recently as 2005, he had never even heard of the Project for a New American Century.

One friend of Blair's recently told me she was shocked in 1997 when she saw Blair welcoming Henry Kissinger into Downing Street and lauding him as a great statesman and friend of democracy. She challenged him over it, but discovered "he just doesn't know about this history - how the Americans toppled democratic governments in Latin America and the Middle East. He really didn't know anything about it. It was shocking."

Here is where Blair's beliefs about foreign policy intersect with the ideas he formed in domestic politics. Tony Blair's core belief is that politics is all about being at the heart of power. In the 1980s, he fought against the Bennite infestation of the Labour Party, and was appalled by followers of a man who proclaimed cheerfully that the Labour Party's 1983 general election catastrophe was "a great victory for socialism" because so many people voted for a "pure" socialist manifesto.

Confronted with people who preferred this impotent moral purity, Blair was determined to be the opposite. As he once put it, "opposition is a waste of time". Wherever there is power, use it. Never back away. So when he came close to US state power, every instinct he had formed in his political life told him to cut away any doubts and embrace the power. To retreat and offer a criticism was contrary to everything he had learned. But to hold together his twin beliefs in his own humanitarianism and in cleaving to power, Blair had to learn a selective blindness towards the actions of the US state. This ability had always been there, enabling him to support deadly sanctions on Iraq or arms deals to foul regimes, but now it became swollen.

He offered weasel words of denial about the US policies of using chemical weapons in Iraq, and would only condemn Guantanamo as "an anomaly". He refused to see how his Coalition of the Willing was really a Coalition of the Drilling, saying it was a "conspiracy theory" to talk about Iraq's oil. His early humanitarianism bled into an unthinking pro-Americanism, and he lost the ability to tell the difference.

And as Iraq descended, he clung to increasingly desperate soundbites to gloss over the tension. He declared that the disasters in Iraq were the work of al-Qa'ida and the Iranian regime, rather than a largely indigenous string of Shia and Sunni insurgencies descending into civil war after Bush-era brutalisation.

And still the drilled and hacked bodies pile up in Baghdad morgue, even more - incredibly - than under the psychotic Saddam. The stench of these corpses will choke discussion of Blair's legacy long into the historical night.

    Johann Hari: Blair's legacy lies in the Baghdad morgue, I, 14.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2539368.ece

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:

Blair's failed promise to Britain's blacks

Blair's heart was never captured
by anti-racism and the results are clear

Published: 14 May 2007
The Independent

On Saturday my friend Rakesh Bhanot, a British Asian, married a Dutch painter, Frieda van de Poll. Guests had gathered from various nations, classes, colours and cultures. We ate Indian food, watched Bollywood dances and Dutch ladies performing pop songs. The bride sang "Over the Rainbow" with a voice as smooth and lovely as the silk she was wearing.

Delightful was this microcosm of mixed and merry London, in spite of and to spite the political doomsayers who see only irreconcilable splits between the tribes of these isles. But there was a poignancy hanging in the air too, a scent of loss. The Blair years had disabled the struggle for equality. One wedding guest asked me if I had made an assessment of race politics and Blair in the orgy of coverage this week. No, I replied. So here it is.

The last runner in the Marathon reaches the line.

Once again black and Asian citizens are considered of no importance to this nation unless, that is, we are terrorists.

When Margaret Thatcher left office, the country turned white. To those writing the first chapters of recent history, we citizens of colour are invisible, our story entirely forgettable.

Bless David Cameron for highlighting this perpetual wilful negation of our lives. This weekend after staying with a British Muslim family in Birmingham, Cameron quoted Edmund Burke's lines: "To make men love their country", their country ought to be loveable and pointed out that integration "is a two way street".

So how is the last decade seen though black eyes? First there was the heady release after long years feeling outsiders under Mrs Thatcher. We "swamp" the country's culture, she complained; we support alien cricket teams, moaned Norman Tebbit. She didn't give a damn about discrimination and ruthlessly tried to extinguish resistance to racist policing and institutional practices. So, boy were we ready for a redeemer when Blair rode in.

And he did deliver, more than we dared to hope for. I remember his stirring words at the launch of my book, True Colours, on the role of government in shaping public attitudes to immigration and multiracialism. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was set up in defiance of right-wing bulldogs and subsequently race laws were tightened; the first ever black minister was appointed (Paul Boateng who then became the first ever Black British ambassador); more Asian and black MPs entered parliament, even more were appointed to the Lords, (some able, others useless but still...) and Waheed Alli, Valerie Amos and Patricia Scotland joined the most powerful Britons; institutions picked up the Government's diversity zeal.

Robin Cook promulgated the ideals of an ethical foreign policy and we intervened nobly in Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Kosovo. Campaigners got the Human Rights Act and an Equalities Commission. Poverty in Africa became a burning issue. These progressive initiatives were anathema to the old Tories and are now embedded into the culture of the new Tories. For that we are, as expected, humbly, humbly grateful.

But even in that first flush some of Blair's words warned of the downside. He was an egomaniac surrounded by obsequious colleagues. He lauded the Empire and took his lead from Murdoch's Sun on asylum and migration.

On the latter he has turned out more right wing than any other PM since the war. We are deporting people to the world's most dangerous zones and have taken in a miserable number of Iraqi refugees. Not a single Blair speech explained why millions are on the move or how nobody willingly leaves behind their homelands. His heart was never captured by anti-racism and the results are clear. Black and Asian individuals have done well but a new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals that most of us - including professionals like me - earn substantially less than their white counterparts.

I save the worst till last. He violated international law, is indifferent to the dead and dying of Iraq, silent on Guantanamo and Israeli intransigence.

His authoritarian attacks on our civil liberties have weakened the foundational principles and myths of Britain.

So now I hear Brown's speech on Friday and the earth moves once again. Cameron is well worth our attention but he doesn't inspire. Gordon Brown, in contrast, got to me, even though he has colluded with his master for too long. Freed from his indentured Labour serving Blair, his voice was reverberated with genuine conviction. He promised to liberate us from these shackles and seek a collective vision we can share. Should we trust this latest saviour who speaks to our need? Or will we be fools to fall for the trick again?

    Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Blair's failed promise to Britain's blacks, I, 14.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/yasmin_alibhai_brown/article2539405.ece

Cherie's parting shot

Mrs Blair speaks out
against pregnant women sent to jail

Published: 13 May 2007
The Independent on Sunday
By Marie Woolf, Political Editor

Cherie Blair last night made her first foray into British politics since her husband announced he was standing down as Prime Minister by attacking the Government for sending pregnant women to jail.

In what will be interpreted as Mrs Blair's first attempt to stake out her own political credo even before the couple leave Downing Street, the human-rights lawyer has warned that sending mothers to prison increases the risk of their children turning to criminality later in life.

As new government figures showed that about 100 babies a year are born to mothers behind bars, Mrs Blair called for "alternative sentences" for all except the most serious women criminals. Speaking exclusively to The Independent on Sunday, Mrs Blair warned that society will pay the price of removing children from their mothers' care while they are in jail.

Stating that action should be taken so "today's sons and daughters of prisoners don't end up tomorrow's offenders", Mrs Blair's intervention is a sign that, liberated from the restrictions of office, she will become increasingly vocal on issues that concern her when she leaves Downing Street.

Her comments also offer a fascinating glimpse into what friends say are her own deeply rooted political views, and throw into stark relief the expected contrast between Mrs Blair's role in Downing Street and that of her successor, Sarah Brown.

Signalling that the country will be governed "in a different way from now on", Mr Brown yesterday set out his own vision for his premiership, stating that there will be an end to the politics of celebrity.

But Mrs Blair, criticised for her influence over her husband during his 10 years' in office, made clear yesterday that she was now prepared to campaign vigorously on policy issues.

In a direct attack on the Home Office, Mrs Blair stated that it is right that "we consider using alternative sentences for mothers. It is not a soft option to make an offender face up to what she has done, to repay directly to her victim or do enforced community work. Nor is it a soft option to be tagged electronically".

Mrs Blair's intervention came as other human-rights lawyers renewed calls for a review of how pregnant women in prison are treated. Although women giving birth are no longer shackled, some prisoners, deemed a security risk, are handcuffed to a guard in the hospital waiting room, while in the early stages of labour and on the way to and from hospital.

Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, the Labour peer and human-rights lawyer, called for criminal courts to compile a report on the effect of jailing the primary carer, usually a woman, on their children before they are sentenced. She has warned that the children of women in prison, most of whom are convicted of shoplifting offences or fraud, are being punished, despite committing no offence.

About 80 babies are currently cared for by their mothers in prison mother-and-baby units, but Lady Kennedy said work should be done to stop babies being born in prison at all.

"While the mother and baby units in the British prison system try to create some semblance of normality, the conditions are hardly favourable for new arrivals into our world. Babies just should not be in prison if it can be at all avoided," she said.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said sending mothers to jail would contribute to later criminality in children. "Crime doesn't have to run in families but to break the cycle you do need to take account of the impact of imprisonment on those children separated from their mums, or in a few cases lone fathers," she said.

    Cherie's parting shot, IoS, 13.5.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2536854.ece

Poll surge

as Brown unveils policy blitz

· Chancellor plans five new 'eco-towns'
· MPs given power over war decisions

Sunday May 13, 2007
The Observer
Nicholas Watt, Jo Revill and Mary Riddell


Gordon Brown is to set out a wide-ranging blueprint for a new Britain as he attempts to prove that he will be a Prime Minister for the whole country rather than sectional interests.

As a new poll shows Labour has gained a bounce in the polls, the Chancellor is set to unveil a host of new policies on the environment, the treatment the public can expect from doctors and fundamental changes to the constitution designed to show the broadness of his political vision and that he can outmanoeuvre David Cameron on the key issues.

A Brown-led government would:

· Build 100,000 new eco-homes in specially designed 'green towns' so the public can buy affordable homes that have a low impact on the environment.

· Have doctors' surgeries open at the weekend and GPs on call in the evenings so that patients to not have to wait for appointments during working hours. Doctors were given the right of opting out of out-of-hours care two years ago, under a controversial pay deal, signed by the then Health Secretary, John Reid, that awarded them a 22 per cent pay rise last year.

· Strip Number 10 of some of the powers conferred on it by 'royal prerogative' - particularly the ability to declare war should only be done with the approval of Parliament. William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, will push the issue in a debate in the Commons on Tuesday.

The Chancellor, who will be delighted that Labour has put on three points in today's YouGov poll for the Sunday Times, will this morning take the fight to the Tories when he uses an appearance on BBC1's AM programmes to announce the eco-towns plans.

The proposal, designed to steal a march on the green-friendly Tory leader, is the most substantial of a series of initiatives announced or floated by the Brown team since he launched his campaign last Thursday. But Cameron is still ahead in the polls, according to YouGov. The Tories lead on 38 per cent, down one, while Labour has climbed three to 34 per cent. The Liberal Democrats are down one to 15 per cent. Brown will also attempt to show his softer side today when he is questioned by the film director Anthony Minghella at the Brighton festival. Every ticket has been sold for the event where Brown will talk about his book on courageous historical figures and answer questions about the arts and literature.

After a brief barbecue with party workers in Brighton, Brown will travel back to London where he will appear alongside Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, the two left-wingers vying to mount a hopeless challenge for the leadership. Brown will demonstrate his break with the Blair era by guaranteeing Parliament the right to approve war. This will involve removing symbolic 'royal prerogative' powers from the Prime Minister and handing them to Parliament.

The Chancellor has long made it clear that he would like to build on the precedent set in 2003, when Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq was launched only after a vote in Parliament.

The Observer now understands that the Chancellor intends to go much further, possibly giving Parliament the right not just to approve war, but also a key role in declaring armed action. Brown is believed to be in favour of transferring key royal prerogatives to Parliament. These are ancient monarchical powers, including the right to declare war and sign international treaties. They are exercised by the Prime Minister in the name of the monarch, under Britain's constitutional monarchy.

Handing elements of the royal prerogative to Parliament would represent a direct break from Blair. In 2004, Downing Street flatly rejected such a proposal by the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, on the grounds that it was 'not persuaded that the proposal would improve the present position'.

A source in the Brown camp said: 'Gordon is looking at transferring powers from the royal prerogative to Parliament. These are not changes that will be handed down: they will be subject to discussion.' The source made clear that there would be protection in the parliamentary legislation that would enshrine the reforms. 'There would be safeguards to allow the executive to act immediately in emergencies where it is necessary to safeguard the lives of British forces.'

Brown, who is convinced that Labour will win an unprecedented fourth consecutive term only if it embarks on the most fundamental reforms, believes enhancing the role of Parliament is the best way to demonstrate that the government has abandoned its old ways.

Blair was often accused of politicising Downing Street - and downgrading Parliament - by packing No 10 with political advisers who were seen as more powerful than ministers.

The Chancellor accepts that Blair broke new ground when he allowed MPs to vote on a substantive motion on the eve of the Iraq war. By convention, pre-war votes are only ever held on a motion to 'adjourn the house' if opponents can muster enough support.

But Brown believes that this did not go far enough, because many people believe the war was a fait accompli by the time of the vote.'

    Poll surge as Brown unveils policy blitz, O, 13.5.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2078595,00.html

Goodbye, grumpy Gordon


Saturday May 12, 2007
Leader
The Guardian


At last, the clock is ticking. With the launch yesterday of Gordon Brown's formal leadership bid and Tony Blair's endorsement, Labour's handover of power has begun. It is all but a procession, and will be unless the two potential challengers, Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, can agree before nominations close next Thursday who is to carry the left's banner. At least they sound confident that they can muster enough nominations to force a contest and ensure the debate on the party's direction that could help to revitalise its fortunes. The new leader will be announced at a special party conference on June 24, ready to take over when Mr Blair tenders his resignation to the Queen on June 27.

Mr Brown has a lot to do. Yesterday he made a start on his metamorphosis from chancellor to prime minister - a transformation that has to take place not just in public, but in the public mind. These weeks are his chrysalis stage, when he must convey an appetite for change without denying his own role in the present state of affairs; distance himself from his predecessor without pouring salt in the as-yet-unhealed wound that is the Blair/Brown tribal divide; reinvent his political personality (goodbye, Grumpy Gordon) and present himself as an open, empathetic character with an appetite for public debate. And at the same time he, a Scot with a Scottish constituency, must start to shore up Labour's crumbling electoral support in England's south-east. But Mr Brown has always been a strategist to the nail-bitten tips of his fingers, so it was no surprise that his campaign launch ticked all the boxes as tidily as a company secretary's annual report.

It was far less smooth in media terms, but maybe that was part of the plan too. This is a moment that has been a long, long time coming. Thirteen years since he made way for Mr Blair as leader; 10 years as chancellor, the last 18 months of which he has spent, with foot-tapping impatience, in the Treasury departure lounge. After all that time, the campaign launch was an unstoppable flow of ideas at the start of what Mr Brown promised would be weeks devoted to listening to the anxieties and ambitions of the citizens of Britain. There were no instant solutions, only the encompassing theme of devolving power and trusting people. Even in Iraq, he seemed to suggest, it might provide a route away from civil war. He paid tribute to the morality and integrity of his parents, and declared education his passion and the health service his immediate focus: so far all appropriate, and predictable.

The most worked-out thoughts were about the way Britain is governed, a fruitful strand for the successor to a prime minister who, through a dangerous mix of impatience and lack of interest, has notably failed at administration. Mr Brown made some bold promises about increasing openness and government accountability to parliament. His idea of formalising the unofficial confirmation hearings for major public appointments, already adopted by many of the MPs' departmental select committees, is welcome. His proposal for a draft Queen's speech promises a more consultative approach than any government has tried before. His talk of a government of all the talents is at least a useful counter to the charge that at the Treasury he has excluded all but a tiny, hand-picked group of individuals. Perhaps he might even soon come to accept the need for a civil service bill to protect Whitehall's independence.

This was Mr Brown's moment to change the music, to set a new theme, for himself and the party. He could not resist a poke at celebrity politics, but he spoke convincingly of his desire to serve in a "humble government" - a new thought in the Labour lexicon. This was partly an early experiment in the language of marrying change and continuity. But it was also a beginner's attempt, by a notoriously private man, at becoming a salesman not just of ideas but of himself.

    Goodbye, grumpy Gordon, G, 12.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2078124,00.html

Brown reviews strategy on Iraq

May 12, 2007
From The Times
Philip Webster, Political Editor

Gordon Brown plans to fly to Iraq to review British policy and troop numbers after using the launch of his leadership campaign yesterday to try to make a decisive break with the Blair era.

The Chancellor said he would govern Britain in a different way – “I want to lead a government humble enough to know its place” – as he lambasted the excessive use of spin and the cult of celebrity, and pledged to restore trust in Labour and politics.

But he also accepted for the first time that mistakes had been made in Iraq, saying that much more must be done to promote economic development and political reconciliation.

His decision to make an early visit to see army chiefs on the ground and the Iraqi Government will raise speculation that Mr Brown would like to speed up the timetable for British withdrawal. British forces are due to hand over control of Basra to Iraqi forces by the end of the year, when troop levels will be reduced from about 7,000 to 2,000.

British forces are due to pull out of Saddam’s former palace in the centre of the city this summer, and eventually all British forces and the consulate will be relocated to the airport.

One of the Chancellor’s allies said last night: “His current assessment is that the the timetable is right. But such matters must be kept under review and that will be among the purposes of his visit, although his big concern is to make the people of Iraq feel they have a stake in their country through economic development.”

A change of policy on Iraq would be considered a dramatic shift from Mr Blair’s stance, but diplomatic sources said that the strong US criticism of President Bush for sending 25,000 more troops to Baghdad gives Mr Brown an opportunity to accelerate the withdrawal process.

Mr Brown could go to Iraq within weeks if the Left fails to raise enough votes from MPs to challenge him for the Labour party leadership. But, if there is a Continued on page 2, col 4 contest he would not be able to use taxpayers’ money for a government trip that might be seen to boost his standing.

Mr Brown used his launch speech in London to distance himself from elements of Mr Blair’s legacy: “As a politician I have never sought the public eye for its own sake. I have never believed presentation should be a substitute for policy. I do not believe politics is about celebrity.”

But, while trying to break with the Blairite style, Mr Brown made plain that there would be no retreat from new Labour policies on reform of the public services, including private sector provision within the NHS, and that he would never govern for a “sectional” interest. He pledged to govern “in a different way”, restoring power to Parliament and rebuilding public trust in democracy.

“One of may first acts as Prime Minister would be to restore power to Parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy,” he said.

He began his campaign boosted by formal endorsement from Mr Blair, who said he had what it takes to lead Labour and Britain with distinction, and more surprisingly support from the ultra-Blairite Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers.

Mr Milburn, once mooted as a challenger for the top job, said: “It is important that the whole of the party now unites around Gordon.” But George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, dismissed Mr Brown’s promise of change: “After ten years of waiting, all Gordon Brown has given us is reheated slogans and a promise to listen when all the evidence shows he’s incapable of acknowledging his mistakes.”

    Brown reviews strategy on Iraq, Ts, 12.5.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1780079.ece

Sketch

The claque clapped on and on.

It was like a Moonie wedding

Saturday May 12, 2007
Guardian
Simon Hoggart

Gordon Brown launched his campaign yesterday. It'll be a lonely business, charging round the country asking people not to vote for anyone else. But he is a truculent chap; he can easily pick a fight with himself. The launch was at a trendy design centre in London, all white-painted brickwork and open steel stairways, like a Victorian prison by Richard Rogers.

A claque of young persons had been gathered. They were the kind of young people politicians love, but who make other young people shoot strange and puzzled glances, as the rest of us do to train spotters, or evangelicals.

News came through of Tony Blair's endorsement on television. The words were warm, but the body language was awful. He umm'ed and ah'ed. His eyes flickered wildly.

"I am absolutely delighted to, um, give my full support to Gordon. As. The next leader of the Labour party. And - er - prime minister ..." It got worse. His teeth were so gritted you could use them on a snow-covered motorway. The words sounded as if they had been recovered from the bowels of his being, like a potholer with a broken leg being hauled up on a rope.

Finally Mr Brown arrived. The claque was in ecstasy. They clapped him for far, far too long. It was like a mass Moonie wedding.

He looked happier than I have ever seen him. He had a new haircut. He worked the crowd, shaking hands, chatting and smiling. He was like a new husband trying to make jolly good friends with his wife's children. He wants them all to love him. He is the Stepfather of the Nation! ("Awright, a new iPod, but I'm not going to call you 'Dad'.")

His speech was, as you would expect, an attack on Tony Blair. Why should he break the habit of a lifetime?

You had to read between the lines. Like the way he kept talking about "a new government", with "new ideas", and "new leadership for this new time."

Get the drift? Embrace "change"! We must change. Communities must change, and "as the world changes our priorities must change".

David Cameron couldn't have put it better. We must "restore power to parliament," he said. I wonder who took it away in the first place? We must uphold civil liberties - against the tyrant who has been stripping them away, as he clearly thought but didn't quite say.

But he attacked Blair in the kind of language Blair would use. He set out his "core belief" (recall Blair's "irreducible core"?) He spoke with misty eyes - and no evident irony - about "security with good pensions". Somehow the claque, whose bright-eyed zealotry led them to applaud wildly at every cue, failed to express astonishment at that.

And like Blair he spoke in verb-free sentences. "Faith in people and their potential! A belief that Britain can lead the world." He spoke about his parents. As with the parents of all politicians, they taught him integrity and decency, and gave him his moral compass. Why does no-one ever say, "they taught me to grab what you can, and to look after No 1 ..."? And the last jab at Blair: "I have never believed that presentation is a substitute for policy."

But if anyone had cared about presentation yesterday he would not have been speaking behind an autocue which alarmingly masked half his face on the TV feed. But being there is never a substitute for watching something on television.

    The claque clapped on and on. It was like a Moonie wedding, G, 12.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2078078,00.html

At last,

the would-be PM

steps smiling into the light

· Chancellor will consider written constitution
· Promise of 'a new government'

Saturday May 12, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour, political editor

Gordon Brown will try to restore public trust in British politics by proposing an all-party convention that could pave the way for a written constitution.

In an attempt to draw a line under damaging perceptions over sleaze and spin in the Blair era, the chancellor will seek consensus for the historic move to enshrine certain values and rights.

The convention will also look at new powers for parliament and a rebalancing of powers between Whitehall and local government, similar to those laid out in the US constitution of 1787 which has a central place in American law and culture.

Mr Brown hinted at the proposal at the launch of his leadership campaign yesterday, which is expected to see him become prime minister by the end of June. On a day when he stepped out of the shadow of Tony Blair, he insisted Labour must "change the way we govern", and he would listen and learn to address public concerns about where the government had fallen short. In his speech, he raised the negatives associated with Mr Blair, including Iraq, poorly explained health reforms, and government arrogance. He reiterated his conviction politics should not be about celebrity. He addressed his dour image by insisting he had been raised as an optimist by his father and would find it thrilling to unleash the country's dynamism.

Minutes before Mr Brown's launch, Mr Blair gave a faltering if unequivocal endorsement of his chancellor as the next prime minister, saying: "He is an extraordinary and rare talent, and it's a tremendous thing if it's put at the service of the nation as it now can be."

The endorsement was echoed by Bill Clinton who believed New Labour was at the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Asked if he thought Mr Brown less charismatic than Mr Blair, the former US president said: "In terms of his communication skill he's got better, he will keep getting better at that; but there are different ways to be charismatic. The most important thing is if he comes across as brilliant, which he is, and authentic, which he is; that carries its own charisma. People will get used to him, and I think he will wear well."

Mr Brown made reference to New Labour's achievements but said he was also determined to show he represented not a just a change in style, but "a new government". He also claimed, for the first time, he believed Mr Blair was right to have won the party leadership in 1994.

Some of the launch was marred by an autocue masking his face on TV, underlining his claim he never believed "presentation is a substitute for policy". In his key passage, he said: "I want to build a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform that strengthens the accountability of all who hold power; that is clear about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in Britain today; that defends the union; that is vigilant about ensuring that the hard-won liberties of the individual, for which Britain has for centuries been renowned round the world, are at all times upheld without relenting in our attack on terrorism."

His aides indicated a written constitution, stronger ministerial code, review of the royal prerogative, and financial freedoms for local government. He is not enthusiastic about Commons electoral reform after the Scottish poll debacle.

No final proposal has been constructed, but Mr Brown is interested in working on a cross-party basis. He offered a new tone on Iraq, saying he would talk to the military. He promised to visit the Middle East very soon, and admitted mistakes had been made; the immediate task was reconciliation and reconstruction inside Iraq. But he put greater emphasis on hearts and minds. He said: "If we do not apply a cultural, political and ideological attack against extremism, we will not be able to help the moderates."

    At last, the would-be PM steps smiling into the light, G, 12.4.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2078063,00.html

An inferior Bill Clinton

The force was with Blair when he took power,
but ultimately the American was the smarter operator

The Guardian
Saturday May 12, 2007
Richard Sennett


I came to live in Britain just before New Labour took power in 1997. Even many Conservatives were exhausted by the years of Tory rule; the sheer fact that Tony Blair was a fresh face seemed the most promising thing about him. To me, who had spent time in the shambolic netherworld of the first Clinton administration, Blair appeared a better version of Bill Clinton: more reliable and balanced and much more modest.

But for all Clinton's personal upheavals and policy reversals, he never lost a profound, almost visceral, connection with the American public; he was more personally popular when he left office than when he entered it. Clinton hatred had strict social limits: Southern young, white, men; anti-abortion zealots; palaeo-conservatives. Clinton is someone who, in the end, you forgive.

Blair's career has followed a different and perhaps more normal course. He lost the trust of his public. This loss is something he himself caused. In his first three years he spoke in the name of the people; by the end of 2000, he spoke to people, arguing them into submission like a lawyer scoring points; after the Iraq war began, he no longer seemed to care what people thought. He and his minions have in the past five years presented and explained and defended policies, but not much responded to what others think. He leaves a public more disposed to forget than forgive him.

Clinton is an excellent judge of character. Both his administrations were filled with highly qualified individuals, charmed and exasperated by him in equal measure; short-tempered, Clinton nonetheless took in advice he didn't want to hear. Blair has proved a poor judge of character. His most disastrous misjudgment is the faith he placed in George Bush, but he has relied too much on people such as the fixer Lord Levy. His cabinet choices, like David Blunkett at the Home Office, have often put people into jobs they did not command; ministers who gave him dissenting advice (Robin Cook, for example) were sidelined or banished.

The difference that has most struck me is in Clinton's version of the Gordon Brown problem. Neither of Clinton's treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, were after the president's job, but both commanded empires that frequently countermanded the president's plans. Clinton's response was to deal. Like Blair, Clinton was out of his depth when it came to money; unlike Blair, Clinton accepted that fact. Compared to the Blair-Brown grand opera, there was thus much less briefing against opponents within the administration.

Unlike many who are just glad to see him go, I have real admiration for many of Blair's achievements, such as the easing of child poverty and the plans for dealing with climate change; he has also dealt with the failure of Iraq more honestly than his American partners. But he is a worse case than Clinton for being his own worst enemy.

What struck me when I chaired the American Council on Work was the well-oiled machinery of transition in many big businesses. Moreover, there seemed general agreement about how long the person at the top should rule - seven or eight years the usual figure. The US constitution also sets an eight-year presidential limit to prevent abuse of power (imagine 12 years of George Bush).

The British handover could serve as a business-school study of how to mismanage a transition. The top man announces he will go, but coyly does not say when; work in the Westminster village grinds to a halt as the inhabitants obsess about when, when. No procedures are put in place. And a year is lost.

Is this handover now an abuse of power? It seems to me it is. "It's Gordon's turn" more resembles paying an old debt than running a country democratically. In principle, the prime minister is the leader of a party, and this is a good principle; the leader should be answerable at least to the party. Brown has a stain on his legitimacy, as though he is afraid to submit to public scrutiny.

The business-school brief might not worry too much about entry through the back door. It would focus on business benefits. The New Labour project has some real accomplishments under its belt, but it has run its course; its managers face the same prospect of going stale as any long-serving CEO's team. Unless Brown suddenly discovers the secret of relating personally to voters, or David Cameron falters, the voters will toss out Labour. New Labour will become Tired Labour. I am saddened, therefore, that David Miliband has chosen not to challenge Brown; he's capable, and much more experienced than was Blair when the latter entered office.

As befits my American origin, I have the perfect practical solution for these ills. Having gained power, if through the back door, Brown should announce a snap election. If he wins, he becomes a truly legitimate ruler; if he loses, he will lose with honour. Less long-term damage will be done to the Labour party than two more years of leaden life. Bill Clinton would take the gamble.

· Richard Sennett is professor of sociology at the LSE and author of The Culture of the New Capitalism.

    An inferior Bill Clinton, G, 12.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2078032,00.html

Profile

A prime minister in waiting

After a decade in the wings,
Gordon Brown is ready to lead the British public in his own way

Friday May 11, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Oliver

Even his detractors admit Gordon Brown is a political heavyweight, a "great clunking fist" as Tony Blair recently warned David Cameron and his "flyweight" Tory front bench.

Mr Brown's admirers have described him as intellectually awesome, physically impressive with broad shoulders, morally impeccable and seriously committed. Critics call him dour, and a "control freak" possessed of "Stalinist ruthlessness".

The longest-serving chancellor in modern British history is undeniably a man of substance. However, even after more than a decade of scrutiny, his nature remains enigmatic and his depths not fully fathomed. He is the "great puzzle", the New York Times said yesterday.

The criticism in 1998, allegedly by Mr Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, that Mr Brown was "psychologically flawed" hurt then and still echoes now. It has long been observed that Mr Brown does not have Mr Blair's easy charisma and nobody seems sure how the British people will warm to him if he reaches No 10.

People who meet him say that while he is fun and gregarious with his infamous small inner circle and others he trusts, he can be awkward with strangers. Some find that endearing, an antidote to the vacuous smarminess of many modern politicians, but many in the Labour party fear it could hurt them at the polls.

Mr Brown was born in Glasgow in February 1951, the son of Elizabeth Brown and her Church of Scotland minister husband John Brown. They provided the "moral compass" in his life, Mr Brown said today as he launched his leadership bid.

In his youth he suffered a detached retina playing rugby. He spent weeks in a darkened room as he recuperated but it is thought to have left him blind in one eye.

At school he was academically rigorous and entered Edinburgh University at the age of 16 to study history. He emerged with a first class degree and later a doctorate, going on to lecture in Edinburgh and work as a journalist at Scottish television.

His destiny, though, was politics. He became fully engaged in the Scottish Labour party and in the 1970s was sometimes described as "Red Gord". He first stood for parliament in 1979 and lost, but then became MP for Dunfermline East in Fife in 1983. He served there until 2005 when he became MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath after the reorganisation of Scottish constituencies.

Mr Blair also entered parliament in 1983 and shared an office with Mr Brown. The pair became friends, though with an undercurrent of rivalry.

When the Labour leader John Smith died unexpectedly in May 1994, many believed Mr Brown was the most likely to succeed him, but Mr Blair emerged from the sidelines. There are two views of Mr Brown's handling of this period: one that he was mourning his friend, the other that he dithered.

Some commentators have tried to describe Mr Brown as a Shakespearean character - a Hamlet, who has hemmed and hawed in his rivalry with Mr Blair.

During his years as chancellor, Mr Brown notched up many achievements, including giving independence to the Bank of England and establishing his "five economic tests" for joining the euro, which more or less killed it off as a troubling issue.

His mistakes included selling 60% of the Bank's gold assets, only to see gold go up in value. And he was damaged by the recent revelation that he ignored the advice of officials when abolishing tax relief on pensions in 1997.

His supporters point to his achievements at the Treasury, saying he is driven to making Britain better and holding up his long-standing commitments to tackling child poverty and helping Africa and the developing world.

Friends say he has been softened by marriage. He wed the public relations executive Sarah Macaulay in Fife in 2000 after a four-year courtship. In January 2002, their 10-day-old daughter, Jennifer, died after being born two months prematurely. At her funeral Mr Brown declared that Jennifer had transformed his and Sarah's lives twice. "Once by entering our lives, then by leaving."

He later told an interviewer that he could not listen to music for a year afterwards as he grieved.

The couple's second son, James Fraser, was born in 2006 and diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Mr Brown has said he is optimistic about his son's future. On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme recently Mr Brown was asked if he thought he was liked and if that was important. He said he hoped he was but it was for others to judge. He tried to present a softer side, describing himself as a "family man who has two young children", who had changed as a result of his family experiences in recent years.

He frequently holidays in the US, though the Bush administration will be anxious about how Mr Brown might change the tone of the transatlantic relationship should he become prime minister.

The chancellor has written several books, most recently one entitled Courage, which examines several characters who have inspired him, including Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Cicely Saunders and Aung San Suu Ky.

The starkness of the personal details on his Treasury website biography gives the impression of a man totally committed to politics. It says: "Mr Brown's interests include football, tennis and film."

He has a life-long love of Raith Rovers, and once invited a rather uncomfortable-looking Mr Blair to watch a match with him on television in front of the press cameras.

This morning, Mr Blair finally gave Mr Brown his long-sought public endorsement as his successor.

"He's got what it takes to lead the Labour party and the country," Mr Blair said. "He's an extraordinary talent ... perhaps the most successful chancellor in our history."

He had the strength, the experience and the judgement, Mr Blair said. The endorsement ticked all the boxes but Mr Blair's conviction somehow sounded less than full, as if all those years of rivalry had drained something from their relationship.

With Mr Blair so unpopular over Iraq, Mr Brown may benefit from the distance between them, though it is a moot question of how far he will be able to generate a sense that he offers a fresh start. Opposition parties have been hammering the line "Blair-Brown government" in recent months.

Mr Brown, sometimes described as a brooding prince caught up in the longest sulk in history, now has the crown close to his grasp.

Mr Cameron is buoyant in the polls, but Mr Brown has said he believes people have tired of "personality politics" and that we are entering a new phase where people do not just want leaders who tell them what they want to hear.

If he is right, then he may manage to keep the crown beyond the next election.

    A prime minister in waiting, G, 11.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2077711,00.html

Why Asbestos Anthony

will end up damaging our health

11/05/2007
Last Updated: 12:01am BST
The Daily Telegraph
By Jeff Randall
 

When Tony Blair arrived as the UK's new chief executive in May 1997, he came with a reputation for being "a pretty straight kinda guy" - at least that's what he told us. Ten years on, we know that the Prime Minister's greatest talent is twisting inconvenient facts to fit his story.

I'm often asked: what does British business think of Blair? It's a question that cannot be answered properly without qualification. Because whether you're a one-man band or a FTSE-100 chairman, any assessment of Blair's record on commercial matters is inevitably overshadowed by the private mendacity and public waste that are his project's trademarks.

In a recent YouGov poll, only 16 per cent regarded Blair as "honest and straightforward". Among business folk, I'd be amazed if his rating was that "high".

advertisementEven the most finance-focused entrepreneur can see that the unfolding disaster in Iraq, rather than tax and trade, will define Blair's reputation. Domestic wins on issues such as Northern Ireland are offset by huge overseas losses, the cheques for which are being signed in the blood of servicemen, whose ill-fitting boots he is unfit to polish.

But let's, for argument's sake, imagine that we could strip out his grotesque deception over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. How would British business rate the Blair decade?

The early days were marked by a charm offensive on Labour's traditional "enemy" - wealth creators - and a clear signal from Peter Mandelson, Blair's Cardinal Richelieu, that the party was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich".

In opposition, Labour pledged not to soak the rich; in office it hosed them with requests for gifts and loans. Blair's team, it seems, was happy to favour those who coughed up - a passport here, a knighthood there. It must have been tempting for businessmen who could see no further than an opportunity to buy Downing Street's goodwill.

One who regrets being trapped in the web of deceit is Sir Christopher Evans, arrested last September over cash-for-honours allegations (he denies any wrongdoing). As boss of Merlin Biosciences, he would, I'm sure, love to magic away his scandal-ridden association with No 10.

The Blairs' unsaid maxim is that you can't help the poor by joining them. Their companions of choice are not the caravan-loving Becketts, but billionaire owners of exotic holiday homes, such as the sinister Silvio Berlusconi. It's a cocktail of business and pleasure that Tony and Cherie enjoy most when mixed with a fortnight of free lunches.

After what seemed like a promising start, Labour's so-called business-friendly policies have turned increasingly hostile. Small companies are being strangled by red tape and stealth taxes. The British Chambers of Commerce calculates that the cost of regulation introduced since 1998 is more than £55 billion. Tim Ambler of the London Business School says: "Government talks less regulation, but has actually increased it by 50 per cent."

Business organisations that once queued up to bathe in Blair's warm glow have gone cold. A survey this month by the Institute of Directors found that 45 per cent of companies believe Labour has been bad for business; only 32 per cent said it had been good. A failure to tackle Britain's woeful transport infrastructure and skills shortages were cited as particular disappointments.

This week, the CBI urged government to cut business taxes by £17 billion over three years to help shore up Britain's creaking competitiveness. In a league of 55 developed countries, the UK ranks only 20th, below the US and several European rivals, including Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and Germany.

Blair and his finance director, Gordon Brown, boast about how much they have pumped into schools and hospitals. Budgets for education and health have been inflated to bursting point.

But as any businessman knows, spending is the easy bit. Delivering value for money is another matter. With government annual borrowing at £35 billion, twice what it was 10 years ago, fiscal incontinence, not better services, will define the Blair "crusade".

According to Derek Scott, the Prime Minister's economic adviser 1997-2003: "There has been too much money and too little reform... the lion's share has gone into salaries, without any corresponding increase in productivity. In other words, the state is paying more people more money to do roughly the same amount of work."

The CBI says, "much of the massive increase in public spending has been wasted". For evidence, look no further than the ludicrous tax credits system, which has doled out nearly £6 billion of overpayments in just three years, about £2 billion of which will have to be written off. If a business behaved in a similar fashion, it would quickly collapse.

Insolvencies are booming. Corporate failures jumped by more than 10 per cent in 2006 to 20,000 - the highest for more than a decade. But that is mild compared with the explosion in personal bankruptcies.

When a youthful Blair urged us to join him on his journey, a trip to Carey Street was not what we had in mind. Bailiffs, however, are loving it. Last year more than 100,000 people went bust. This year, the trend has accelerated with 30,000 insolvencies in the first quarter.

Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm, says: "More and more people are finding their already precarious finances squeezed further... the proportion of people throwing in the towel and opting for bankruptcy has gone through the roof."

Apart from granting the Bank of England independence to set interest rates, Labour's most significant triumph has been rejection of the euro.

Blair, of course, takes no credit. Left to him, the pound would have been scrapped, along with many key elements of British sovereignty - and our economy wrecked.

While more than 7,000 service personnel risk their lives on a goose-chase in Iraq, farmers are banned from hunting foxes. School standards have been debased and the integrity of our finest universities is being sacrificed on the altar of social engineering. The feckless are rewarded, while the industrious poor are taxed.

Community dislocation caused by uncontrolled immigration is creating resentment in many areas and will inevitably get worse.

Some businesses appreciate a ready supply of cheap labour, but for many unskilled British workers "open borders" mean more competition for housing and school places, and lower wages.

Blair came into the job as Teflon Tony, the man on whom no bad news would stick. He goes out as Asbestos Anthony.

We thought he was fire-proof, but he turned out to be a malign presence, whose damaging effects will only become fully apparent years after his departure. As his regime's carcinogenic fibres flake into the system, our disunited kingdom will pay a heavy price.

    Why Asbestos Anthony will end up damaging our health, DTel, 11.5.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=X0NMHSJTV4XOHQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/05/11/do1101.xml

Comment

Famed as a favourite attack dog

in the imperial kennel

Blair's first loyalty was to the White House.

The result has been a legacy of hatred
that ultimately ended his premiership

Friday May 11, 2007
Guardian
Tariq Ali


The departure, too, was spun in classic New Labour, Dear Leader fashion. A carefully selected audience, a self-serving speech, the quivering lip and soon the dramaturgy was over. He had arrived at No 10 with a carefully orchestrated display of union flags. Patriotic fervour was also on show yesterday, with references to "this blessed country ... the greatest country in the world" - no mention of the McDonald's, Starbucks, Benetton that adorn every high street - nor of how Britain under his watch came to be seen in the rest of the world: a favourite attack dog in the imperial kennel.

Tony Blair's principal success was in winning three general elections in a row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician. Bereft of ideas, he eagerly grasped and tried to improve on Margaret Thatcher's legacy. But though in many ways Blair's programme has been a euphemistic, if bloodier, version of Thatcher's, the style of their departures is very different. Thatcher's overthrow by her fellow Conservatives was a matter of high drama. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car bombs and carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack. Thatcher's supporters described themselves afterwards as horror-struck by what they had done. Even some of Blair's greatest sycophants in the media confess to a sense of relief as he finally quits.

Blair was always loyal to the occupants of the White House. In Europe he preferred Aznar to Zapatero, Merkel to Schröder, was seriously impressed by Berlusconi and, most recently, made no secret of his support for Sarkozy. He understood that privatisation and deregulation at home were part of the same mechanism as wars abroad.

If this judgment seems unduly harsh, let me quote Rodric Braithwaite, a former senior adviser to Blair, writing in the Financial Times on August 2 2006: "A spectre is stalking British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud's. This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the CIA's box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent ... Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair's total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?"

This, too, is mild compared to what is privately said in the Foreign Office and MoD. Senior diplomats have told me it would not upset them too much if Blair were tried as a war criminal. But while neither Blair nor any of those who launched a war of aggression and occupation in Iraq have been held to account, a civil servant and MP's researcher were yesterday shamefully jailed for exposing some of the dealings between Bush and Blair that lay behind the war.

What this reveals is anger and impotence. There is no mechanism to get rid of a prime minister unless their party loses confidence. The Conservative leadership decided Thatcher had to go because of her negative attitude to Europe. Labour tends to be more sentimental towards its leaders, and in this case they owed so much to Blair that nobody wanted to be cast in the role of Brutus. In the end he decided to go himself. The disaster in Iraq had made him hated and support began to ebb. One reason for the slowness was that the country is without a serious opposition. In parliament, the Conservatives simply followed Blair. The Lib Dems were ineffective. Blair had summed up Britain's attitude to Europe at Nice in 2000: "It is possible, in our judgment, to fight Britain's corner, get the best out of Europe for Britain, and exercise real authority and influence in Europe. That is as it should be. Britain is a world power."

This grotesque fantasy that "Britain is a world power" is meant to justify that it will always be EU-UK. The real union is with Washington. France and Germany are seen as rivals for Washington's affections, not potential allies in an independent EU. The French decision to reintegrate themselves into Nato and pose as the most vigorous US ally was a structural shift which weakened Europe. Britain responded by encouraging a fragmented political order in Europe through expansion, and insisted on a permanent US presence there.

Blair's half-anointed successor, Gordon Brown, is more intelligent but politically no different. It is a grim prospect: an alternative politics - anti-war, anti-Trident, pro public services - is confined to the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. Its absence nationally fuels the anger felt by substantial sections of the population, reflected in voting against those in power, or not voting at all.

· Tariq Ali is the author of Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, Terror, London

    Famed as a favourite attack dog in the imperial kennel, G, 11.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2077242,00.html

Comment

He will always be defined

by the war he started,

not the conflict he ended

Despite his achievements,
Blair lost both middle England and the radical intelligentsia.
Brown will struggle to win them back

Friday May 11, 2007
The Guardian
David Marquand

The monstrous shadow of Iraq has hung over Tony Blair's prime ministership for so long that it is hard to remember the achievements of his first term. Yet they were extraordinary, in scope and significance. Under Blair, Britain acquired a fundamental law - the Human Rights Act - for the first time in its history. It has not yet been fully digested. Blair and his ministers clearly haven't understood it; and its repercussions for the dealings of private individuals and organisations have yet to be grasped by the wider public outside the legal profession. But, like a stone thrown into a pool, it has created ripples going well beyond the expectations of its authors. The same applies, rather more obviously, to the devolution statutes in Great Britain and the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland.

In Great Britain there are now three centres of power, each embodying a distinct political will, and each helping to foster a distinct political culture. The old union state, created in 1707, has gone for ever. The Good Friday agreement was still more revolutionary. In Northern Ireland, majoritarian democracy on the classical British pattern is no more, replaced by an extraordinarily subtle and complex form of consensual democracy that has much more in common with the low countries than any other Anglophone polity. Meanwhile, the sacred cow of state sovereignty, which British politicians and bureaucrats have traditionally viewed with awed reverence, has been slaughtered, and the Irish Republic's stake in the governance of the six counties has been entrenched.

True, this transformation is not solely, or even mainly, due to Blair. The Human Rights Act and devolution were part of John Smith's legacy. The credit for the Belfast agreement belongs to a long line of pioneers, including the Irish external relations department, John Hume, David Trimble and John Major. But the constitutional revolution in Great Britain would not have happened if Blair had not thrown his weight behind it. And his role in the making of the Belfast agreement was second to none. If it sticks, as now seems more probable than not, the fraught period leading up to the agreement will go down as his finest hour.

By a tragic irony, however, the part of his legacy about which he cared most is already unravelling. From day one of his leadership he devoted himself, with ruthless determination, exhilarating panache and frenetic energy, to the creation of a new social coalition to replace the Thatcher coalition that had transformed British politics in the 80s. That was the meaning of "New" Labour, of the "young country", of the third way, even of the naff mawkishness of the "people's princess". In place of the old Labour party, spawned by the inward-looking culture of the first industrial revolution, a new broad-based, cross-class, outward-looking, ideology-lite, fashion-conscious new movement would appear on the political stage, reconciling irreconcilables and reflecting the airy rootlessness and ecumenical goodwill of its creator and leader.

At first the project was astoundingly successful, as the crushing victories of 1997 and 2001 bore witness. Blair's entourage talked hubristically of a "progressive century", by which they meant a century dominated by them and their political heirs; and their hopes seemed well founded. But Iraq put paid to them. The miserable 2005 election result, which Labour won with only 35% of the popular vote and 22% of the electorate, showed that the Blair coalition's days were numbered. This month's local elections have shown that it is breaking apart. Middle England, whose conquest was Blair's overriding goal and greatest political achievement, has turned against him. David Cameron is now the chief prophet of political ecumenism and the chief peddler of hope to the southern middle class. If Labour wins the next general election, as is perfectly possible, it will do so on the back of its traditional constituency in its old, now largely de-industrialised, heartlands.

Dwarfing that irony is a greater one. Blair was, and I suspect still is, the most "European" prime minister since Edward Heath. He meant what he said when he proclaimed his wish to give Britain leadership in Europe. He wanted to join the euro and, in an ideal world, would have liked to ratify the constitutional treaty. Above all, he wanted to bridge the gulf between Britain and the leading states of the union, and to reconcile his insular fellow citizens with their European destiny.

Here too the omens seemed auspicious at the start of his reign. For the first time since Heath's tragic fall in February 1974, Britain seemed a normal European country, comfortable in its European skin. But here too the Iraq misadventure smothered early hopes. The breach between Britain and the heartland states of the EU has been repaired, but it went deep while it lasted and helped to fortify the Europhobia of the tabloids and the suspicions of the public. Britain is still uncomfortable in its European skin; and, to far too much of the political class, the Atlantic still seems narrower than the Channel.

The ironies do not end there. Blair's moral interventionism has often been compared to Gladstone's, and there is something in it. Blair's blazing attacks on the evils perpetrated in Kosovo were reminiscent of Gladstone's famous philippics against the Ottoman empire's Bulgarian horrors; and Gladstone's insistence that civilised countries enjoyed a "moral right of interference" when others transgressed the norms of civilised behaviour can plausibly be seen as the intellectual progenitor of Blair's doctrine of the "international community".

But Blair, the Gladstonian moralist, soon gave way to a very different figure, much more reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's imperialists shouldering the white man's burden. The most obvious single feature of the Iraq war is that it was not waged by the international community that Blair had celebrated in his first term. It was waged by Bush's infamous "coalition of the willing" - the US, Britain and a distinctly unimpressive gaggle of minor allies - in defiance of the only body entitled to speak for any international community worthy of the name. The end result is that the whole idea of moral interventionism has been discredited, not least in the US.

The effects on the national conversation, and above all on the conversations of the left and centre-left, have been uniformly malign. Though far too many Labour politicians seem oblivious of the fact, the radical intelligentsia has played a decisive role in left politics since Labour first became a contender for power in the 1920s. Labour's great victories - 1945, 1966, 1997 and 2001 - have all reflected a tacit alliance between the radical intelligentsia and the party.

Labour's great achievement in 1945 and again in 1966 was to stand not just for the Labour interest, but for the progressive conscience. That was still more true of 1997, and although the sheen had begun to wear off, it was still broadly true in 2001. Thanks overwhelmingly to the escalating horror of Iraq, but also to the flood of illiberal legislation since 9/11, the radical intelligentsia is more confused, unhappy and alienated than at any time I can remember. Brown may manage to heal the breach between the machine and the intelligentsia, and I fervently hope he does. But it will be an uphill task; and if he does succeed, he will owe nothing to his predecessor.

· David Marquand is a former Labour MP and a visiting fellow in the department of politics at Oxford University

    He will always be defined by the war he started, not the conflict he ended, G, 11.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2077137,00.html

Regrets?

Too few to mention any in particular


Friday May 11, 2007
The Guardian
Polly Toynbee, commentator of the year


At last! But now the waiting is over, it's time to look back with pre-emptive nostalgia: no other politician in living memory could deliver a performance like it. Tony Blair is the supreme political interpreter of modern times. Now all eyes turn to the future. His successor could never make such a speech, but people may relish solidity after years of catch-in the-throat theatrics. Blair bequeaths a party in its worst state in the polls for 25 years, and a country in a sour mood, dangerously eager for political novelty. A weakened leader staying too long has given all Labour's age-old foes their head: the enemy press now rips into the government with a new taste for blood.

Graciously Gordon Brown paid his tribute at cabinet yesterday. It's for him now to capture the public's "time for a change" mood in his own way. But yesterday was a celebration of the ancient art of rhetoric, modernised for a touchy-feely age. He might not make the next Guardian collection of great speeches, but there, among his most loyal admirers, was the final display of the very quintessence of Blair's political being. Emotion at full throttle, sincerity and showmanship balanced on a knife-edge, the great political crooner went out with a lump-in-the-throat version of My Way.

"Hand on heart ... I did what I thought was right for our country" brought tears to his fans, but no doubt had his enemies reaching for sick bags. This was high risk from the "straight kind of guy" whose foes call him Bliar. Regrets, he had too few to mention any in particular. Here was a tour de force from the moderniser who always thought it his destiny to pull the country into the 21st century. And so he did.

"Go back to 1997. Think back. No, really think back. Think about your own living standards then and now..." he said. Yes, it has been a long decade that changed his face from that eager-to-please young optimist to this grizzled, sod-them-all, tough-skinned realist.

And yes, he might have added, think back and pause a moment here to remember the world of Margaret Thatcher, Norman Tebbit, Peter Lilley, John Redwood and Bill Cash. Remember tax cuts for the rich, mass unemployment, soaring child poverty, and deep spending cuts that left holes in school roofs and trolleys in hospital corridors. Think of the Section 28 anti-gay law, and compare that with civil partnerships now. That is how far Tony Blair's government has dragged the country in a progressive direction.

Make no mistake, at home he leaves behind a country far better than he found it - and unimaginably better than it would have been under 10 more years of Conservative rule. Whatever else he has done wrong and failed to do - and the list is long - he has made the political weather and shifted the culture.

Blair's Britain is a better place to live in, especially for the least well-off. Not even the Iraq catastrophe that propels him to the exit can take all that away, even as the protesting furies pursued him with klaxons and placards outside Trimdon Labour Club. Yesterday's Guardian poll shows 44% still think him "good for the country" and four-fifths of his own party still agree, sorely though he has tried their patience.

Blairism has become the national creed, the big tent among bivouacs. Social justice arm-in-arm with economic success is not the Third Way, it's the only way now. Political and intellectual hegemony is Labour's. Why? Because Labour has combined unaccustomed economic success with unprecedented improvement in the public realm. Blair is right when he said the country has got its self-confidence back, though he was embarrassingly BNP-dreadful when he added: "This is the greatest nation on earth." The fact is, after Tony Blair no party can be elected without espousing Labour's progressive social policies. All must promise generous spending on health and schools, pensions, childcare, and families. Blair has set benchmarks no future government dare retreat from: NHS waiting lists must keep falling, exam results must keep rising. Progress is hard-wired across the political spectrum, when it used to be stop-go.

He has raised social expectations, sometimes eye-wateringly high: was he referring to that promise to abolish child poverty when he said: "At least in life, give the impossible a go"? Cameron is not Blair's heir, but every word he speaks, every gesture he makes pays homage to the triumph of Blairism.

If only that were the whole story, the prime minister might not be heading for the exit. But the original Blair-Brown New Labour idea became encrusted with Blair's own peculiar ideological obsessions that sprang from this My Way self-belief. He became dangerously convinced by his own convictions.

Abroad, Blairism was a noble ideal of liberal interventionism: sheer force of moral argument brought a reluctant US to the rescue of Kosovo and the downfall of genocidal Milosevic. How well he did in Sierra Leone, and in leading the rich countries on Africa and climate change. But all that came crashing down in Baghdad. The error was paid for in the world's paralysis over Darfur and Zimbabwe. Blair's liberal interventionism died when so much money and effort was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. His delusions remain, if he imagines he can be a global peacemaker, after his silence as bombs fell on Lebanon.

Other personal fixations were not in the original New Labour blueprint either. Nothing suggested his sudden ideological swerve towards marketising public services and bringing in the private sector, often at higher cost. His taste of grand institutional change distracted from what worked best - fine-tuned practical programmes such as Sure Start for under-fives, literacy and numeracy hours, and NHS walk-in centres. These are his best monuments, not the ever-shifting furniture and name plates on NHS doors.

Lastly, money, Blair's blind spot. Rubbing shoulders with the super rich, he never heeded the early warning over the Ecclestone donation, so cash for coronets may dog him yet. If he rides off into a sunset of corporate greed and not public service, he risks tainting how his years in office are seen in retrospect.

He never talked of equality. Yesterday, again he celebrated the arrival of oligarchs to tax-haven London. Fear of offending the rich led to Britain's inequality-gap rising, so redistribution to the poor was like running up a down escalator of cash.

The question now is whether a new leader can halt those rampant forces driving society ever further apart.

    Regrets? Too few to mention any in particular, G, 11.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2077308,00.html

Tony Blair: success or failure?

David Aaronovitch v Matthew Parris

May 11, 2007
From The Times

Dear Matthew,

It falls to me to make the first moves in this on-page wrestling bout to contest whether the Blair premiership has been a glorious success or ignominious failure. So let me emerge from the unfashionable left-of-centre corner clutching an updated copy of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, in which Cyrano anticipates all the insulting epithets that may be or have been hurled at him on account of his unusually large hooter.

To start with a theme, the departing Prime Minister is Bliar, the mendacious, spin-obsessed, manipulating fraudster who lied to take us to war, undermined our independent civil service, took cash from the rich and rewarded them with peerages and favourable decisions, and suborned our politics.

This Blair is also, at best a naive, messianic prating fool when it comes to foreign entanglement, a US poodle, or at worst a war criminal who has done huge damage to international law and world peace.

At home he has been the ignorer of Parliament, the trampler on our ancient liberties, the CCTV and ASBO king, the grinning, malign Mary Poppins of the supernanny state.

Personally he is Phoney Tony, a vacuous actor with the Dome as his exemplifying monument, a freebooter, a lover of foreign trips to celebrity hideouts owned by other members of the Cool Britannia Delusionary Roadshow.

Even where he might claim some credit he has in fact been a Clintonian disappointment, with vast sums of money thrown at public services to no very good result. True, some agree that he has been nice to gays and blacks but, as Michael Portillo recently put it: “Our schools are a disgrace, our hospitals shameful, our public transport a bad joke and our public spaces depressing. At night our streets are filled with the yelling and puking of foul-mouthed youths and their obese girlfriends.”

And, Matthew, since the polls show that this is what most people think, it must be true.

I take the ring with nothing but the record to fall back upon, the facts of what has really happened since 1997, in schools, on the streets, in hospitals, in our thinking about the environment, in action over Third World debt and African misery. My hope is to get you to agree that in truth Britain is, in so far as any government had the power to make it so, a better country for having had Tony Blair as its Prime Minister.

Yours, David.

Dear David,

It is good of you to set out in such a spirited manner the charges against Tony Blair, but I must remind you that your task is not simply to demonstrate familiarity with the complaints, but to answer them. I shall try.

“Bliar, the mendacious, spin-obsessed, manipulating fraudster who lied to take us to war, undermined our independent civil service, took cash from the rich and rewarded them with peerages and favourable decisions, and suborned our politics” you say? You go too far, David. He’s less interesting than that. Mr Blair has cut a smaller, meaner figure. It’s not the big lies but the grubby little half-truths that are so depressing.

“Emphatically not – I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly,” said the Prime Minister to journalists on a plane over China, after Dr Kelly’s suicide. No – not a lie. Not quite. In fact Mr Blair had taken part in a meeting at which it had been decided to let Kelly’s identity “emerge” without ever actually saying his name. What a creep.

To the Iraq war later. As for spin, enough has been said. All politicians spin to some degree. Churchill did. Disraeli did. Thatcher did. We forget the spinning when it has accompanied the achievement of great purposes; and these we remember. It is because Mr Blair’s work has been so unsolid, so bereft of any real sense of direction, that we obsess about the surrounding spin. When the picture’s blank, you do tend to look at the cheap faux-gilt frame.

And I could forgive the pushing around of civil servants (Mrs Thatcher did it) if it had been to do anything beyond treading water prettily. Nor did Mr Blair invent the linkage between cash and peerages, any more than he invented the greasing of palms in overseas arms deals: what disgusts is all the breast-beating about purity, the noisy enactment of legislation to “reform” party donations and “outlaw” corrupt foreign deals, then the sidestepping of both new laws. It is this curious disjunction between the world of ideas and the world of actions that has led me to ask whether Mr Blair may actually have a screw loose. Kinder souls just accuse him of hypocrisy.

You conclude by inviting me to agree that Britain has improved while Mr Blair has been Prime Minister. I agree readily. It’s the causal link with which I’m having trouble.

Yours ever, Matthew. PS: You’re not in the “unfashionable left-of-centre corner”. You’re in the until-lately super-fashionable New Labour Third Way corner. Anyway we all have our spells in the wilderness. Mine lasted from 1994 to the Iraq war: a time when Tony Blair was believed to be real.

Dear Matthew,

First, on your postscript: let’s agree that you too have suffered. Then allow me to recapitulate your argument. Mr Blair is a barmy creep who has done nasty little bad things, failing even to commit larger sins.

These sneaky transgressions might have been excusable if he had done anything substantial, but he hasn’t – and even if he has, they weren’t his things, they were inherited from the unlucky John Major or someone else did them. I don’t think I’ve missed anything out.

Certainly I can see why, as a supporter of Major – two members of whose political hierarchy were imprisoned for perjury – you should regard Mr Blair’s crimes as insufficiently epic. But more of those another time.

Rather let me head straight for your claim that Mr Blair hasn’t changed anything for the better. In 1997, after nearly two decades of Conservative rule, 43 per cent and 46 per cent of primary schoolchildren failed to achieve the average standards expected in maths and English respectively. Those figures are now 21 per cent and 24 per cent, and the primary schools that have done best are those in the poorest areas. One legacy of the Blair years will be new school buildings. Look around you.

In ’97 it was not unheard of for patients to wait up to two years for important orthopaedic operations. In winter there might be a flu crisis in which thousands of operations had to be cancelled. Child poverty and pensioner poverty had both increased enormously. No one seriously disputes that in the last decade waiting times have fallen dialectically and hundreds of thousands of pensioners and children lifted out of poverty. Rather the debate now, if one follows David Cameron, is about whether this is enough.

Tell me, Matthew, does no part of you secretly think “Hmmm, not bad”? Or is Mr Blair somehow innocent of all the credit?

Inquisitively yours, David.

Dear David,

I’m puzzled by your opening remark. Why this sudden attack on John Major? I don’t recall mentioning him. Take as many shin-kicks at Major as you like, but then return to your task, which is to make the positive case for Mr Blair himself.

Himself. His personal contribution to national life. Not that of a Labour government; not, in particular, the conduct of economic policy, which he left to Gordon Brown; not the scuppering of plans to join the European single currency, which Mr Brown achieved despite Mr Blair; not Mr Brown’s campaign against pensioner and child poverty, in which Mr Blair showed little sustained interest. No, ask yourself what difference he made.

Well, there’s the four-letter “I” word that we don’t mention. And here at home there is one big initiative on public services which – I agree with you – we probably can ascribe to Mr Blair himself. That was the demented announcement, seemingly impromptu, that bounced the Treasury into what will prove the near-doubling of expenditure on the NHS in the absence of any serious plan for meshing this with improvements to efficiency.

The consequence was predictable: efficiency loss. Gentle improvement in the quality of healthcare combined with a vicious increase in the cost. Here was a missed opportunity to use the proceeds of economic growth to buy tightly monitored structural change in a public service. It was blown in pursuit of one cheap headline. Very Blair.

You’re right, of course: substantial increases in public spending have bought modest increases in some public services. They always will. But the impression this decade leaves is neither of triumph nor tragedy but something smaller, meaner and a bit sad. It is of bold talk followed by confused action; a relentless focus on politics coupled with a fitful interest in government; stirring words, ill-considered follow-through, and an administrative mess. This is Mr Blair’s very personal stamp. It has cheapened politics in the public imagination.

Yours ever, Matthew.

Dear Matthew,

You are surely straining too hard to be ungenerous here, a bit like Reg of the Judean People’s Front. I mean, apart from the fast operations, improved education standards, new schools and falling crime rates, what else has Blair done for Britain? In time, when this moment of grumpiness has passed, I suspect that the “impression of the decade” will actually be of wealth, migration and dynamism, as well as the discovery of new problems. It will be epitomised by the London bombings and the London Olympics.

Even so, a lot of what you say is true. Too much early time was wasted, reform was too incremental, there were too may half-arsed populist initiatives. Paradoxically, the main achievements have probably come during the misunderstood and reviled twilight years of the Blair reign.

So now let us whip the cover from the elephant. The invasion of Iraq has been a disaster, maybe even more of a disaster than not invading would have been. We still don’t know. But then there is the “K” word – what would have happened in the Balkans without Mr Blair’s determination? And what, Matthew, do you make of the seven-letter “I” word? Ian Paisley shaking hands with Martin McGuinness would have been impossible without Mr Blair. Even Reg would sign up for that. Will you?

Peace and love, David.

Dear David,

Whether invading Iraq was “even more of a disaster than not invading [you say] we still don’t know.” We do. A disaster, full stop.

Briefly tempted by your conciliatory tone, I contemplated conceding something; but no, Tony Blair has been a horrible disappointment, there’s something rotten about his record, and his reputation has further to sink.

But I’ll give you Ireland. Like all confidence-tricksters Mr Blair is a confidence-builder, and used his slippery arts there with skill.

I will not give you our gentle improvements in prosperity and (some) public services. Under most governments since 1949 living standards rose, but epoch-marking personal interventions by particular leaders are less routine. By Blair there has been one: we both know what. The Iraq debacle was not even (as he likes to insinuate) a bravely unpopular choice. He thought it was going to be the popular choice. He joined the gang of the biggest boy in the playground.

Blairophobes should not by our abuse build Blair up. Beasts have dignity. Ogres do big things. To convey the unsavoury yet flimsy qualities Mr Blair has brought to his political decade, we need a smaller word, a playground word.

It’s “cheat”. Tony Blair leaves, now, like the Cheshire Cat, fading to only a rictus grin, a mocking laugh and a lingering scent of cat’s pee and cologne.

Yours ever, Matthew.

    Tony Blair: success or failure?, Ts, 11.5.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article1774485.ece

Leading article:

Lofty ambition, harsh reality

and a catastrophic mistake

Published: 11 May 2007
The Independent

Most modern British prime ministers have chosen, or more often, had forced upon them the brutally precipitate farewell. The snap decision, the lost vote, defeat at a general election, and the removal van at the door - that is how our political system works. Tony Blair has bucked that tradition, replacing it with perhaps the most protracted prime ministerial departure ever. Yesterday, at Trimdon in his Sedgefield constituency, he was feted like the second-rate rock star he might have been, bidding a strangely subdued and self-absorbed farewell.

Yet it was of a piece with the prevailing public mood. The exhilaration that had accompanied his rise was long gone, replaced by a mixture of realism and disenchantment. As Mr Blair said yesterday, expectations when he came to office were high, perhaps too high. But those expectations were real. From the youthful, risk-taking politician, who seized the opportunity of the Labour leadership and then slew the dragon of Clause IV, to the grinning prime minister-elect who saw the sun rise on New Labour's historic victory, Tony Blair was a new leader for a new millennium. It could, and for a while it did, only get better.

He set records and broke fresh ground. He was the youngest 20th-century prime minister. He was the first Labour prime minister to lead his party to three successive election victories. He was even the first prime minister for 150 years to become a father while in Downing Street. A consummate campaigner, with great personal charm and flair, perhaps his biggest gift to his party was the ability to outfox his opponents and to win elections.

But there is more to politics than electoral success. And in many ways he can claim to have modernised not only the Labour Party but the country. Britain today is a more confident nation, with a strong economy and a capital city in the vanguard of globalisation. As prime minister, Mr Blair was responsible for a succession of socially liberal provisions that recognised the fact of social change, but also demonstrated - by their acceptance - that Britain was a more liberal country than many had given it credit for. Benefits were directed towards children; unconventional families were as valid as the traditional model. The minimum wage was successfully introduced, civil partnerships recognised.

Elsewhere in domestic policy, his record is more ambiguous. As an institutional reformer, Mr Blair was ambitious, but not far-sighted. Devolution for Scotland and Wales has been embraced with more enthusiasm as time has gone on. But it has done little to calm nationalist sentiment, while having unpredicted implications for England and the Union. Reforms of the House of Lords and the judiciary were inconsistent and ill thought-through.

Some of the same defects dogged efforts to reform the public services, which were all too often piecemeal, profligate and fraught with unintended consequences. With education, as with the NHS, the results have failed to reflect the cost, and for all the talk of reform, there has been too little, too late. Our transport system remains as congested and haphazard as ever. And increasingly, on issues such as crime, security and immigration, an ugly authoritarianism has been on display.

From the earliest days there were hints of the three elements that would corrode the Blair prime ministership. The allure of money and celebrity that shone through the Bernie Ecclestone affair and would find its apotheosis in the "loans for peerages" scandal. The media-management that bordered at times on lying and fuelled mounting distrust in government. And the fractious relationship with Gordon Brown that prevented the more productive pursuit of a common purpose.

Abroad, as at home, realisation fell short of lofty ambition. Increased foreign aid and the focus on Africa were laudable, but remain incomplete. The early emphasis on Europe faded all too soon. Bold words on global warming proved to be little more than hot air, with carbon emissions rising and a refusal to set binding annual targets. And the pursuit of liberal interventionism in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Afghanistan - born, perhaps, of a sense that the West had failed Rwanda - led directly to Mr Blair's greatest mistake: the hubristic war in Iraq.

Iraq - what led up to it and what has proceeded from it - sums up so much that went wrong in other areas. An overestimate of what military or state intervention can do, a deluded sense of personal destiny, an inadequate understanding of history, an over-reliance on spin and a stubborn aversion to admitting fault. Above all, Iraq constituted a catastrophic failure of judgement. At the political level, it separated us needlessly from many European allies. At the popular level, it led to a souring of relations with the United States. It deflected attention from Afghanistan, the proven cradle of Islamic terrorism, while poisoning relations with much of the Islamic world. So far, it has cost the lives of almost 150 British service personnel and thousands of Iraqis.

The malign effects of Iraq, however, reach still further. The dossiers that made the case for Iraq being a global threat, and Mr Blair's retrospective attempts to shift the rationale for the war, like the narrowly drawn inquiries he instituted, all reinforced the impression of politics distorted by media manipulation. Public scepticism and cynicism were already well entrenched; with Iraq, the breakdown of trust between people and prime minister became terminal. This is his legacy.

Tony Blair leaves Britain a different country. It is more tolerant, more socially and ethnically mixed, and more open in every respect than it was 10 years ago. It is also more unequal and, regrettably, less socially mobile than it was. How far Mr Blair is responsible for any of this, and how far it merely reflects changing times, can be debated. What cannot be debated is Mr Blair's culpability for the greatest foreign policy mistake of the post-war period. Its repercussions will be felt for many years to come. It is the tragic epitaph for Tony Blair's decade as Prime Minister.

Leading article: Lofty ambition, harsh reality and a catastrophic mistake, I, 11.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2530746.ece

 

The Legacy:

Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007

Published: 11 May 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
 

Tony Blair has apologised for his mistakes and admitted that his legacy in the eyes of many people will be dominated by Iraq when he stands down as Prime Minister on 27 June.

In an emotional and highly personal speech, Mr Blair insisted that he had done what he believed was "right for my country" and stopped short of saying sorry for the Iraq war.

But he struck his most conciliatory tone over Iraq, admitting the fierce "blowback" of global terrorism and conceding he would leave office with many Britons believing the Iraq invasion was wrong.

Loyal Blairites launched a campaign to pin the blame for the mistakes made after the conflict on the Bush administration, which rejected Britain's advice by abolishing the Iraqi army after Saddam Hussein was toppled. Alastair Campbell, the former Downing Street communications director, and Baroness Morgan of Huyton, the former director of government relations, both criticised Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, for the post-war decisions.

Lady Morgan admitted: "The fundamental problem is it [Iraq] has become a place where terrorists from every group are now operating." She added: "The operation of the war and post-war planning was Donald Rumsfeld and I don't think President George Bush was running Donald Rumsfeld in the end. Operationally, I think [Mr Blair] was frustrated that things didn't always happen in the way that he'd hoped or expected would take place."

Mr Blair, speaking in his Sedgefield constituency, pleaded with the British people to believe that he acted in good faith, even if they disagreed with him on Iraq, but admitted they would be the judge.

"Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right," he said. "I may have been wrong. That's your call. But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country."

He defended his "shoulder-to-shoulder" approach with the United States over Iraq and Afghanistan, but admitted: "The blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. For many, it simply isn't and can't be worth it. For me, I think we must see it through. They, the terrorists, who threaten us here and round the world, will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief. And we can't fail it."

Mr Blair, who drafted his speech as he flew to his constituency in Co Durham, conceded the "great expectations" when he came to power in 1997 had not been fulfilled in every part. Although some aides admitted he originally wanted to carry on until next year, he said: "I have been Prime Minister of this country for just over 10 years. In this job, in the world today, that is long enough for me, but more especially for the country."

John Prescott confirmed he would stand down as deputy Labour leader, and is expected to leave the Commons at the next general election. Nominations for the posts of Labour leader and deputy leader open on Monday and close on Thursday.

The results will be known on 24 June and Mr Blair will leave Downing Street on 27 June, when Gordon Brown will almost certainly become Prime Minister. Mr Brown may win the leadership unopposed in a "coronation" as left-wing MPs have not yet mustered the necessary nominations by 45 Labour MPs.

Mr Brown led the tributes when Mr Blair informed the Cabinet of his departure timetable in a low-key fashion at its weekly meeting yesterday. The Chancellor praised Mr Blair's achievements as "unique, unprecedented and enduring".

He will launch his leadership campaign today, insisting he would welcome a contest and heralding a mixture of continuity and change. In a sign that he may distance himself from Mr Blair's decisions on Iraq, Mr Brown said in a television interview yesterday: "At all times he tried to do the right thing."

President Bush said he would miss Mr Blair, as Prime Minister, and was ready to work with Mr Brown, confident that he "understands the consequences of failure" in Iraq. He hailed Mr Blair as a "political figure who is capable of thinking over the horizon", adding: "I have found him to be a man who's kept his word, which sometimes is rare in the political circles I run in."

Cabinet ministers said the Prime Minister had acknowledged at their meeting that Labour needed to move on but urged them to "entrench" his reforms. Some expressed doubts about whether Mr Brown would continue them but allies of the Chancellor said he would bring in "different reforms".

The Labour MP Frank Field said he was "saddened" by Mr Blair's resignation. He told GMTV's Sunday programme: "We're divorcing the person who's been most successful in winning us elections and doing it in almost a clinical fashion." He added: "My guess is as we never, ever, ever produced anybody like him to win elections, in 18 months time we may be looking back to this week and thinking, 'Wow! How extraordinary that we shoe-horned him out in this fashion!'"

A CommunicateResearch survey for tonight's BBC Newsnight programme found that Mr Brown was seen as less "in touch with ordinary people" than Mr Blair, David Cameron or Sir Menzies Campbell. But Mr Cameron was seen as more concerned with spin and public relations than Mr Brown.

Mr Cameron said the Prime Minister left a legacy of "dashed hopes". He said: "Obviously some good things have happened in the last 10 years, not least the conclusion of the peace process in Northern Ireland just a few days ago. But when the Prime Minister spoke about some hopes that have been disappointed, I think that was putting it mildly. I think many people will look back on the last 10 years of dashed hopes and big disappointments, of so much promised and so little delivered."

Sir Menzies, the Liberal Democrat leader, tabled a Commons motion calling for an immediate general election so the people could choose the next Prime Minister. He said Mr Blair had presided over "a decade of missed opportunities in which the hopes of the British people for a new kind of politics were shattered".

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, said: "I think that in the same way that perhaps one of the biggest long-term successes is bringing peace to Ireland, the most catastrophic error is the war in Iraq. It has, in a sense, created a whole new generation of terrorists."

The resignation speech

This is an edited extract of Mr Blair's speech:

I have come back here, to Sedgefield, to my constituency, where my political journey began and where it is fitting it should end. Today, I announce my decision to stand down from the leadership of the Labour Party. The party will now select a new leader. On 27 June, I will tender my resignation from the office of Prime Minister to the Queen.

I have been Prime Minister of this country for just over 10 years. In this job, in the world today, that is long enough for me but more especially for the country. Sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down.

1997 was a moment for a new beginning, for sweeping away all the detritus of the past. Expectations were so high, too high, too high in a way for either of us.

Now in 2007, you can easily point to the challenges, the things that are wrong, the grievances that fester. But go back to 1997 ... Think about your own living standards then and now ... There is only one Government since 1945 that can say all of the following: more jobs, fewer unemployed, better health and education results, lower crime, and economic growth in every quarter - this one.

Decision-making is hard. Everyone always says 'Listen to the people'. The trouble is they don't always agree ... And, in time, you realise putting the country first doesn't mean doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom or the prevailing consensus - it means doing what you genuinely believe to be right. Your duty is to act according to your conviction.

All of that can get contorted so that people think you act according to some messianic zeal. Doubt, hesitation, reflection, consideration and reconsideration - these are all the good companions of proper decision-making. But the ultimate obligation is to decide.

I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally. I did so out of belief. So Afghanistan and then Iraq, the latter, bitterly controversial. Removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease. But the blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. For many, it simply isn't and can't be worth it.

For me, I think we must see it through. They, the terrorists, who threaten us here and round the world, will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief, and we can't fail it.

Great expectations not fulfilled in every part, for sure. Occasionally, people say, as I said earlier, 'They were too high, you should have lowered them.' But, to be frank, I would not have wanted it any other way. I was, and remain, as a person and as a prime minister, an optimist. Politics may be the art of the possible but, at least in life, give the impossible a go.

So, of course, the vision is painted in the colours of the rainbow, and the reality is sketched in the duller tones of black, white and grey.

But I ask you to accept one thing - hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That's your call. But believe one thing if nothing else - I did what I thought was right for our country."

This country is a blessed nation. The British are special, the world knows it, in our innermost thoughts, we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth. It has been an honour to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short.

    The Legacy: Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007, I, 11.5.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2530768.ece

Dave Brown        The Independent        11.5.2007

Paul Vallely:

The Britain he leaves behind

His 10 years in Downing Street
have left an indelible mark on the United Kingdom.

ut what impact did he make
- and was his premiership a force for good or ill

Published: 11 May 2007
The Independent

What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the restaurant at 127 Upper Street in Islington was called Granita. The food was what chefs like to call modern British - a sophisticated melange purloined from all around the Mediterranean: you know the kind of thing, char-grilled aubergine, shellfish with interesting vinaigrettes and a signature dish of Roquefort with toasted walnuts.

It was sophisticated and trendy, and it was where, modern political mythology has it, one night in May 1994, Tony Blair persuaded Gordon Brown not to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party but to support him instead. They tell a rather different story in Tony Blair's constituency in Sedgefield, as we shall see. Such is the nature of mythology. Apparently Granita never served polenta either.

It certainly doesn't today. The restaurant has changed hands. It is now a Tex-Mex cantina with thick steaks and chilli burgers of a kind more to the taste of Tony Blair's political friend and military ally, George Bush. The place is called "Desperados", a name which offers scopes for gags whatever your political perspective - as do the John Prescott-style cowboy boots hanging from the ceiling.

Table 13, in the far corner, where the Blair/Brown deal was purportedly hatched, was empty the day I began my tour of totemic milestones through the Blair decade. But in the window sat a young couple whose views on the outgoing prime minister set the tone for those I encountered on a week-long journey across Blair's Britain. They were views shot through with paradox and contradiction, which was perhaps an apt verdict on a man who bowed out yesterday with his party at a record low in the polls and yet with his own personal popularity standing at more than 60 per cent.

Geraint Simpson was aged 12 when Tony Blair came to power. His girlfriend, Naomi Williams, was nine. The Blair years are their years.

"I'm pleased to see him go," says Geraint, now 21 and a security officer. He is wearing an Arsenal shirt.

"I"m not," says Naomi, lifting her head from her boyfriend's shoulder. "I didn't agree with Iraq but otherwise I think he's done a good job."

"I think Iraq is one of the better things he's done," says Geraint, raising interesting issues of compatibility. "It's good to see Saddam out of power. But look at immigration. John Reid doesn't even know how many illegal immigrants they've let in."

"But you get seen a lot quicker in hospitals," she counters, and schools have got a lot better."

"Yes, the academies are good. There are lots of schools round here that needed fresh starts."

"And he's done a good job in Ireland,"says Naomi.

"OK, he's done good things and bad things. But I wouldn't vote Labour. We need a fresh one in."

Having touched so succinctly on most of the key themes of the Blair decade, the couple then fall to musing on how hard it will be for them ever to get on the London property ladder.

Yet that too is a mixed indicator. For it reflects the strength of the economy over which New Labour has presided, with low-inflation, no boom-and-bust, unemployment slashed, robust growth, a strong pound and London challenging New York as the world's financial centre.

But then the Blairs know there can be losers as well as winners in that. Just round the corner from the restaurant stands the elegant end-terrace Georgian house which Tony and Cherie sold when he became Prime Minister. Blair's spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, was afraid that if they let it out they might end up with an unsuitable tenant, as had the Tory chancellor Norman Lamont who had rented out his flat to a "sex therapist" called Miss Whiplash. No 1 Richmond Terrace, with its red door and well-pollarded poplar tree, was sold by the Blairs for just £615,000. It is now worth almost £2m, which Cherie feels means they have unnecessarily lost ££1m.

Such amounts are beyond the present dreams of Geraint and Naomi. I left them pondering the menu with its enticing alternatives of tequila-flavoured beer or a cocktail of bourbon, amaretto, grenadine and orange juice which goes by the valedictory name of a Mexican Sunset.

From Islington, the Northern Line takes you south to Elephant and Castle and the Aylesbury Estate, whose squat grey concrete blocks are home to 7,500 council tenants of the London borough of Southwark. This was the place where Tony Blair gave his first big speech as Prime Minister.

It was a symbolic choice. He wanted his first statement on policy to be made to those he called the poorest people in our country who have been forgotten by government. "I want that to change," the young Prime Minister told them. "There will be no forgotten people in the Britain I want to build."

In the years that have intervened, Britain lost Hong Kong and then a princess, Scotland and Wales got their own parliaments, hereditary peers were ejected from the House of Lords, fox hunting was banned, civil partnerships were introduced for gay couples and peace came to Northern Ireland. But did anything change for the people of the Aylesbury estate?

Ten years on, the sun is shining and the lawns between the blocks of flats are verdant and yet the grey concrete of the flats and the elevated runways between them look as grim as ever. So too is the verdict of Margot Lindsay, a university librarian, who lived on the estate for 26 years, until last November.

"We had eight years of glossy leaflets, videos and so-called consultation meetings to try to persuade the residents to cease to be council tenants and move to housing associations," she says. "Despite all that, 74 per cent of the tenants voted 'no' in 2004. Then finally, last September, the council lost patience and decided to demolish the whole place."

Ms Lindsay is very angry. "I'm very disappointed in Tony Blair. I voted for the man and at first thought he was wonderful. I believed all the shit" - the word comes oddly from the lips of the curly-haired 65-year-old, sitting in her a knitted multicoloured tabard and long skirt as befits the stereotype of a lady librarian ? "And now I feel betrayed." After eight long years of ardent campaigning she gave up. "I was burnt out. I applied to move to council accommodation elsewhere. I have given up."

Yet on the Aylesbury estate, too, opinion is divided. One of the activists who has not given up is Jean Bartlett, who started Tykes Corner, a mother and toddler nursery, for her own grandchildren but which now takes 500 children a month. "It is disappointing that Blair hasn't allowed local authorities to build more council housing," she says. "But Southwark council struggled to refurbish the properties under the government's Decent Homes initiative. They found that renovation of the Sixties concrete blocks, which have structural defects as well as problems with heating and hot water, will be much more expensive than rebuilding. That's been a difficult decision but the right one."

In any case, she points out, Tony Blair was talking about far more than buildings in that 1997 speech. He spoke of jobs and opportunities for young people, getting single mothers into work, closing down failing schools, tackling crime and drugs, helping young people with nothing to do, providing nursery education, encouraging social entrepreneurs.

So what had been delivered on all that?

"He launched the New Deal for Communities and Sure Start which have been great successes," she says. "Our youngsters are doing better at school now than they were 10 years ago because there are teaching assistants, homework support and breakfast and after-school clubs." The failing school at the centre of the estate is being turned into an academy. There has been intensive help on job placements. Health and education statistics have improved. Crime and fear of crime is down 10 per cent and is now lower than in other parts of Southwark. The residents have gone from a depressed group of people with low self-confidence to a people with a sense that they can do and achieve things.

"A decade ago it was not a good place to live; it's far from perfect now but it's a huge improvement," Jean Bartlett says. "Tony Blair has changed a lot of people's lives for the better."

Such are not the individuals on whom elections turn. Over the past three elections ,Tony Blair's fortunes has lain in the hands, the pollsters said, of someone called Worcester Woman.

The demographers offer various definitions. She is a middle-aged, middle-class, Middle England, non-traditional Labour voter. She is the "school-gate mum" who cares about politics only where it touches her quality of life - through jobs, schools and the NHS. She is, more pejoratively, a woman with consumerist views who is susceptible to political spin.

She was, above all, the woman without whose vote Tony Blair could never win.

Mike Foster is the only Labour MP ever to represent Worcester in Parliament. His voting record is model New Labour. He was for ID cards, foundation hospitals, student top-up fees, anti-terrorism laws and equal rights for gays. He was very strongly for the Iraq war and very strongly for the ban on fox hunting - which, indeed, he introduced via a private member's Bill. He has won Worcester for each of the three Blair elections.

He is an amiable chap who cheerfully takes time off over a bank holiday to show me around his constituency. And an impressive tour it is. We see a brand new eco-sustainable primary school in Battenhall, the most prosperous part of the city, which is heated by tapping into deep subterranean natural heat sources. In the little dock basin where Birmingham and Worcester canal meets the river Severn, he shows me prestige apartments, shops and restaurants being built near site of old porcelain works that closed towards the end of the Thatcher era with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

"Unemployment in Worcester has halved under Blair," he says. We see a massive new library site that will serve the public, Worcester's large new college of technology and the second campus for Worcester's new university which is about to be built on the city's old hospital site. We see another new primary school in a poorer district, Warndon, along with one of three brand new mega-surgeries for GPs, an adult learning centre, a Sure Start nursery, a slew of social housing and an all-weather basketball court on which a group of young boys are playing.

The crowning glory is the £100m Worcestershire Royal Hospital "which the Conservatives promised for 40 years and never built and which we built within five years of our promise to do so," says the MP. "It isn't there by accident, it's there because we put up national insurance in 2000 and raised the money to pay for it. All of this has been achieved on Blair's watch."

But I have bad news for Mike Foster. Worcester Woman may be on the turn.

The local paper, for reasons that are lost in the mists of electoral folklore, decided that the archetypal Worcester Woman was a lady called Fran Richman, a blonde, 51-year-old mother-of-two who works part-time as a welfare officer at Worcester University. Previously, she voted for Margaret Thatcher but when Tony Blair came along she liked the cut of his jib and switched.

She has just got home from work on the afternoon I call and had barely even kicked off her shoes. But she gallantly turned her mind from student welfare to the business of politics.

"To be fair to Tony Blair, he kept his promises on health and education. Worcester got its new hospital. On Ireland, something marvellous has been achieved. And Mike Foster has done an excellent job as local MP. But I won't be voting for them next time. I've had enough of them now."

Ask her what was the tipping point and she comes up with a collection of concerns so diverse that it is impossible to fit them into any coherent political philosophy: "They have abolished tax allowances for marriage and forced lone parents back to work - and then they wonder why there are all those children running wild, with no discipline anywhere at home or in school," she begins. "And they have encouraged a climate in which teachers aren't allowed to discipline pupils properly.

"And," she continues, barely drawing breath, "there is no real plan on transport, no control of immigration, not enough emphasis on sport - look at all the unfit and obese children. They have marginalised religion in schools, no time for proper assemblies a lot of half-baked political correctness, vandalism, litter, it's all so soul-destroying."

So how, with that ragbag of views, did she vote in the local election last week? "I voted Green" And who got in? "I don't know."

Down the road at Droitwich Methodist Church, another Worcester Woman offers a different perspective.

Maureen Hartridge runs the fair trade stall at the back of this bustling little red-brick building. On a Sunday, it is full of young families. During the week, it has that odd mixture of activity which characterises the modern church -mothers and toddlers sessions, the Girls' Brigade, the sewing circle and a rehab group for drug addicts. Last year Ms Hartridge sold £17,000 of goods for the fair trade organisation Traidcraft there last year.

Her concerns about Tony Blair are altogether more international. "We work our socks off to keep fair trade on the agenda," she says, "but international barriers, trade tariffs and farm subsidies are the real problem". She was disappointed that all Blair's efforts for Africa at Gleneagles produced no real movement on trade.

But she was greatly cheered by what he had achieved in getting the G8 to write off African debts. "That's been a great success," she says. The $36bn write-off means that health care is now free in Zambia. Roads are being built for farmers in Ghana. Nigeria will get three million more children into school. And much more.

Now Blair needs, in his final weeks up to the G8 in Germany next month, to get them to deliver the hike in annual aid which Gleneagles promised. "We've led the way. The British aid budget went up 13 per cent last year. If only he could get Germany, Italy, Japan and the rest to pay up then he can go out on a bit of a high."

In the hall, there are row upon row of sparkling diamante shoes, flowers floating in huge globes and edible decorations. There are displays of ice sculptures, gleaming Mercedes convertibles, and crystal thrones that the Beckhams would be proud of. This is the Manchester International Conference Centre, to which Tony Blair has switched recent Labour conferences. Blackpool is so old-fashioned these days.

But those filling the great curved-dome, which was once a great Victorian railway station, are not Labour activists. It is the Asian Wedding and Fashion Exhibition '07. Those crowding round the stalls are a diverse group of fashion retailers, beauty consultants, restaurants and caterers, henna artists, brides-to-be and their mothers. There are also local community leaders, bankers and money transfer specialists and immigration lawyers. They are Hindus and Muslims.

Ask here for a verdict on Tony Blair and the response is likely to be just one word: Iraq. Nowhere more than here is it clear that the fallout from 11 September 2001 is what has most sullied the Blair legacy. The Prime Minister's response to the attacks was to stand by America at all costs - and one of the costs was that his response, necessarily, alienated him from Britain's ethnic minority communities.

There are, of course, those who are more than alienated. "Blair's a wanker; someone should kill him," says an incandescent Muslim selling shalwar kameez, his chin framed by his soft downy young man's beard. Others are less violent in their language but equally resolute. "Blair has been excellent on the economy and his support for the ethnic minority community," says Azar Iqbal, an immigration barrister, "but his legacy is tarnished by his foreign policy."

Yet what is striking is the extent to which that legacy is to the forefront of Asian minds, despite Iraq. "Blair has done a good job," says Vishaal Anand, 24, a fashion retailer from Rusholme who decribes himself as a Hindu Punjabi born and bred in Manchester. "We pay too much in council tax and business rates, and in import duty and VAT but he's kept the economy strong. He's made some bad choices - like the war - but he's been good for schools and on crime with Asbos. I'll be sad to see him go."

It is not just Hindus who take that line. "The war was a blunder but the economy is tremendous," says Afzal Khan, who was the first Asian Lord Mayor of Manchester. "The change and improvement in this city under Blair has been phenomenal."

Another Muslim, Anasudhin Azeez, managing editor of Asian Lite magazine, adds: "Blair has done great work for the ethnic minority community in the health sector, in starting up nursing homes, in community support, in IT. And there was no backlash after the 7/7 bombings because Blair handled it so well. But Iraq has overshadowed all that.

"I feel sorry for him. He's quite a good leader and quite a good person. But he is like a Shakespearean tragic hero whose many virtues are undone by, as the Bard would put it, the stamp of one great defect. I don't dislike Blair but it will make people feel a lot better when he's gone."

You might imagine that trade unionists in Blackpool would be among those most pleased to see the back of Tony Blair. After all, it was there that he ditched Clause IV, the Labour Party's historic commitment to nationalisation. And the seaside resort's halls and hotels were the traditional venue of the Labour conference, until Blair switched it to Manchester. To add final indignity he then failed to deliver the supercasino that locals thought he had virtually promised.

Certainly the abolition of Clause IV still rankles. "It was awful," says Ann Green, general secretary of the British Pensioners and Trade Union Action Association, which is in town for the Pensioners' Parliament. "What it stood for was the need to change the balance of wealth from the minority to the majority. Scrapping it was Blair's pointer. Since then, the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. New Labour is the party of business. Everything has been privatised."

But the venue for the conference goes unmentioned and the verdict on the casino is surprising. Jane Rogers, who works in a Boots the Chemist shop in Blackpool is a big wheel in the shopworkers' union, Usdaw, the biggest in the town. She was a canvasser for the Labour Party at last week's local elections. "Lots of issues were mentioned, positively, by voters - high employment, workplace rights, the minimum wage, statutory holidays, the age of consent, civil partnerships, Africa, the human rights act, the first minister for women, getting lone mothers back to work, maternity pay being up, paternity leave as a right, lifelong learning, tax credits.

"And the negatives were Iraq, the National Health Service and pensions. But the casino issue wasn't mentioned all day.

"The majority of ordinary people in Blackpool don't want the casino. It won't bring regeneration. Most of the jobs it brings will be unskilled and low-paid - cleaners, glass washers and so on, because most of the income will come from one-armed bandits - the kind where you can get through a £50 note in 8 minutes. We did a survey and 96 per cent of local people said they would rather have something else."

That's the trouble with talking to ordinary people. They so often tell you the opposite of what the politicians, and the media, say they're going to say.

The beer in the Trimdon Labour Club is Newcastle Exhibition. Ale drinkers will know it is both bitter and sweet. If that is a contradiction then perhaps that is an appropriate way to end a tour of Blair's Britain.

Trimdon, in the heart of Sedgefield constituency, is where the outgoing Prime Minister began his political career in 1983 and drew it to a close it yesterday. At the start, the locals were clear as to the virtues of the new man. "What struck us was his ability to connect with ordinary people," says one of his earliest supporters, Phil Wilson, who once worked in Blair's constituency office. Mr Wilson was the man who realised you had to give New Labour a northern accent not an Oxbridge one. Some now tip him to succeed Blair as MP.

"Every house in our road had been burgled and people couldn't afford burglar alarms or insurance. That was how the 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' speech came about. Tony could articulate messages of what ordinary working class people wanted, and he could do it in a middle-class accent. He bridged the divide."

It was that, not deals done in a fancy London restaurant, which was the key to Blair's success, the locals say. "It was all sorted up here," says Blair's agent for the past 24 years, John Burton. "Just after John Smith died, he and Gordon Brown met in County Hall in Durham. Tony went in the front door. We took Gordon in the back. It was then that they reached an agreement that whoever was higher in the public opinion polls after two weeks would go forward unopposed by the other."

The story of Brown's self-sacrifice in Granita, he says, was a work of fiction to suit those trying to pressure Tony to stand down - "failed cabinet ministers and left-wing MPs" - who successfully orchestrated the backroom coup which did for Blair last September and forced him to say he would go within a year.

They will hang on to their separate mythologies in Sedgefield. "I used to laugh about the Bush's poodle stuff because Bush used to phone him for advice," says Burton. The trouble was there was precious little evidence that Bush took it - on sealing the Iraqi borders, on disbanding the Iraqi army, on Guantanamo Bay or on doing a dealing for the Palestinians.

In the background as John Burton speaks. Sky TV is on and Charlton are being relegated.

"At one time, everyone round here was a Sunderland or Newcastle supporter," says Phil Wilson. "But these days you see a lot of Middlesbrough shirts." Football is important in these parts. It points to wider changes. "The Northern Echo has a column in Polish. And a school in Newton Aycliffe has just appointed a teacher who can speak Polish.

"Something really shocked me at the local election. There were all these local lads in their early 20s supporting the BNP. And I thought we're losing a generation. People are joining extreme parties looking for simple answers to complex questions, just as I did as a kid when I joined the Labour Party wanting to nationalise everything and ban the bomb and wanting socialism tomorrow.

"But Labour is about breaking with tradition. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the people who came up with the NHS, and now Tony Blair. They all broke with tradition. The world is changing. It's not going to come to the Labour Party. The party has to go to it."

    Paul Vallely: The Britain he leaves behind, I, 11.5.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2530796.ece

'I did what I thought was right'

Friday May 11, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour and Will Woodward

Gordon Brown will today reveal his commitment to restore the wilting New Labour coalition when he launches his campaign for the premiership with a whistlestop tour of southern marginals, and a promise to rebuild any lost trust after he becomes the sixth Labour prime minister in British history.

Mr Blair announced the handover date in a conciliatory, confessional, almost humble speech in his Durham constituency, in which he apologised for when he had fallen short, but insisted "hand on heart" that he had always done what he had thought was right for the country. His aides say he recognises "in his own head" that it is time after 10 years in power to leave the British political stage.

Mr Brown will launch his 47-day campaign for the party leadership with a speech and press conference today, but he will hold back from publishing a fully- fledged manifesto until after MPs' nominations close next Thursday.

One of his closest political allies, Ed Miliband, hinted at a new Brownite style of government at a Progress rally at the London School of Economics, saying: "There was a New Labour style that got us into power, which was about message, about being on-message. That is a style that belongs to the 1990s, it doesn't belong to the 2000s; partly because people are more intelligent than they are often given credit for, and you need to level with them and talk to them honestly about the challenges and dilemmas you face. And that is a very important part of winning back people's trust."

Mr Miliband also said that the government needed to talk more about inequality, and to strengthen the power of parliament over the executive.

As the world watched Mr Blair's farewell address in his Sedgefield constituency, frantic backroom politics was under way between the two putative leftwing candidates, Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, to see if either had enough support to prevent a coronation for Mr Brown, an event they insist the party membership and the public do not want.

The two men met three times at Westminster to try to agree which of them should try to go forward. As they divulged the names of their supporters to one another, it appeared they had 25 or 26 supporters each - but two MPs appeared to be supporting both candidates, leading to frantic efforts to discover their true allegiance. Mr Meacher and Mr McDonnell will reconvene on Monday.

Mr Brown has asked Mr Meacher and Mr McDonnell to debate with him at a Fabian event on Sunday, hours after the party national executive sets in train the leadership and deputy leadership contest.

Mr Blair's deputy, John Prescott, also announced his intention to resign, in a letter to his constituency party, expressing great pride to have served the most successful Labour prime minister ever.

The day had begun with a brief cabinet meeting at which Mr Blair told colleagues he was leaving. Mr Brown intervened to give a vote of thanks, before Mr Blair headed to Trimdon Labour club in his constituency, his political birthplace.

In his speech he admitted expectations in 1997 had been "so high - too high, probably. Too high in a way for either of us".

Turning to Iraq, he said: "Removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease, but the blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. And for many it simply isn't and can't be worth it. For me, I think we must see it through."

He added: "I was, and remain, as a person and as a prime minister, an optimist. Politics may be the art of the possible; but at least in life, give the impossible a go. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong, that's your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country."

It had been an honour to serve the country: "I give my thanks to you the British people for the times that I have succeeded and my apologies to you for the times I've fallen short. But good luck."

What happens now

May 10 Tony Blair announces resignation

May 11 Gordon Brown expected to announce bid for leadership

May 13 Labour's national executive committee meets to agree a contest timetable for leader and deputy leader elections

May 14

2pm: Parliamentary Labour party meets

2.30pm: nominations open

May 17 Nominations close at 12.30pm

May 22 Over the next two weeks candidates will start campaigning. Hustings for both elections to begin in England, Scotland and Wales. Brown will attend, even if there are no other candidates. Unions will also decide which candidates to back

May 26-27 Tony Blair visits Africa

June 6-8 PM attends G8 summit in Germany

June 10 Around now, the NEC will decide if Brown is to face a vote - or not, if he is the sole candidate.

The ballot process will begin and take two weeks. Voting papers sent to 380 Labour MPs and MEPs, 200,000 party members, and 3.2 million trade union members.

Around now, the BBC will broadcast a special edition of Question Time.

Mr Blair will also launch policy initiatives including a criminal justice bill and a terror bill

June 21-22 Mr Blair attends European Council meeting in Brussels

June 24 Special Labour conference to decide the winner, who must have more than 50% of votes of electoral college, which is divided in thirds between MPs and MEPs; party members; and union affiliates - otherwise there will be further votes to eliminate candidates

June 27 Blair takes his last prime minister's questions and writes to the Queen to resign

'I did what I thought was right', G, 11.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2077273,00.html

Hain and Harman enter contest

· Immediate move to stake claim to deputy leadership
· Johnson, Blears, Cruddas also run; query over Benn

Friday May 11, 2007
Guardian
Tania Branigan and Will Woodward

Peter Hain and Harriet Harman yesterday became the first contenders to claim their places in the election for Labour's deputy leadership, with the Northern Ireland secretary publishing 47 pledges of support within two hours of John Prescott's formal announcement he would stand down.

They were first to declare, shortly after Mr Blair finished speaking in Sedgefield, with campaign teams for the four other candidates making a final push for nominations ahead of Thursday's deadline.

Aides to Jon Cruddas, Hazel Blears, and Alan Johnson said they had the 44 nominations from Labour MPs which each requires to gain a place on the ballot paper. Only Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, has yet to sign up the necessary numbers.

His team says he is confident of doing so - and several backbenchers suggested that colleagues would "lend" him backing if necessary, to ensure he was not out of the race. Stephen Timms, chief secretary to the Treasury, and arts minister David Lammy endorsed him yesterday. So did cabinet minister Lord Falconer, although, as a peer, he cannot nominate him.

Others suggested he was struggling - because he began canvassing support much later than others - and even predicted he could pull out this weekend.

Success at this stage offers little guidance to how the candidates would perform in the election. While support among MPs accounts for a third of the electoral college, the rest is made up equally of trade union members and Labour members, among whom Mr Benn is expected to perform well. Tony Lloyd, chair of the party's parliamentary committee, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme there was "subterranean frantic activity" as contenders pressed floating voters in the parliamentary Labour party, or PLP. Another MP added: "Nominating someone is not the same as supporting them. People ... say to MPs, 'You don't have to support this candidate, but get him on the ballot paper, because he's a few names short'."

Mr Hain's list of supporters includes Paul Murphy, his predecessor as Northern Ireland secretary, and ministers Paul Goggins and Shaun Woodward. He was to tell his constituency party in Neath last night: "My support within the PLP demonstrates my appeal to all parts of the country, all sections of the party, and to both marginal seats in Middle Britain and to traditional Labour heartlands."

His declaration led the justice minister, Harriet Harman, to add more names to her published list of supporters, taking it over the threshold. Her backers include Europe minister Geoff Hoon, health secretary Patricia Hewitt, and Yvette Cooper, the housing minister and a key Brownite.

Several colleagues remarked on the speed of Mr Hain's declaration, with the former home secretary David Blunkett, who is backing Mr Benn, describing it as a "media-savvy" move. Another backbencher described his declaration as "unbelievable", saying he should have allowed Mr Blair to have had his day.

Mr Johnson, the education secretary, is widely acknowledged in the PLP as the frontrunner. Fifty peers have declared their support, and he is known to have exceeded the MPs' nominations he needs with ease. He will launch his campaign formally on Tuesday morning.

Labour chairwoman Hazel Blears strengthened her claim as the New Labour candidate as she gained two more cabinet ministers. John Reid, the home secretary, and John Hutton, work and pensions secretary, joined communities secretary Ruth Kelly in endorsing her campaign.

Mr Cruddas, the backbench candidate urging the party to reconnect with its core voters, will unveil his backers on Monday. The leftwing magazine Tribune endorses him today, citing his work in opposing renewal of Trident and campaigning for the rights of migrant workers. It argued: "Mr Cruddas' rivals may complain that the campaign hasn't even started yet. But they have been left behind in the stalls. Jon Cruddas has already proven to be the change that is required."

One senior MP suggested Labour should not be preoccupied over the outcome: "It's an interesting contest ... [But] not likely to be a hugely significant factor in our success in government."

    Hain and Harman enter contest, G, 11.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/deputyleader/story/0,,2077292,00.html

12.30pm update

Brown lays out leadership credentials

Friday May 11, 2007
Deborah Summers, politics editor, and agencies
Guardian Unlimited

Gordon Brown vowed that he would "listen" and "learn" today as he formally announced his candidacy to succeed Tony Blair.

In a bold, and at times highly personal, speech the chancellor said it would be the "greatest honour" to take charge of the party and offered "new ideas for a new time".

Admitting he was pleased that his "friend", the prime minister had this morning endorsed him as his successor, Mr Brown also attempted to set his priorities apart from those of the Blair government.

Under his leadership, power would be restored to parliament and government made more open and accountable with a new ministerial code.

"Today there are new priorities and I offer a new leadership for this new time," he said. Mr Brown insisted he would welcome a challenge from "any other candidate who wants to stand", and said he would "fight hard" for every single nomination and expression of support.

The 'iron chancellor' also attempted to portray a more human image, talking of his moral compass, the joys of fatherhood and a childhood accident on a rugby pitch that left him blind in one eye.

Setting out his "core beliefs" he said the Britain he believed in was a Britain of fairness and opportunity for all citizens.

"If you work hard you are better off, if you save you are rewarded, if you play by the rules we will stand by you," he said.

As chancellor, he had learned that when you got something right, it was wise to build on it.

"But part of experience and judgment is to recognise that when you fall short you listen, you learn and then you are confident enough to set new priorities," he said. "And I have learned also that the best way to use these priorities is to involve and to engage people themselves. And for me this starts with governing in a different way."

Just as his first act as chancellor of the exchequer was to give away power to the Bank of England to restore trust in economic policy, so one of his first acts as prime minister would be to restore power to parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy.

"Government must be more open and more accountable to parliament," he said. "For example, in decisions about peace and war, in public appointments and in a new ministerial code of conduct."

But this was just the beginning, Mr Brown said.

"Over the coming months, I want to build a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform that strengthens the accountability of all who hold power, that is clear about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in Britain today, that defends the union, and is vigilant about ensuring the hard-won liberties of the individual for which Britain has for centuries been renowned round the world, are at all times upheld, without relenting in our attack on terrorism."

Mr Brown promised he would form a government "of all the talents" and would tour the country meeting all sections of society.

Sporting a new haircut and flanked by his campaign logo, "Gordon Brown for Britain", the chancellor described how his upbringing and personal experiences had affected his politics.

"My father was a minister. For me my parents were, and their inspiration still is, my moral compass.

"It's a compass which has guided me through each stage of my life. They taught me the importance of integrity and decency, of treating people fairly and of duty to others."

Mr Brown said the "sheer joy" of fatherhood had changed his life, and he was "struggling" to make sure he was a good parent.

"Because I was fortunate enough to benefit from the best of education at my local school which helped me to university, and because I had the best of healthcare that saved my sight when I was injured playing rugby and struggled as a teenager, I want for my children and for all children the best education and the best healthcare," he said.

Mr Brown said his minister father instilled in him a "faith in people" which had inspired his entry into politics.

He added: "For me, the weeks of the campaign are a chance to discuss new ideas, but also to listen to your concerns.

"I will listen and I will learn. I will strive to meet people's aspirations.

"I want to lead a government humble enough to know its place, where I will always strive to be - and that's on people's side."

Earlier, the prime minister had set aside their famously turbulent relationship to praise Mr Brown as an "extraordinary and rare talent".

"I am absolutely delighted to give my full support to Gordon as the next leader of the Labour party and as prime minister and to endorse him fully," Mr Blair said.

"I think he has got what it takes to lead the Labour party and indeed the country with distinction."

    Brown lays out leadership credentials, G, 11.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2077653,00.html

11.30am update

Blair backs Brown

as chancellor launches campaign

Friday May 11, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Deborah Summers and agencies

Gordon Brown is an "extraordinary and rare talent", Tony Blair said today as he finally endorsed the chancellor as his successor.

After years of obfuscation over who he would like to see replace him at No 10, the prime minister said he would be "absolutely delighted to give my full support to Gordon".

The pronouncement brings to an end a decade of feuding between the two men and will cement the chancellor's prospects of clinching the top job when the prime minister steps down on June 27.

Mr Blair said: "I'm absolutely delighted to give my full support to Gordon as the next leader of the Labour party and prime minister and to endorse him fully.

"I think he has got what it takes to lead the Labour party and indeed the country with distinction."

Describing Mr Brown as "an extraordinary and rare talent", he added: "He has shown, as perhaps the most successful chancellor in our country's history, that he's got the strength and the experience and the judgment to make a great prime minister."

Meanwhile, Mr Brown set out his vision and values as he formally announced his candidacy to succeed Mr Blair. The chancellor said that as the country changed, his party had to change too.

"Today there are new priorities and I offer a new leadership," he said.

Mr Brown vowed to restore power to parliament and make government more open and accountable.

Mr Brown said he offered "new ideas, the vision and the experience" to earn the trust of the British people.

With victory for the Scot looking more of a foregone conclusion than ever, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said today that she expected the US to work "very, very well" with Mr Brown as prime minister.

Ms Rice hailed Tony Blair as a tremendous visionary but made clear that she expected the trans-Atlantic relationship to remain "very strong" under his probable successor.

Her comments came after George Bush yesterday hailed Mr Blair as "a good friend" after his announcement that he would stand down as PM.

Mr Bush also described the chancellor as "easy to talk to, a good thinker... an open and engaging person" and made clear he hoped to work well with him on issues including Iraq.

Ms Rice told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think the relationship will be very close, in part because Britain and the United States are such key allies.

"The bonds with Prime Minister Blair have been forged through some of the most difficult times, through the time of 9/11, through the time of the attacks on London, through Afghanistan and Iraq and Northern Ireland, and those are bonds of friendship that come from having been through some of the toughest circumstances.

"But Britain and America will always be friends and I know that we will work very, very well with Gordon Brown when he becomes prime minister."

The BBC reported today that Mr Brown's campaign slogan would be "Brown for Britain".

Last night, after Mr Blair's resignation speech, the Labour party's website was updated and his famous slogan "New Labour, New Britain" was removed.

It was replaced with a logo specifically designed for the leadership campaign, made up of a rose motif with the words "Labour leadership elections".

However, a party spokesman said that the New Labour branding would return after the contests for leader and deputy were complete.

Jack Straw, the leader of the Commons and Mr Brown's campaign manager, insisted last night that the chancellor would welcome any challengers for the top job.

But that prospect appeared to recede when the two hopefuls from the party's left failed to agree which of them should run against the chancellor.

Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, and John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, had struck a deal that whoever received the least backing would stand aside, giving the other a much better chance of achieving the 44 MPs' nominations required to reach the final ballot.

But after a private meeting yesterday afternoon they delayed the decision until Monday, saying that their levels of support were "too close to call".

The move sparked immediate speculation that even pooling their backers the pair had been unable to achieve 44 nominations - although they insisted that there was "clearly sufficient support" for a candidate from the left.

Mr Blair's endorsement of the chancellor was by no means clear cut. Mr Brown has previously accused the prime minister of reneging on a deal to hand him the keys to No 10.

Mr Blair always denied there was ever such a deal and has until now refused to endorse any candidate as his successor.

But as all the mainstream Blairites mooted as challengers to the chancellor fell by the wayside, the prime minister's mood towards Mr Brown has softened.

The home secretary, John Reid, was the last to confirm he would not run last weekend, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Charles Clarke.

The environment secretary, David Miliband, the education secretary, Alan Johnson, and the former health secretary, Alan Milburn, are also among those who have decided against standing.

However, Mr Brown will have to attend party hustings even if he is the only candidate to replace Mr Blair.

Mr Blair's successor will be announced at a special party conference on Sunday June 24.

Mr Straw said of Mr Brown's candidature: "He has widespread support and I think that will be reflected in his nominations."

    Blair backs Brown as chancellor launches campaign, G, 11.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2077454,00.html

1pm update

Brown prepares for power

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Hélène Mulholland and David Hencke

Tony Blair's announcement of his resignation today paves the way for Gordon Brown to realise his long-held ambition to seize the reins at No 10.

According to his campaign team, the chancellor has now garnered pledges from 271 of the 355 Labour MPs, with the figure increasing by the hour.

The decision by John Reid, the home secretary, to leave government without throwing his hat in the ring, has bolstered Mr Brown's support.

However, the Brown camp believes that John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, or Michael Meacher, the MP for Oldham West and Royton, could scrape the 44 votes they need to get onto the ballot paper, if, as expected, one of them stands aside to maximise support for a single leftwing candidate.

Around 84 Labour MPs are thought to be "undecided" about who they would back, although a number will be committed Blairites who will have no in intention of voting for either of them. The two are due to hold a joint a press conference later today to make their intensions clear.

There have also been last-minute moves by two of the candidates in the deputy leadership contest - Peter Hain and Hilary Benn - to see if they can get a deal to back Mr McDonnell, in return for his supporters backing them.

While Labour party members speculate on whether they face a contest or a coronation, preparations are under way for the seven-week election process.

Today's resignation by Mr Blair triggers a meeting of the Labour party's national executive committee, which will meet on Sunday to finalise the timetable and arrangements for the nominations for the leadership and deputy leadership contest and appoint an election committee to oversee the process.

The chancellor, meanwhile, will steam ahead with his campaign tomorrow, by unveiling his policy agenda as prospective party leader on a theme of "continuity and change".

Mr Brown will attempt to shake off his "control freakery" image and has already signalled his belief that parliament should have a say on big decisions such as going to war.

He will also call for more powers to be devolved away from Whitehall and greater consultation, with the executive being held to account not just by parliament but also by the country.

Examples of decentralisation could include setting up an independent board for the national health service that would give it constitutional freedom and continuity of policy.

On foreign policy, the chancellor is anxious to draw a line under the Iraq conflict - perhaps the biggest cause of the government's unpopularity - and has pledged to reduce troop numbers when possible.

He is also expected to try to shed the UK's image as George Bush's poodle by forging a different relationship with the US.

But he is unlikely to radically change security policy. He supported government plans - defeated in parliament - to detain terrorism suspects for more than 28 days without charge.

On Europe, Mr Brown is expected to join France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel to advocate structural reforms in the European Union.

The chancellor hopes to avoid a summer of discontent by doing the rounds of spring union conferences including the GMB and the T&G (which will have a solo conference despite now being part of the superunion merger with Amicus).

Unions want to see some rolling back on privatisation and public-private partnerships, which they say are fragmenting the nation's public services.

The opposition, meanwhile, are already busy knocking the chancellor by painting him as "a blast from the past".

The Conservatives have seized on his decision to end tax relief on pension schemes 10 years ago which recently came back to haunt him as part of their strategy.

And they have worked hard on inextricably tying Mr Brown to the Blair project and pointing only to the faultlines.

The chancellor will be using the next few weeks to plan a cabinet reshuffle for a Brown government.

Expected beneficiaries are Ed Balls, currently economic secretary to the Treasury and formally Mr Brown's trusted special adviser, Yvette Cooper, the housing and planning minister, and Ruth Kelly, the education secretary.

Mr Reid has already announced his intention to quit cabinet once Mr Brown takes the helm.

John Hutton, the Blairite secretary for work and pensions, is also expected to be moved.

The contest has not even begun, but Mr Brown has had an unprecedented period of time to plan for his time in No 10 - after 13 years of waiting in the wings.

    Brown prepares for power, G, 10.5.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2076713,00.html

Long wait over for Britain's Brown

Thu May 10, 2007
4:12AM EDT
Reuters
By Sumeet Desai

LONDON (Reuters) - Sure of becoming prime minister after long years of waiting, Gordon Brown smiles much more now.

He's got tailored suits and whiter teeth, and is making a huge effort to appear more personable. But Britain's finance minister still faces a battle to guide the increasingly unpopular Labor Party to a fourth successive election victory.

The son of a clergyman, Brown's serious style is very different from that of Prime Minister Tony Blair, the perennially upbeat lawyer who will announce on Thursday he is stepping down after more than 10 years in office.

"Perhaps I will soon be able to talk about things other than financial figures," the 56-year-old Scot told Reuters. "I give news about the economy, and so the scope for great humor isn't really there. I can't just start cracking jokes about taxation."

Brown says he always wanted to be footballer. But at 16, a sporting injury cost him an eye and put him in hospital for months. He was in danger of going completely blind.

"Every event that you face shapes you," he says. "I just had to stay determined and positive.

"The most important thing in one's life is to be determined when bad things happen to you, and not to let events beat you."

Brown threw himself into left-wing politics at Edinburgh University, his beliefs shaped by the poverty he saw growing up in Kirkcaldy, a town with a failing linoleum industry.

The Brown Sugars -- miniskirted female fans -- cheered him to his first election victory as university rector. Colleagues remember the student Brown as being intensely driven and he remains a single-minded workaholic.

WORKHORSE

Flying into Iraq for the first time in November, Brown continued studying his papers as the military helicopter lurched violently a few meters above the ground.

As the longest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in 200 years, Brown has had a greater hand in shaping domestic policy than any other incumbent in living memory.

He held the government's purse strings so tightly that one former top civil servant said he demonstrated "Stalinist ruthlessness" towards colleagues over spending plans.

His first act on entering office in 1997 is still regarded as Labor's masterstroke, handing control of interest rates to the Bank of England. He also kept Britain out of the euro.

The British economy has thrived and the International Monetary Fund repeatedly praises his skilful management.

But government borrowing has risen and the housing boom that has made huge numbers paper millionaires has increased inequality and created a trillion-pound debt mountain.

With decisions often made within a tightly knit coterie, many have criticized Brown's management style. Opponents say he lacks charm and often walks right past them without a word.

Certainly, Brown is more of a bruiser than Blair. He angered fellow G7 finance ministers in 2005 over his determination to get a deal on writing off Africa's debts and likes to portray himself as a staunch defender of British interests in Europe.

Fatherhood, however, has softened him. Brown shed a tear on television last year talking about the death of his daughter, Jennifer Jane, 10 days after her premature birth in 2001.

He and wife Sarah have had two sons since. John in 2003 and Fraser, who has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, last year.

Brown's face lights up when he talks about them. "I need a red cement mixer. I'm going to be in trouble unless I get a red cement mixer," he suddenly interjected at dinner recently.

Glasgow-born Brown first entered in parliament in 1983 to share an office with another promising newcomer -- Tony Blair.

The two rapidly rose through the ranks of an opposition party struggling to reinvent itself, with Brown considered the senior member of the partnership.

But when party boss John Smith died in 1994, Labor folklore has it that Brown agreed at a trendy London restaurant to give Blair a clear run for the leadership on the understanding he would take over halfway through a second term in government.

That point has long come and gone, creating the tension and intense rivalry that has been the defining feature of British politics for a decade.

Brown now finally looks certain to be prime minister. But with Labor well behind the Conservatives in opinion polls and an election expected in 2009, the question is for how long.

    Long wait over for Britain's Brown, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1027566220070510

Five Americans who changed Tony Blair

May 10, 2007
The Times > Blogs

1. Will Marshall. In 1992, the President of the Progressive Policy Institute was visited by two young British Labour politicians. One of them was Gordon Brown, he forgot the name of the other.

But the impact on Blair of Marshall and his colleagues in the Democratic Leadership Council was greater. Brown and Blair were visiting to get tips from Clinton associates. The PPI was one of the most fruitful sources. Their working papers helped new Labour get started on a new policy agenda - with a Centre Right bent.

The identity of thinking became so great that Marshall now says that the balance of intellectual payments has changed and that the Democrats are drawing from new Labour. Blair became a new Southern Democrat.

2. Bill Clinton. The election of Clinton profoundly altered Blair and his associates. Philip Gould, Blair's pollster and one of the biggest influences upon him, spent time working on the campaign and absorbed its lessons.

Clinton changed Blair in three ways. First, the Blairites copied Clinton’s "War Room" and began combating the Tories in every news cycle. Second, Tony Blair learned from Clinton's immensely effective rhetorical style. He too began to feel the pain of the middle class. And finally, Clinton's failings hardened Blair. He reacted against the criticism that Clinton avoided hard choices by becoming harder himself. This trait first showed itself during the Kosovo conflict.

3. Rupert Murdoch. Your estimation of the influence of the proprietor of The Sun and The Times on the Prime Minister depends very much on what you think of Tony Blair. Do you think that his politics are on the Centre Right anyway or do you believe that he moved to the Right simply to win the support of the tabloid press? Perhaps it's a bit more complicated than that. Mr Blair provided his own assessment of the relationship last summer in a speech to a gathering of News Corp executives:

Rupert, it’s great to be back at the News Corp conference after all these years. When I first met you, I wasn’t sure I liked you, but I feared you. Now that my days of fighting elections are over, I don’t actually fear you, but I do like you.

This captures perfectly the way Blair has changed during his period in office - what he may have started out doing through necessity, he ended up doing though conviction.

4. Dick Morris. When Bill Clinton was choosing his holiday destination, he turned to his pollster for advice. He ended up in Wyoming. The obsessive use of focus group polling became part of Tony Blair's working method too.

In his book, Behind the Oval Office, about his work for Clinton, Morris set out his methods for developing policy. Morris suggests neutralising the Right on their strong issues - crime and the economy - leaving them to fight where they are weak - education, the environment and so on. Blair followed Morris's methods and ideas very closely.

In fact, Behind the Oval Office, written as a memoir of Morris’s time advising Clinton, remains one of the best texts on Blair's political methods.

5. George W. Bush. The partnership of Bush and Blair, the linking of their names in the public imagination, is an unlikely one. It happened because of Tony Blair's natural liberal interventionism and his view of the importance of the "special relationship". If George Bush had not chosen to invade Iraq, Tony Blair almost certainly would not have advocated doing so. But once the US President had made up his mind to proceed, the British prime minister was never going to allow the Americans to act alone.

Acting together with George Bush has changed Tony Blair in two ways - it has reinforced his interventionist instincts, making that a more prominent part of his political make-up; and it has made him a harder, more ideological politician. He became less reliant on popularity, less concerned about it. And lucky for him that he did, since at the same time he also became a great deal less popular.

Posted by Daniel Finkelstein on May 10, 2007 in American Politics
 

Five Americans who changed Tony Blair, Ts, 10.5.2007, http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/05/five_americans__1.html

How Blair will be remembered

When all the spin has been spun and the soundbites long forgotten, we asked six scholars how Blair will go down in history

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian
Interviews by Ravi Somaiya and Alexandra Topping

Linda Colley

He used power to tackle inequality and create prosperity

"History will judge him, to a degree, in the same way everyone judges him now. He has so many skills as a politician - he's resilient, he has stamina, he has charm, he's articulate, he's a great Commons performer and has great energy. In short, he possesses superb political gifts. The deeper problem is what he did with his power. That is where history will probably go for him. Unless a miracle happens in Iraq, or our perceptions of that conflict change, questions will be asked.

"Blair's focus on foreign affairs and his deep religious bond with George Bush arguably distorted his views at times and moved him away from issues at home, and particularly in Europe. He'd probably admit that one of the things he'd wanted to do was to improve Britain's relations with the rest of Europe, but that the alliance with the US and the Iraq war have tended to have the opposite effect.

"As for his achievements - you can see how much he, and his administration have done for women and black people by the enthusiasm with which David Cameron has taken up this drive to improve equality. If Blair hadn't pushed, this might never have happened - and I think it is a sea-change.

"Britain is now far more prosperous. No one is saying that there isn't poverty, but if one goes to visit Paris and walks around there, and then does the same in London, the amount of wealth and conspicuous consumption we have is striking, and that's true even beyond the capital. One can be moralising and say 'what is all this wealth really doing for us' but on the whole being prosperous is far nicer than the alternative. People now take it for granted, so Blair doesn't get any credit."

Linda Colley is Shelby MC Davis 1958 professor of history at Princeton University



Niall Ferguson

Botched reforms, and a diluted brand of Thatcherism

"When I first met Blair, before he became prime minister, I remember asking him if he was New Labour or New Liberal, because he didn't seem like a socialist. He just gave me one of those wide grins.

"There are four key points he should be judged on: constitutional change, an end to sleaze, education (education, education), and an ethical foreign policy - which became a curiously important part of his time as PM.

"What kept him in power, economic stability, wasn't really to his credit. One has to thank Gordon Brown, the Bank of England and globalisation, not necessarily in that order. He's been very lucky to be prime pinister during this time - most Labour premierships have been terminated by economic instability.

"The most ambitious thing he attempted was constitutional reform, in the House of Lords and through devolution. In both cases, it's failed. The botched upper chamber reform is a fast track back to sleaze.

"Education was supposed to be his number one priority, but a lot of what this government has done has been pouring money into old systems. Comprehensive schools and the NHS just eat money. I'm particularly disillusioned about education - all this money has gone in but we have seen little result. In mathematical attainment, for example, we're well down the international rankings.

"Blair's legacy will be remarkably like Margaret Thatcher's. We pretty much are where we were. What the British electorate wanted, and got, was the Thatcherite economics without its rather harsh face, Thatcherism-lite, with a degree of old Labour income redistribution smuggled in by the chancellor.

"Ultimately, I think his reputation will be determined more by his foreign policy, and particularly Iraq, than anything else."

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch professor of history at Harvard University



Margot Finn

Today, I would say Iraq, but ask me again in a few years' time

"Tony Blair's legacy will depend immensely on when you ask historians that question. Jimmy Carter was considered a complete disaster shortly after the end of his term in office, but has been recently voted the most popular American president.

"What he will be remembered for in the short term is the Iraq war, and I think it will be difficult to get away from that. Another worrying legacy will be the erosion of due process - a fairly fundamental commitment to civil liberties and international law.

"How he is judged will also depend in part on what comes after, and whether his successor wins or loses the next election. I think if his successor, whether it's Brown or someone else, loses the next election much of that will fall to Blair. Partly because of the prolonged period he's taken to resign and the major tactical errors of announcing it so early and in taking so long to do it.

"It says something about the inadequacies of how we view politics that this probably won't be viewed as a triumph, but I think a crucial thing [Blair achieved] is the national minimum wage. It's not something that will be immensely trumpeted and celebrated, but for people at the bottom of the economic pile is something very meaningful.

"I don't think it's fair to call the Blair years a disastrous decade, partly because of the economy - although not everyone is going to associate that with Tony Blair as opposed to Gordon Brown. In terms of international relations it is likely that for the short to medium term we'll judge him, probably rightly, very harshly. In the longer term, history has this wonderful way of discombobulating everything we thought we knew, so in the longer term I think he may well do significantly better than that."

Margot Finn is professor of modern British history at Warwick University


Eric Hobsbawm

At least he will be remembered, but, sadly, for the war

"Well, in the first place, he's definitely going to be remembered, unlike other prime ministers who are only known by those doing PhDs. That's not only because he won three elections, although that is something that interests the media a lot. It's mainly because he represents a certain post-Thatcher period.

"In many respects, the government's domestic record is pretty respectable - due to people around Blair, as much as him. If not for Iraq, the critique of the government would have been that it carried on a Thatcherite tradition at the expense of Labour ideals.

"He, and his administration, had three great domestic failures: in the first place he failed to create, or even renew, New Labour. He essentially created his government from people who had come to the fore under Kinnock, with the odd exception like Miliband. This left him with no successor but the one he clearly did not want - Brown. Second, his was the first government that completely subordinated governing to the needs of the media. He introduced an era where future prime ministers will be judged mainly on how they look on screen. Third, he continued to weaken the structure of British governance by short-term initiatives with unconsidered long-term implications (Scotland, Wales, the Lords) and headline-grabbing snap legislation which was poorly thought through.

"The major positive is Northern Ireland. Blair is mainly responsible for what looked like an armistice turning into a lasting peace.

"Except for Iraq, he would have been remembered as a reasonable PM, about the same level as Harold Macmillan. But Iraq wasn't an accident. He stopped being the brilliantly successful intuitive vote-getting politician and developed a missionary conviction for saving the world by armed interventions, most catastrophically with Bush. As Eden is remembered for Suez, Blair will be remembered for Iraq."

Eric Hobsbawm is president, Birkbeck, University of London


Tristram Hunt

He will be praised for modernising and globalising Britain

"Blair's legacy will partly lie in how he eased Britain into a globalised world, and helped it come to terms with the forces of globalisation whether cultural, economic or political. You can compare his tenure to the Roy Jenkins era, when, as home secretary in the 60s and 70s he was liberalising homosexual and abortion law. That cultural element of the Blair era is quite important, whether it's equality, gender or race legislation, and I think will be looked on favourably.

"Ironically, the things Blair will be most remembered for those he's not that interested in, like constitutional reform, devolution, etc. The high era of Britishness over the last 200 years comes to an end with the Blair years, partly because of the end of empire and a change in how we see ourselves.

"In terms of the big ugly elephant in the room, historians will see Blair keeping the power of Britain alive through deft mobilisation of the armed forces in the early years in Serbia, Sierra Leone and, I would say, Afghanistan. On the other hand, I don't think he will be judged particularly well in the Iraq war, as a result of his slight misreading of the Anglo-American relationship.

"It's difficult to say if he will be judged less harshly in the future. I don't take the view that people judge him that harshly at the moment, if you differentiate the general public from the aggrieved political classes. People are angry about Iraq politically, especially on the left, but I don't accept that everyone judges him harshly. The silent majority valued his time as prime minister. The ease Blair had with the world was very different from the cold war era of Thatcher or the middle-England mindset of Major."

Dr Tristram Hunt is visiting professor at Arizona State University and a lecturer in history at Queen Mary, University of London


Andrew Roberts

A great prime minister, who fought for freedom

"I think Tony Blair will go down in history as a great prime minister because, although his failure to change that much domestically matters a lot to us now, it won't in 40 or 50 years' time. People don't tend to judge prime ministers on obscure statistics. What they remember are the big things, and Tony Blair's big things will be peace in Northern Ireland, democracy in Iraq and the flinging out of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan and other great achievements that he's had in the course of his premiership.

"He's going to go down certainly in the first division of British prime ministers since 1900. For the first four-and-a-half years of his time as PM he was pushed around by special interest groups and opinion polls, but after 9/11 he stuck to the war on terror and had the guts to support America when America most needed it. He had the guts to stick with that support and not resile from it, even though he came under enormous political pressure to do so. I admire him for that and think history will too.

"Time gives you perspective and you don't worry about things peripheral to the central issue. The central issue is foreign policy, which has been unlike normal Labour foreign policy. It's been a breath of fresh air to see Labour stick up for freedom around the world, as Blair has."
Andrew Roberts is author of A History of English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900

· This article will appear in a special 48-page supplement, The Blair Years, in which the Guardian's best writers and political commentators pass judgment on Tony Blair's decade in power - free with Friday's Guardian.

    How Blair will be remembered, G, 10.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2075005,00.html

Issue 1183        27 April 2007

Analysis

The second worst kept secret of the week

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Larry Elliott, economics editor


The second worst kept secret of the week was made public at noon when the Bank of England announced that it was raising interest rates to 5.5% - the highest level for six years.

At the very moment that Tony Blair was announcing he was stepping down as prime minister, the statement from Threadneedle Street and the three pieces of data released today spoke volumes about the underlying weaknesses of the economy that will be inherited by Gordon Brown.


First, there was the news from the Halifax that house prices - despite the three previous quarter-point hikes in the bank rate - are still booming.


The average cost of a home is up by almost 11% on a year ago and is now nudging £200,000. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the body that represents estate agents, house prices have risen 170% in the Blair years - fine if you want to borrow money against the rising value of your property, not so clever if you are struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder.


Why have house prices boomed? Partly because Britain is a small island with tough planning laws and a tax regime that encourages home ownership. Partly because there has been a very rapid increase in migration. And partly because there has been far too much easy money sloshing around the economy, allowing individuals to borrow more than they can really afford.


If we have been living beyond our means as individuals, the same goes for us as a nation.


The second piece of economic data revealed that Britain had a monthly trade deficit of £7bn in March - the worst figure for almost a year and the third highest on record. Consumer spending, underpinned by the buoyant housing market, has been the driving force behind economic growth, and year in and year out under Labour Britain has been importing far more than it has been exporting.


Not once in the past 10 years has the UK's current account balance been in the black, despite the surpluses racked up by the City.


The explanation for this lies in the third piece of economic data out today - for industrial production. For a party that has its roots in Britain's manufacturing heartlands, Labour's record has been miserable when it comes to making things. More than a million jobs have been lost in manufacturing and, despite a rebound in production in March, output has flatlined over the past decade.


Blair and Brown rarely mention the inflation-prone housing market, the trade deficit or the stagnation of manufacturing when they laud their own economic successes. Unsurprisingly, they tend to concentrate on 10 years of uninterrupted growth, claimant count unemployment below a million and (until recently) inflation that has remained close enough to its target.


This, Labour's high command boasts, is evidence of economic stability. It is nothing of the sort, since the alleged stability rests on the shakiest of foundations.


Strong consumer spending is needed to keep the economy growing, and that requires plenty of cheap money to keep the housing market afloat. A strong pound is required to ensure that all the imports flooding into the country are nice and cheap - with baleful consequences for UK manufacturers trying to export.


The current account deficit is only kept to manageable proportions because the speculators in the City have been able to make more out of their investments abroad than foreign speculators have been able to make out of their investments in the UK.


Ironically, while UK industry has been running to stand still under Blair, the City has never had it so good. The gap between rich and poor is wider now than it was when John Major walked out of 10 Downing Street for the last time on May 2 1997.


Major, of course, never recovered from the humiliation of Black Wednesday in September 1992, when George Soros masterminded the pound's departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism.


Blair has been the first Labour prime minister not to be hobbled by a devaluation or a severe run on the pound; one key factor behind his three election wins.


But it would absurd to conclude from the lack of a good old-fashioned sterling crisis that the prime minister will hand over an economy of near-perfection to his successor in a few weeks' time.


Between them Brown and Blair have contrived a live-now-pay-later economy characterised by dangerous levels of excess at every level - personal debt, record trade deficits, and an ever-larger carbon footprint. There will be a reckoning for the Blair years; all that's in question is when it will be.

    The second worst kept secret of the week, G, 10.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2076728,00.html

Analysis

Ten years in office have not changed Blair

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mary Riddell

Power is a great preservative. Look at Clinton, Bush, Chirac, Thatcher: give or take a scandal here, a new hairdo or a bit of cosmetic dentistry there, few durable leaders have been radically altered by a long stint at the top. Had they been more malleable, they would have faltered sooner. The same goes for Tony Blair.

I first interviewed him 15 years ago. It was 1992, an election had been lost, and Blair, just one more high-flying hopeful, was aiming for a seat on Labour's national executive committee.

He was, as I remember, charming and slightly vain. After the photographer arrived, he disappeared to comb his hair and don cream jeans, fretting when he discovered a small stain of bicycle chain oil on one leg.

His policy preoccupations - better childcare and keeping the streets safe for old ladies to walk at nights - have since been reiterated a million times. He made some coffee, chatted about his children and acknowledged, diffidently, some personal ambition. Even I, a raw reporter, could spot the towering understatement.

I last interviewed Blair a few weeks ago. The palette had changed - greyer hair and a tangerine complexion - but he seemed otherwise the same old Tone. How else would he have survived? Political Methuselahs can afford no self-doubt, no recriminations, no evolutionary process, no conversions.

A plausible manner and a humility bypass are the lifelines of the long-life leader and the curse of the countries they control.

Obviously Blair changed, as public taste altered and his credibility grew shabbier. The tremulous sincerity (and some, especially on Africa, was well-meant) had to go. Soundbites pertaining to history (as in "hand of") and the people (as in their princess) had the shelf life of cheese.

God, with whom Blair will be spending more time in his retirement, had a more or less obtrusive role. War and terrorism, which had not crossed his thoughts when I first met him in Trimdon, would shape his office and, in the case of the Iraq conflict, rightly stain his legacy.

The good things that he did were equally hard-wired. The freer, more equal society, the better maternity pay and leave, the civil partnerships and the erosion of prejudice, were all rooted in his past.

So was the superficiality, or presentational skill, that made him such a dodgy constitutional reformer and such a hit on Masterchef.

Blair gauged, and moulded, the preoccupations of an affluent and fretful country. I doubt that he has acquired or shed a belief in all his time in office. That is the secret of his durability and the key to his failure, and society's.

If only he could have seen the folly of imprisoning too many people, especially women and children. If only he could have understood the scandal of turning young people into rejects. If he could only have seen how easy it is to embitter a country by overstating tensions, enmities, crimes and dangers.

Whenever Blair did reproach himself, it was for not being tougher - notably, on reorganising public services. But he should also have allowed the country to be gentler, on its not-bad kids, its not-bad NHS, its not-bad civil society and its not-bad crime levels.

That would have freed him up to be tougher on its rubbish transport, its divisive schooling, its fractured communities and its cruel penal policy.

But leaders, like leopards, never change their spots.

    Ten years in office have not changed Blair, G, 10.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2076581,00.html

Was it good enough?

The Guardian
Polly Toynbee
May 10, 2007
10:56 AM

Iraq was his nemesis, the reason why Labour's great winner crashes out of the sky still in his prime, still with that easy power of persuasion that can silence a room full of hostile journalists. For Iraq, Tony Blair has paid with his political life and reputation.

But if the history books were only to record what he did at home, it would be another story. First, cast your mind back to that bright May morning and remember how little he promised. He warned his own side sternly that he was elected as New Labour and he would govern as New Labour. There was euphoria, but how carefully he limited expectations. That tiny pledge card contained only five unambitious minor promises.

Triangulation was a word stolen from Clinton's campaign, a "third way" that refused to sound a progressive drum and accepted much of the Thatcher settlement. Many on the left got their disillusion in long before the 1997 election, refusing to vote for a New Labour they had already decided was betrayal. The left is always destined for betrayal because nothing can be enough.

But imagine if Labour's early disillusionists had been given a crystal ball that day to see what Blair would actually do in the next 10 years. The truth is, they would have been surprised: the Blair era did change the political climate as surely as Thatcher had done before. What better proof than Cameron's strange transmogrification into a caring, green, liberal-minded leader who claims wellbeing trumps wealth? He may be a wolf in sheep's clothing, but he thinks Conservatives can't win unless they look, sound and smell more like progressive social democrats.

Nothing would have predicted that Tony Blair would utter that most extraordinary pledge in British living political memory, his promise to abolish all child poverty by 2020. If the left wanted a taste of near-impossibilism, here it is. Inheriting a child-poverty calamity where Thatcher let one in three children fall under the poverty threshold, with the shaming statistic that one in three of all the EU's poor children were now born in Britain, here was a bold promise indeed.

So the twin-track poverty policy began by directing significant sums to poor families through much higher benefits - up by 53% - and even more via the new tax credit to the low paid. More money was redistributed through the tax system than under any previous Labour government: 600,000 fewer children are now poor and those still below the line are much better off.

The other track was social support for families in trouble. Soon there will be 3,500 Sure Start children's centres for all new parents, havens of community, childcare and nursery education for every family, as well as intensive help for parents in trouble. Catch children young enough, improve their home life, and many will be rescued from early calamity. Results may not be felt for years to come but the ambition and the imagination will be life-changing for future generations, as the missing cradle is added to the cradle-to-grave welfare state. In schools results improved, but his legacy will be transforming them all soon into extended schools, with breakfast and tea clubs, after school homework help, aiming to give all children the sport, arts and tutoring that private schools offer the few.

Back in 1997 Labour never promised much to mothers. But now universal childcare will be well on the way by the next election. Nor did they promise flexible work, but millions of women have claimed it from their employers. Nor did Labour say maternity pay would double in value and triple in time off work. It was women who gained most from the minimum wage.

Clinics, hospitals and schools are almost unrecognisable from the shabby disrepair Labour inherited. Ten years ago roofs leaked, Portakabins and even war-time Nissen huts took overflows of many pupils and patients. Where's the money gone, the opposition asks? It can be seen in every public service, public building and open space by anyone who can remember 10 years ago.

It can be seen in the pay and status of public servants. Now, 70% more people apply to be teachers, while a doctor and nurse shortage has become a glut. Children able to read and add up at 11 rose from 59% to 79%. Cancer and heart deaths fell sharply and waiting times for operations plummeted: in 1997 283,866 people waited over six months, but by this March there were only 199. Shorter waits means private medicine is now in decline and private health insurance is falling.

All this, with the strongest economy and the longest period of growth, is Blair's legacy. The turbo-boost to public services will last: no future government can let these figures slide backwards again. Add to that the wind of change in the social climate. If some keen 1997 MP had promised civil partnerships, it would have been seen as electoral suicide, akin to Clinton's first row over gays in the military. Yet it has been done, a civilising act. No one can take these things away from him, emblems of a good social democrat - and all of it done in the face of a mainly hostile 75% rightwing British media that grew more indignant with every successive Conservative defeat.

But the difficult question remains: was all that good enough? With that enormous majority, all that early good will in a country longing for change, was this too little progress to show for 10 prosperous years? Scarred by those 18 formative years out of office, Blair embraced market ideology with the uncritical fervour of a convert, importing it to the public sector as "choice". The poor never heard that they came first and that Labour was for them, while the greed of the rich was let rip with never a word of disgust. Inequality grew. The City was praised: rights and responsibilities applied to those on social security, never to boardrooms helping themselves to 30% annual increases. That's why there was no Blair legend of social justice. Public messages were for middle class ears, while any good for the underdog was done by stealth.

Abroad, his failed foreign policy leaves a nation more alienated from Europe, more Eurosceptic than he found it. His strange Bush alliance leaves Britain more anti-American and in that fatal bond, more disliked across the globe: good done in Sierra Leone or Kosovo was forgotten in Baghdad. He leaves a country both more isolated and more isolationist.

At home, the final reckoning depends on whether what comes after is better or worse. But let no one diminish his social achievements that outshine every government since Attlee.

This article will appear in a special 48-page supplement, The Blair Years, in which the Guardian's best writers and political commentators pass judgment on his decade in power - free with Friday's Guardian.

    Was it good enough?, G, 10.5.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/polly_toynbee/2007/05/was_it_good_enough.html

Getting a laugh

out of this prime minister

has been like trying

to open an oyster

with a plastic fork

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian
Simon Hoggart

When Blair and Labour came to power in 1997 kind friends warned me that my job as a sketchwriter was about to become impossible. The Tory administration had been full of grotesques, sleazeballs and hilarious incompetents. This lot were smooth, sleek, suited; they looked like middle-management executives. Sketching their work would be like trying to get jokes out of the sales team at a management consultancy.

Well, they were wrong, as the past 10 years have shown. The boys and girls proved to be every bit as off-the-wall and out-to-lunch as their predecessors. Take John Prescott, for whom we in the trade ought to sacrifice several head of oxen to the gods. He always claimed to believe that the sketchwriters were public school snobs, who were putting him down for his lack of education. Yet he went to Oxford and I, as it happened, was educated at the public expense, largely in his own city of Hull.

Even the bores, who like little mammals are creeping out of the dinosaurs' shadows - the Alistair Darlings and John Huttons - are boring in a fascinating sort of way. They have turned tedium into an art form. But Blair himself has always remained a problem. Getting hold of him has been like trying to open an oyster with a plastic fork. I spent some weeks making a programme for Radio 4 about how comedians and satirists have coped, and many admit that they never quite nailed him. Rory Bremner, for example, likes to come up with a phrase that somehow embodies the victim, even if they never used it. "I'm not going to hurt you" was perfect for Michael Howard. But his team never found a line that encapsulated Blair.

When a new political figure comes on the scene, sketchwriters and cartoonists have the same job. We need to find the key elements, of physical appearance and speech, then exaggerate them to that they become familiar to readers and can be used as a helpful shorthand for drawings and articles. Steve Bell spotted the Blair eyeball, the one mad staring optic, which he seemed to have inherited from Thatcher. The bonkers eye complements the sane one, which roves around the room in a friendly way; meanwhile the angry one is taking names. Alarmingly, the eyes change places; sometimes it's the right which comes at you like a dentist's drill, sometimes the left.

I noticed first the verb-free sentences, which he still uses today: "Our people, prosperous and secure. Our children, meeting the challenge ..." These are sentences without real content, expressing vague aspirations rather than real commitments. He might use up to 200 in one speech, making it sound like oratorical Muzak, conveying little but a sense of wellbeing.

Sometimes the speeches actually resembled, say, a Mozart sonata. A theme would be established - for example, we must modernise, while bearing in mind our true values. Then he would restate the theme in slightly different fashion: we must hold to our values, but at the same time face up to the challenge of the future. Then he would go all over the place before returning to the principal leitmotif, that we can only bring change if we remember what we truly stand for - our core values. Or the other way round. None of it ever amounted either to a set of proposals or even an over-arching philosophy. Indeed, a backbencher once had the nerve to ask him in PM's Questions what his political philosophy was. You would imagine that he kept a philosophy up his sleeve for just such an occasion, but he didn't; instead he flannelled about appointing the heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub to head some NHS committee or other. That might be an achievement, but it didn't amount to a philosophy. Quite recently a Tory asked him what his greatest regret had been. He didn't have one. He said that, by contrast, the Tories should regret losing three elections to him. Watching him in the Commons one was reminded often that in his view his greatest achievement was winning elections. Running the country was something you had to do to fill time between these triumphs.

(He has expressed some regrets, but usually these amount to a sense that he wasn't bold enough, which means not Blairite enough. A constant theme is "I should have let me be me!")

Of course Blair was a latish baby-boomer, and boomers don't do oratory. Inspiring political speeches might have helped Churchill stiffen the national sinews, but 30 years later it was what got America into Vietnam. Blair's generation preferred to trust their friends, chatting over a cup of coffee. Even in his big setpieces Blair often sounds as if he is sitting on a sofa with a couple of pals over a Party Seven: "Y'know, ah'm not going to say 'sorry' for getting rid of Saddam Hussein ..."

One curious side-effect is that when he does go for the big phrase or saying, the one that is supposed to be downloaded direct into the next Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, it comes out stiff and clunky. If Saddam admits the weapons inspectors "then he will put the world to proof!" Eh? "The gates of xenophobia, falling down!" Come again? "Locking horns with modernity." No thank you, I'd rather not. "I have an irreducible core," which sounds like a nuclear reactor liable to go critical at any moment.

"I've not got a reverse gear" was plain English, I suppose, but utterly meaningless. The other phrases we remember came before he reached Downing Street: "Education, education, education" and "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." Later ones seem like hollow jokes: "I'm a pretty straight sort of guy," and "This is no time for soundbites ... I feel the hand of history on my shoulders." The only copper-bottomed success was "she was the People's Princess," and no one is sure whether he or Alastair Campbell came up with that.

At other times he could be amazingly impressive. Facing the liaison committee, 30 or so chairpersons from various Commons committees, he could offer opinions and statistics for two and a half hours without a note in front of him, or a word of help from his aides. It was a performance of immense skill, and invariably silenced his audience.

Will I miss him? Not professionally, I think. Gordon Brown shows promising signs of being permanently on the brink of losing control, and that may make for great sketchwriting.

· This article will appear in a special 48-page supplement, The Blair Years, in which the Guardian's best writers and political commentators pass judgment on Tony Blair's decade in power - free with Friday's Guardian.

    Getting a laugh out of this prime minister has been like trying to open an oyster with a plastic fork, G, 10.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2074980,00.html

A figure of ridicule:

Oh, how we will miss him

Tony Blair has been the easiest of targets for the satirists.
Here, some of the leading lampooners explain
what he meant to them. Interviews by Andy Dykes,
Lisa Williams and Yolanda Bobeldijk

Published: 10 May 2007
The Independent

Dave Brown, Cartoonist, The Independent

I won't be sad to see the back of Blair. I detest the man and what he's done. But he's great to draw. You put all that bile, hatred and angst into drawing. Blair's legacy is Iraq. It could have almost been Northern Ireland but Iraq just overshadows everything.

He's easy to draw as a recognisable type. But you've got to do something that suggests he has this split personality. The one staring, glinting eye and the one closed, slightly wrinkled eye. As a cartoonist you can introduce these little elements over time.

There's one I did a couple of years ago at Christmas. It's just the shape of a Christmas tree. There's one single bauble that works as his glinting eye and a row of fairy lights that look like the teeth. That's Blair. You don't need any other features. Once you get people used to your depiction you can get on with the comment.

At first he was this young guy, fairly bland looking, but you pick up on things to help you say what you want to say. Once they are recognisable you stop worrying about realistic representation.

Blair has some interesting gestures that you can put into cartoons. If you draw him standing at a lectern he does this thing with his hands where he moves them one way and then switches them back the other way. Of course politicians are taught to do that but I don't know what it means.

I'm not looking forward to drawing more of Gordon Brown. I've been drawing him as long as I've been drawing Tony. Maybe as PM there'll be something more, but is there much to explore?

James Larkin, Actor who played Blair in the Channel 4 drama The Government Inspector

I approached the role not thinking about him, but thinking about the character that had been written. If I tried to play him as he is, with all the mannerisms and the voice, people would have seen it as an impression or an impersonation of him, rather than an acting role.

Michael Sheen, who played him in The Queen, did a great job. But he took on some of Blair's gestures and it made me wonder how similar to Blair he was acting. Instead, I tried to portray some of his personality traits, such as his energy. He has always had an extraordinary amount of energy, which I am quite jealous of. Blair's biographer said he liked my portrayal.

It is hard to say what his legacy will be. His character traits are apparent and will be remembered. He will be remembered as a determined person. I would play Tony Blair again. It was good fun.

John Morrison, Author of Anthony Blair: Captain of School, a comic novel

I think we all gave Tony Blair the benefit of the doubt when he went to war in Afghanistan. I supported a lot of the things he was trying to do. But when we went to war in Iraq I gave it a lot of thought and wanted to write about it. It struck me that Westminster is like an old-fashioned boys' school. The idea of writing a book about Westminister in this style seemed obvious.

Because Blair is a public school boy he fitted in well to what I was trying to do. Blair is so polite and eager to please. People who know him think my depcition was spot on.

I think the war in Iraq can be his only legacy. This man has thousands of deaths on his conscience, in my view, and he can't get round that.

Jon Culshaw, Impressionist and comedian

It didn't take long before Tony Blair became instantly recognisable to the audience. With Blair, people knew very soon that he was playing off his youth, off this earnest [adopts Blair voice] "things can only get better, wrinkled forehead, anxious earlobes" sort of approach.

At the start he was simply portrayed as a schoolboy. He was then portrayed as a sort of flouncing prime minister who liked feta cheese and Paul Smith suits. Then it was the Machiavellian Prime Minister with the red eyes. But he always had the earnest pointy finger and the cool prime minister bald spot. His body language and movements were pointy and jerky, like a little pigeon. I extend and stretch those characteristics when I play him.

My favourite form of his speech was where he was being very emphatic. He would always pinch his thumb and forefinger together in a very soft point. It was never a deliberate point. He really did want to create that people's prime minister, that softer image.

There'll be two chapters to his legacy. There's the "things can only get better" for the first five years and in the second half it was the actions behind the words. People were asking when is it going to get better? Then, of course, Iraq.

Robert Bathurst, Actor who plays the PM in BBC sitcom My Dad's The Prime Minister

I didn't watch Tony Blair specifically when I took the part in My Dad's The Prime Minister. It wasn't really about him; it was more about family life. It was a funny character who was running the country but couldn't rule his own family in Downing Street. But I did have a snoop around in Parliament before the show. For Whipping it Up [the stage play in which Bathurst plays a government whip] I do it more often than I did for My Dad's the Prime Minister. It's worth it to see how politicians actually behave.

The other day I was on the public bench in the House of Commons watching Prime Minister's Questions. Tony Blair is a masterful parliamentarian. Kenneth Clarke's face was creased with admiration when Blair was speaking, rather more than when David Cameron was speaking.

He completely stiffed the Tories in the Iraq debate. They had absolutely no leg to stand on. It was a masterful trick. I don't know what Blair's legacy will be, obviously Iraq will be part of it.

Alison Jackson, Film-maker

I'm making a film about Blair so I'm a bit surrounded at the moment. In some senses Blair was right for now because he was a perfect master of TV and we live in a TV world. He does that very well. It doesn't matter what he's saying; he knows how to get a captive audience.

He has directed and destroyed politics. We've always wondered if politicians were telling the truth and now there's no doubt that often they aren't.

There is no glory in Tony Blair's decade. There he is trying to go down in the history books and hoping people will forget how disappointing he was. But even in leaving he's managed to make a mess. He was always there for famous moments: Diana moments, Queen Mother moments, war. But there's this trail of horror that's left behind him.

The film I'm making, Tony Blair, Rock Star, was based on research we did into his gap year. When he did play his first rock concert, the drums fell apart and everything went wrong and everyone booed and walked out. Then when he managed a band he hired the Albert Hall but no one had ever heard of them so nobody came. He had all these fabulous ideas that came to nothing.

I suspect maybe in a couple of years he'll go into business, or after-dinner speaking. For now he's going to enjoy the pinnacle of his after-stardom. But his legacy will be Iraq and lies.

Jonathan Cullen, Actor who played Blair in Feelgood and Why We Went to War

When I first played Blair in Feelgood, I would start doing the wool-winding hand action and the audience would laugh straight away.

They were ready to laugh at him. But when I returned to the part, after 9/11, the audience had changed. They didn't want to see him as a figure of fun any more. I didn't prepare for the role. People want to see the characteristics that you remember when you don't look closely: the tone of sincerity, the pauses and the heavy emphases.

This is what you do when people in the pub ask you to "Do Blair". It can easily turn into Julian Clary though.

But when I did Why We Went to War, it had to be different. It was his parliamentary side. I had to fight the impulse to play him how I saw him and play his corner for him instead. Like most liberals, I was pleased when he came to power. But I became disenchanted when it turned out he was a Christian Democrat.

Alistair Beaton, Writer of stage plays Feelgood and Follow My Leader, and television programmes A Very Social Secretary and The Trial of Tony Blair

Tony Blair is worthy of satire. David Cameron is such an insubstantial figure you could write a three-minute sketch about him but no more. Blair is complex and contradictory, which makes him elusive and an interesting subject to satirise. He came into power on a great wave of hope and expectation. Then there was this strange curve from a man who always put his finger in the wind to give people what they wanted to the politician who started taking us to war.

He will be remembered for the disaster that is Iraq. It was a hopeless mission and its effects will go on a long time.

What is interesting about satire is moments such as yesterday, when I picked up the paper to read that Blair wants to set up an interfaith forum. I included this idea in The Trial of Tony Blair, written a year ago, and now it has come to life. It shows his delusional vanity, that he thinks he can improve understanding between religions when he has done so much to undermine relations between them.

I'm tempted to say I'm relieved he's going so I can move on. But I have a sneaky suspicion he'll find a well-paid and important international job and I'll need to take a shot at him once again.

Matt Buck, Cartoonist

It has got easier to draw Tony Blair in recent years, as there are more issues with which to characterise him. A cartoon always reveals something of a person that he or she actually wants to hide. With Tony Blair it's definitely his teeth. When he first appeared [in my cartoons] he had this sort of cheesy grin but over time his teeth got more battered and disorganised. It's a metaphor for something that seemed to look ok, but in fact wasn't quite so appealing.

I will always remember Tony Blair's face when he got off an aeroplane somewhere in the Far East, there were lots of cameras and it was just after the news that David Kelly was found dead. He looked utterly in shock and guilty. At the time, I didn't use that image for my drawing. I drew the white tent on the hill where David Kelly was found. I thought that was a better drawing. I may have been wrong.

    A figure of ridicule: Oh, how we will miss him, I, 10.5.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2527732.ece

FACTBOX:

Highs and lows of Blair's rule over Britain

Thu May 10, 2007
3:16AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair is set to announce on Thursday he is quitting as leader. Here is a chronology of the highs and lows of his premiership:

1997

May 2 - Election victory sweeps Blair's Labor Party into power with massive majority of 179 after 18 years in opposition.

May 6 - Finance minister Gordon Brown gives Britain's central bank, the Bank of England, the power to set interest rates. Economists credit the move as the single most important factor in securing eight years of solid growth that followed.

1998

April 10 - Blair seals Northern Ireland Good Friday deal to bring an end to 30 years of violence in British province.

November - Acts of parliament bring about Scottish and Welsh devolution, paving way for Scottish, Welsh elections.

1999

March - Blair sends troops to join NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia in a bid to halt suppression of ethnic Albanians.

June 13 - A collapse in Labor's core vote in elections for the European Parliament hands Blair his first electoral defeat.

2000

September - Blair criticized for his handling fuel tax crisis.

2001

June 8 - Blair wins second term, majority down to 167.

September - Blair pledges support to U.S. after September 11.

2002

September 24 - Britain publishes dossier on Iraq that says Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. Dossier is criticized for overplaying certainty of intelligence.

October - Northern Ireland returns to direct rule from London after the suspension of the local assembly following allegations of Irish Republican Army spying.

2003

February 15 - Half a million march in London to oppose war.

March 18 - Blair wins parliamentary vote over Iraq war but 139 party members defy him. Foreign minister Robin Cook resigns.

June 9 - Finance minister Brown rules out British adoption of the euro, dashing Blair hopes of placing Britain "at the heart of the European Union".

July 17 - British weapons expert David Kelly commits suicide after being identified as the source of a BBC story alleging the government had "sexed-up" intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons.

October 19 - Blair given electric shocks to regulate heart palpitations in the first health scare of his premiership.

2004

January 28 - Inquiry by judge Lord Hutton into Kelly's death exonerates Blair's government of deliberately distorting intelligence to justify war. Weeks of public testimony raise questions about how Blair's acolytes acted in run-up to war.

September 30 - Blair says would serve third term as prime minister if Labor win another general election, but that he would not fight a fourth general election as Labor leader.

October 1 - Blair in hospital to correct heart palpitations.

2005

May 1 - Leaked documents say Bush and Blair were determined to topple Saddam Hussein at least nine months before war.

May 5 - Blair wins third term, majority only 66.

July 6 - London declared host of the 2012 Olympic Games.

July 7 - Four suicide bombers blow themselves up on London's transport system killing 52 people and wounding about 700.

July - Leaders of the Group of Eight agree increase of $25 billion in annual aid for Africa at a summit hosted by Blair.

2006

March - Scotland Yard launches a probe into allegations political parties awarded state honors in return for loans.

September - Blair says he will stand down within a year.

December - Blair interviewed by police as witness in corruption probe cash-for-honors row.

2007

May 8 - Northern Ireland parties launch power-sharing government securing Blair a legacy of peace in the province.

    FACTBOX: Highs and lows of Blair's rule over Britain, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1038147220070510?src=051007_0713_TOPSTORY_blair_statement_live

Britain's Blair in his own words

Thu May 10, 2007
Reuters
3:16AM EDT

(Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce on Thursday he is stepping down as leader after more than a decade in office. Here are some of his memorable quotes:

"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. That is a prize beyond value" - at a NATO-Russia summit in Paris in 1997.

"We therefore here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy" - after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

"A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders" - in April 1998 before peace talks in Northern Ireland.

"They liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the people's princess and that is how she will stay" - after the death of Princess Diana in 1997.

"Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane" - Labor Party rally in 2003.

"My three priorities for government are education, education, education" - after Labor came to power in 1997.

"It is sometimes better to lose and be right than to win and do the wrong thing" - after his first parliamentary defeat in November 2005.

"I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear" - Labor Party rally in 2003.

"Labor will be tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - pledge made in 1992 while in opposition.

"This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this House, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this House to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk" - to parliament in March 2003 in debate about going to war in Iraq.

"This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace and see opportunity in the modern world and those who reject its existence" - at Reuters headquarters in March 2006, referring to the fight against terrorism.

    Britain's Blair in his own words, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1037532920070510?&src=051007_0724_TOPSTORY_britains_pm_tony_blair_resigns

FACTBOX: Longest-serving British prime ministers

Thu May 10, 2007
3:16AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to announce on Thursday he is stepping down as leader. He ranks ninth on the list of longest serving prime ministers and is the second person in the century to have held the job for 10 years.

Here are some facts about British prime ministers:

-- Only Margaret Thatcher has outlasted Blair as prime minister in the past century, occupying the head of government's Downing Street residence for 11-1/2 years from 1979 to 1990.

-- Both fall well short of several previous occupants of the post. Sir Robert Walpole, generally regarded as Britain's first prime minister, served nearly 21 years from 1721-42.

-- Blair is the longest-serving Labor Party prime minister and the first to win three elections in a row.

-- One woman and 51 men have passed through the doors of Number 10 Downing Street as prime minister since the address was first associated with British leaders in 1730.

-- George Canning holds the record for the shortest term as prime minister, serving just 119 days in 1827.

-- Here's a list of the longest serving prime ministers:

- Robert Walpole: (1721-42) 20 years 314 days.

- William Pitt the Younger: (1783-1801; 1804-06) 18 years 343 days.

- Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool: (1812-27) 14 years 305 days.

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury: (1885-86; 1886-92; 1895-1902) 13 years 252 days.

- William Ewart Gladstone: (1868-74; 1880-85; 1886; 1892-94) 12 years 126 days.

- Lord North: (1770-82) 12 years 58 days.

- Margaret Thatcher: (1979-90) 11 years 209 days.

- Henry Pelham: (1743-54) 10 years 191 days.

- Tony Blair: (1997-) 10 years 8 days.

(Source: 10 Downing Street website)

    FACTBOX: Longest-serving British prime ministers, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1038324920070510

Blair Says He Will Leave Office in June

May 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, May 10 — After months of coy hints and fevered speculation, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that he would leave office on June 27 after a decade in power in which he sacrificed his popularity to the war in Iraq and struggled at home to improve schools, policing and hospitals.

With stirring oratory cast as a personal testament, he declared: “I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That’s your call. But believe one thing: I did what I thought was right for our country.”

The announcement, in Mr. Blair’s home district of Sedgefield in northeastern England, was part of a closely-choreographed and protracted farewell that is not quite over yet. Between now and his final departure, Mr. Blair plans to attend major European Union and international summits in June.

The prime minister’s aides have sought to detail Mr. Blair’s agenda between now and his resignation to counter taunts from the opposition Conservatives that he is leading a lame duck administration. According to British media reports, he has also scheduled trips to France, Africa and the United States and will seek to press laws through parliament before handing over to a successor — almost certainly Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

“Today I announce my decision to stand down from the leadership of the Labor Party. The party will now select a new leader. On the 27th of June I will tender my resignation from the post of Prime Minister to the Queen,” he said.

“I have been Prime Minister of this country for just over 10 years. In this job, in the world today, I think that is long enough for me, but more especially for the country.

“Sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down,” he said.

Mr. Blair stood before 250 cheering supporters in a local Labor Party club-house, his words relayed by banks of television satellite vans drawn up outside. His tone was personal and partly elegiac. His wife, Cherie Booth, the source of much controversy during the Blair era, was in the audience as he spoke and he paid tribute to her. He did not, however, endorse Mr. Brown as his successor.

“It’s difficult in a way to know how to make this speech,” Mr. Blair said. “1997 was a moment for a new beginning. Expectations were high, too high,” he said, referring to the landslide election victory that brought him to power, and praising Labor’s record. “There is only one government since 1945 that can say all of the following,” he said, detailing what he depicted as Labor’s record in cutting employment and criminality while improving public services.

He also charted what he considers a fundamental shift in Britain’s prosperity and self-confidence.

“Britain is not a follower today. Britain is a leader,” he proclaimed. “It is a country at home in the 21st century.”

Coincidentally, while Mr. Blair was speaking the Bank of England announced a further quarter percent increase in interest rates — a hike designed to curb inflation that has cast a shadow over Labor’s economic record.

In marked contrast to the youthful exuberance with which he led Labor to office in 1997 after 18 years of opposition, Mr. Blair these days is more careworn and far less popular, his party trailing in the polls behind the opposition Conservatives. Only last week, Labor was forced into retreat in regional elections across Britain. Yet, in national elections, Mr. Blair has been one of the most successful and most charismatic campaigners, winning three consecutive victories for the first time in the Labor party’s history.

After announcing last September that he would leave office within a year, Mr. Blair — one of the closest allies of the White house — had refused to be pinned down on a precise date as he strove in vain to erase two big stains on his legacy: British mistrust of his actions in going to war in Iraq, and a lingering scandal over campaign financing.

The timetable announced today gives the Labor Party roughly seven weeks to go through the motions of a leadership contest — Mr. Brown faces no serious challengers — and through a less predictable battle for the deputy leadership to replace John Prescott, who plans to quit along with Mr. Blair.

Mr. Blair traveled to the tiny Trimdon village Labor Club in Sedgefield — the symbolic font of his political power — after talking to his cabinet ministers in London at a brief 15-minute meeting.

According to his spokesman, who spoke in return for anonymity under civil service rules, Mr. Blair did not disclose the date of his planned departure to the cabinet, apparently anxious to forestall a leak and characteristically eager to dominate the stagecraft of the occasion. At the cabinet meeting, Mr. Brown offered Mr. Blair a “fulsome tribute,” the spokesman said.

The choreography reflected a belief among analysts that Mr. Blair does not want his departure to evoke humiliating comparisons to Margaret Thatcher’s ouster by her own party in 1990. When he announced last year that he would step down, he was widely seen as being under overwhelming pressure to quit from supporters of Mr. Brown.

Reinforcing perceptions of his style as presidential, Mr. Blair flew north in an executive jet after driving in a cavalcade of cars and motorcycle escorts to the military airfield at R.A.F. Northolt in west London. His loyalists hailed his announcement in glowing terms.

“Tony Blair has been the most successful leader ever in our 100 year history,” said Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Minister, who has been a strong supporter of Mr. Blair. “Britain is a much fairer, much more tolerant, more democratic place than it was 10 years ago.

“Iraq has been enormously divisive in the cabinet and in the country,” Mr. Hain said, feting Mr. Blair’s record on provoking debate on climate change, and on relieving poverty in Africa. He said this week’s installation of a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland — formally drawing a line under four decades of conflict and animosity — is “an inescapable achievement.”

But he stressed that Mr. Blair had not formally left office despite the hoopla surrounding his announcement on Thursday. “He’s not stepping down yet. It’s a time to tell the cabinet and the country what he’s doing,” Mr. Hain said, speaking after the cabinet meeting.

The opposition Conservatives acknowledged Mr. Blair’s stature as an election winner, but assailed both his record on public services and his credibility. “There has been so much spin in that the word of government is less believed than at any other time,” said William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman. “We will be glad to see the back of him.”

    Blair Says He Will Leave Office in June, NYT, 10.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/world/europe/10cnd-Blair.html?hp

12.10pm update

Blair announces retirement

Thursday May 10, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Tempest and agencies


Tony Blair today announced he was stepping down after 10 years as prime minister and 13 as Labour leader.
The prime minister told a crowd of supporters in Trimdon Labour club he would stand down as PM on June 27. He will tender his resignation to the Queen on that day.

In an emotional speech, he said the judgment on his 10-year administration was "for you the people to make". Mr Blair paid special tribute to his wife and children "who never let me forget my failings".

Earlier, the PM had confirmed to cabinet he would announce his plans to step down, joking it was "not quite a normal day".

The meeting ended with the entire cabinet "thumping" the table in appreciation, according to Mr Blair's official spokesman.

He added: "Just as cabinet was breaking up, the chancellor intervened. He acknowledged Mr Blair could rule him out of order, but said he didn't think it would be right to finish cabinet without thanking and appreciating the premier for his unique achievements in the last 10 years."

Mr Blair's official spokesman said the premier did not disclose a date for his departure from Downing Street after a decade in power.

His public announcement on his plans for the future will come in a speech at Trimdon Labour Club in his Sedgefield constituency around noon.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "The prime minister started cabinet by acknowledging that it wasn't quite a normal day. He confirmed that he would be going to his constituency. He confirmed that he would make an announcement.

"He also confirmed that announcement would be about his intentions and that those intentions had not changed."

While Mr Blair flew to the north east, the likely next prime minister was in the Commons, answering Treasury questions.

He joked that "There are, of course, 600,000 vacancies in the economy - there's one more today actually as a result of announcements that have just been made," he quipped to laughter from all sides.

The two leftwing challengers for the Labour leadership, John McDonnell and Michael Meacher, will announce this afternoon which, if either, of them has the required 44 nominations to mount a challenge.

Tributes have already started flowing in to the departing 54-year old prime minister, whose future plans are not yet clear.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell said Mr Blair had "an enormous impact on world politics, and he certainly has had an enormous impact on the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.

"He has been a friend, he has been steadfast in the face of negative public opinion, and in the face of crises he's stood steady. And we could always count on him."

Although he is expected to endorse Gordon Brown as his successor tomorrow, it is not even clear if Mr Blair will stay on as a backbench MP, or create a byelection in Sedgefield.

Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War coalition, said: "We cannot let this day pass without marking the deadly legacy of Tony Blair with the war in Iraq, but this is about the future as well."

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats demanded an immediate snap election to legitimise Mr Blair's successor.

The party leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, has tabled a Commons motion calling on the Queen to dissolve parliament immediately, since Mr Blair promised to serve a "full third term" in 2005.

Mr Brown, facing a financially straitened Labour party and poor polls, is highly unlikely to grant that request.

Mr Blair was unique among Labour leaders in winning three successive elections. Although announcing before the 2005 contest he would serve a "full third term", a mini-putsch by both Blairite and Brownite backbench MPs last autumn forced him to confirm he would stand down within a year.

The final act of that saga was enacted today.

    Blair announces retirement, G, 10.5.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,2076434,00.html

A bloody legacy:

Blair's disastrous war in Iraq

has made Britain a more dangerous place

As he prepares to leave Downing Street, the Prime Minister will this week receive well-deserved plaudits for his decade-long endeavour to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Terrorism on UK streets is transformed from 10 years ago - it is much more deadly, more unpredictable and far harder to prevent. Francis Elliott reports on how the PM's crusades overseas have made Britain a prime target for Islamist terrorists

Published: 06 May 2007
The Independent on Sunday

The choreography of Tony Blair's departure from Downing Street will see him fly to Belfast on Tuesday to witness the birth of a new government in Stormont.

With the PM flanked by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the resulting photo-opportunity will draw attention to his successful conclusion of the Northern Ireland peace process.

The very next day, however, will come a tacit admission that he leaves Britain more at risk than when he arrived in No 10 a decade ago with the creation of a new slimmed-down Home Office, focused on counter-terrorism.

Mr Blair's period of office may have coincided with the disarming of republican and some loyalist paramilitaries, but it has also seen hundreds of Britons rallying to al-Qa'ida.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller left her post as director general of the security service (MI5), warning that its agents were watching 1,600 people and monitoring around 30 "active plots". Almost all are believed to be related to Islamist extremism.

The conclusion of the "fertiliser bomb plot" trial last week exposed how stretched MI5 had become in 2004 as it sought to follow the activities of groups of young radicals.

The so-called Operation Crevice succeeded in foiling a planned attack on the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent but failed to track two of the plot's peripheral figures.

The consequences of that failure were felt on 7 July 2005 when 52 people were killed and 700 injured by four suicide bombers. Only the 1988 Lockerbie PanAm bomb was deadlier.

Mr Blair is likely to spend a good deal of his political after-life justifying his response to the rise of Islamist extremism both at home and abroad. For some intelligence analysts, however, the verdict is already in.

They detect a dry irony in the fact that the Prime Minister was paying more attention than most to the rise of al-Qa'ida as a global terrorist organisation through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Mr Blair's allies let it be known that he had spent that summer reading the Koran and was seeking to understand what he saw as a "perversion" of Islamic teaching.

Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, says that it is "credible" that Mr Blair understood the problem and says that he was effective in his initial response to the New York attacks.

But just as al-Qa'ida was on the "back foot" after the enforced removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Professor Wilkinson says the invasion of Iraq gifted it a lifeline. "Nobody could credibly argue that [the invasion of] Iraq caused terrorism, but to pretend that it does not exacerbate it was really foolish."

Crispin Black, a former intelligence officer, says that Mr Blair was warned repeatedly about the consequences for domestic terrorism of the Iraq adventure by the intelligence services and the Foreign Office. "Regardless of what you think about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, the question is, when warned, what did Blair do to secure the home front?"

The answer to that question, Mr Black says, is not one that shows the outgoing Prime Minister in a flattering light.

He says that Mr Blair was "badly served" by his security and intelligence services both in the run-up to the Iraq war and over the 7 July bombings, but his "corrupting" influence would cause lasting damage. The dodgy dossier had broken a "covenant of trust", undermining the credibility of all subsequent intelligence warnings. "Time and again the warnings have been shown to be exaggerated or wrong. The tragedy is we won't believe them when they are right."

The exact state of the current threat to Britain is, by its nature, unknowable but Professor Wilkinson is gloomy: "The trends and the emerging trends confirm that this is going to be a difficult problem for a very long time yet."

Mr Blair's great mistake, suggest the experts, was to identify the right problem but then fail to apply the correct solution.

Mr Black says that the Prime Minister was right to identify the Israel-Palestine conflict as an "open wound" in which extremism was festering. But in reaching for a military solution to Iraq - which in any case was not a part of the al-Qa'ida equation in 2003 - he handed terrorists a new cause and a training ground. The extent to which British terrorists are being trained under the cover of the Iraq insurgency is unclear, but there is no doubting the terror traffic between the UK and Pakistan. In a recent talk to the Policy Exchange think tank, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, formerly chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), said that the UK was nowhere near disrupting this "transmission belt" between Lahore and London.

Dame Pauline is scathing about Mr Blair's efforts to win the "hearts and minds" battle that will be needed to turn new generations away from terror. Counter-terrorism , she says, is better framed in terms of a criminal conspiracy than a "war on terror", which lends participants the dignity of being "soldiers" for their cause. And seeking to engage a "Muslim community" through representative bodies is an approach as outdated as the colonialism of which it smacks.

One enduring legacy of the Blair era will be the massive increase in surveillance and diminution of civil liberties. The unhappy saga of control orders - a device only introduced because detention of terror suspects without trial was ruled unlawful and which was itself then rejected by the law lords - showed how cheaply Mr Blair's government has handed propaganda victories to Britain's enemies. He may not have been responsible for Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo but has pushed the law to its very limit, says the former JIC chair.

"The price is internal surveillance to an unprecedented degree... there has not been this degree of penetration of our society by forces hostile to the state since Sir Francis Walsingham was pursuing Catholic plotters in the 16th century," Dame Pauline says. "We are about at the acceptable limit of restraints on freedom of speech and association, such as the restrictions on demos near Parliament, and the curtailment of habeas corpus."

A little over a year into his premiership, dissident republicans detonated a car bomb in the middle of the Northern Ireland border town of Omagh with scant warnings. They killed 28 people, including nine children. Tuesday will be a celebration that that threat has cleared. The darkness that followed hard behind will hang heavily over Britain long after Mr Blair has gone.

A bloody legacy: Blair's disastrous war in Iraq has made Britain a more dangerous place, IoS, 6.5.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2516747.ece

 

Blair's bloody legacy: Iraq

On the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair's election as Prime Minister,
an exclusive poll reveals 69 per cent of Britons believe that,
when he leaves office, his enduring legacy will be the bloody conflict in Iraq

Published: 01 May 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice

Seven out of 10 people believe that Iraq will prove to be Tony Blair's most enduring legacy, according to an opinion poll for The Independent to mark the 10th anniversary today of the election victory that brought him to power.

As the Prime Minister prepares to announce his resignation next week, the survey by CommunicateResearch reveals that 69 per cent of the British public believe he will be remembered most for the Iraq war. Remarkably, his next highest "legacy rating" - just 9 per cent - is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush.

Four years after the US-led invasion, Iraq still dwarfs all other issues. Only 6 per cent of voters believe Mr Blair will be remembered most for the Northern Ireland peace process, which he will hail as an important part of his legacy when self-government is restored in the province a week today.

Just 3 per cent think the Prime Minister will be remembered most for the cash-for-honours affair, with the same proportion citing the introduction of the national minimum wage and being associated with "spin".

A tiny 2 per cent of people believe Mr Blair's legacy will be his central goal to improve public services, one he put in the spotlight yesterday when he claimed he had achieved the mission he set out exactly 10 years ago to "save the NHS". Only 1 per cent of people believe he will be remembered most for his three general election victories, with the same proportion citing Scottish and Welsh devolution.

But there is some positive news for Mr Blair. Despite public hostility over Iraq, 61 per cent of people believe that he has been a good Prime Minister overall, with only 36 per cent thinking he has been a bad one.

Only one in 10 Labour supporters say he has been a bad Prime Minister, while 89 per cent regard him as having been a good one.

The poll suggests there is strong respect for Mr Blair across the political spectrum. A majority (62 per cent) of Liberal Democrat supporters think he has been a good Prime Minister, while only 36 per cent of them regard him as a bad one. Almost half (45 per cent) of Tory voters believe he has been a good Prime Minister, while 53 per cent judge him a bad one.

Mr Blair hopes that history will cast a different light on his support for the invasion of Iraq. But the poll confirms what his close allies have known for some time: that the continuing problems in Iraq will overshadow other issues when he announces his departure timetable.

Even Labour supporters believe that Iraq will define his legacy: 58 per cent of them think he will be most remembered for the war, and a further 10 per cent for his relationship with President Bush. Only 14 per cent of Labour voters cite Northern Ireland, 8 per cent improving public services and 3 per cent his hat-trick of election victories.

Iraq and Mr Blair's close links to the US President are regarded as "legacy issues" by more women than men, while 18 to 24-year-olds are more likely to think Mr Blair will be remembered for his relationship with President Bush than people in other age groups.

Some 75 per cent of people in the top AB social class group think the Prime Minister will be remembered most for Iraq, a figure that falls to 58 per cent among the bottom DE group.

Older people have a less favourable opinion of Mr Blair. Those aged 65 and over are the only age group with a negative overall view, with 47 per cent thinking he has been a good Prime Minister and 49 per cent a bad one. His best net rating is among 45 to 54-year-olds, 68 per cent of whom think he has been a good Prime Minister and 28 per cent a bad one.

Even in Scotland, where Labour faces its first defeat in a major election for 50 years in Thursday's Scottish Parliament elections, a majority (63 per cent) of people think he has been a good Prime Minister and only 36 per cent a bad one.

Yesterday, Mr Blair predicted that his health reforms would be vindicated and that no future government would reverse them. Addressing the King's Fund think-tank, he conceded his government had made mistakes, had had too many reorganisations and that the pace of reform should have been quicker during Labour's first years in power.

He was sceptical about setting up an independent NHS board to take politicians out of the day-to-day control of the service, an idea being considered by Gordon Brown, who is expected to succeed him as Prime Minister at the end of next month.

Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary and a Blairite, endorsed Mr Brown last night and called for an end to the "tribalism" inside New Labour. She told the Progress think-tank that there should be "no more Blairites and Brownites", adding: "Too much of our present political approach - too much of our conversation and argument - has been focussed on personalities and a debate in code that reinforces that tribalism."

The Tories said Mr Blair had presided over "10 wasted years" in which the NHS had gone on "a circular - and wasteful - journey back towards the policies and structures of the last Conservative government" that had cost the taxpayer £3bn in shake-ups.

CommunicateResearch telephoned 1,001 British adults between 27 and 29 April. Data was weighted to be demographically representative of all adults. CommunicateResearch is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Full tables are available for viewing at www.communicateresearch.com

    Blair's bloody legacy: Iraq, I, 1.5.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2499320.ece

Dave Brown        The Independent        1.5.2007

L: Tony Blair

R: Gordon Brown

9.15am

Blair:

I will make my position clear next week

Tuesday May 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Hélène Mulholland and agencies

Tony Blair will make his "position clear next week" about when he plans to leave Downing Street, the prime minister said today.

Speaking on the 10th anniversary of his 1997 election victory, Mr Blair sought to end speculation about the precise timing of his departure by revealing he would "say something definitive" on the subject next week.

Speaking on GMTV, Mr Blair said: "I will make may position clear next week."

The prime minister also praised the chancellor, Gordon Brown - his expected successor - saying that he would make "a great prime minister".

Responding to an article in the Sun in which Mr Brown awarded him 10 out of 10 for his achievements in office, Mr Blair said he would give the chancellor the same score for his record.

"One of the things I very much hope will be part of the legacy of the government is the strongest economy in the western world which he has been responsible for," he said.

"I have always said about him that he would make a great prime minister and I believe that."

Mr Blair said it was "understandable" that many people no longer trusted him, but rejected suggestions that Labour's current low standing in the opinion polls meant it could not win the next general election.

He told GMTV viewers: "Even though, for understandable reasons, there may be parts of the electorate that don't trust me any more, actually I have always trusted the people in the sense that I think they take a very sensible view of things in the end."

His comments came as it emerged that Mr Brown could take over at No 10 on June 30 after winning support at an electoral college attended by delegates from across the country.

A projected timetable is being distributed among MPs, officials and trade union leaders laying down the exact process of electing Mr Blair's successor.

Approximately 48 days after Mr Blair resigns, an electoral college will be held, almost certainly in London, attended by delegates from unions and other affiliated organisations, constituency Labour parties as well as MPs and MEPs.

Union officials and other Labour party figures are now working on the assumption that the college will be held on Saturday June 30, although it is possible it could be held on Sunday July 1.

Mr Blair is widely expected to resign on May 9 or 10 following this week's elections to the Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly and English and Scottish councils, taking the process of naming his successor to the last week in June.

Blair: I will make my position clear next week, G, 1.5.2007, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/may/01/
tonyblair.labour