{"id":19350,"date":"2016-03-13T12:16:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T11:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19350"},"modified":"2016-03-13T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T11:17:07","slug":"when-will-we-have-a-balanced-assessment-of-the-premiership-of-tony-blair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19350","title":{"rendered":"When will we have a balanced assessment of the premiership of Tony Blair?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;Broken Vows: Tony Blair \u2013 The Tragedy of Power&#8221;<\/em>\u00a0by Tom Bower is a newly-published hatchet job on Blair&#8217;s record in office that has rightly been criticised by many reviewers.\u00a0The political editor of the &#8220;Observer&#8221;, Andrew Rawnsley, opens <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2016\/mar\/13\/broken-vows-tony-blair-tragedy-power-review-tom-bower\">his review<\/a> of the book by pointing out:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;History, so it is often said, is written by the victors. There seems to be an exception to that rule in the case of Tony Blair. Three consecutive election victories, two of them by landslides, ought to give him a place in the history books as Labour\u2019s most successful leader. He is one of only two prime ministers since the Napoleonic wars to secure an unbroken decade at No 10.<\/p>\n<p>The economy grew in every single quarter of his premiership, a record unrivalled by any other major developed country. Sharply higher levels of investment went into health and education, the school and hospital building stock was renewed, child poverty went down and even the Tory party eventually embraced much of a legacy that includes the minimum wage, more spending on international aid, gender equality and gay rights.<\/p>\n<p>When he left office, pollsters reported that a majority of voters thought he had done a good job as prime minister, all in all, and even that he was still \u201clikable\u201d. That\u2019s not bad after a decade at the top. Yet it is now a commonplace of much public discourse that he was one of the most despicable characters ever to inhabit No 10, even the \u201cmost hated man in Britain\u201d.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, Blair himself is the last person to provide a balanced assessment of his premiership, but his memoirs, called simply &#8220;A Journey&#8221;, are a useful starting point and you can read my review of the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/currentaffairs.html#Journey\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, no full judgement on Blair&#8217;s time in office can be written until we see the Chilcot Report on the decision to invade Iraq. Even then, whatever Chilcot states and whatever one thinks of the invasion, we should remember that this was not a decision by Blair alone &#8211; he had the support of the Cabinet and a majority vote in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Broken Vows: Tony Blair \u2013 The Tragedy of Power&#8221;\u00a0by Tom Bower is a newly-published hatchet job on Blair&#8217;s record in office that has rightly been criticised by many reviewers.\u00a0The political editor of the &#8220;Observer&#8221;, Andrew Rawnsley, opens his review of the book by pointing out: &#8220;History, so it is often said, is written by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19350"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19356,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19350\/revisions\/19356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}