{"id":458,"date":"2007-05-01T17:54:26","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T16:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=458"},"modified":"2007-05-01T17:54:26","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T16:54:26","slug":"10-years-of-prime-minister-blair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=458","title":{"rendered":"10 years of Prime Minister Blair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is ten years ago today that Labour took office with Tony Blair as Prime Minister. As he comes close to departing 10 Downing Street, how does one assess his tenure? Apparently, when asked about the historical effect of the 1789 French Revolution, Chinese leader Chou En-lai replied:. &#8220;It&#8217;s too soon to tell.&#8221; So it&#8217;s certainly too soon to make a balanced judgement about Blair&#8217;s time in office.<br \/>\nThe invasion of Iraq in particular colours any judgement, as does the excessive closeness to George Bush. But already it is clear that there have been substantial and lasting achievements, especially in the areas of economic prosperity, social justice and constitutional reform. An <a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/leaders\/story\/0,,2068008,00.html\">editorial<\/a> in last wekend&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper concluded:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Britain has been discreetly transformed: the minimum wage; free nursery care; tens of thousands more teachers, doctors and nurses &#8211; with higher wages; the working families&#8217; tax credit; the right to six months&#8217; maternity leave and two weeks&#8217; paternity leave; a statutory right to flexible working hours; the disability rights commission; the Freedom of Information Act; civil partnerships and the repeal of Section 28; restoring self-government for London; devolution for Scotland and Wales; the Human Rights Act; peace in Northern Ireland. Mr Blair&#8217;s government has given millions of people unprecedented freedom to live as they choose and given them the wealth and security to do it.<br \/>\nBritain is better off after a decade with Tony Blair in charge. Wealth has been created, and wealth has been redistributed. That is what Labour governments have always hoped to do. It has happened without a brake on global competitiveness. That is what New Labour hoped to do: build a vibrant market economy with a generous welfare state; economic freedom and social protection. That is Blairism.<br \/>\nSo on Thursday millions of voters will go to the polls intending to bury the Prime Minister. In time they will find many reasons to praise him.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We have not heard the last of Tony Blair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is ten years ago today that Labour took office with Tony Blair as Prime Minister. As he comes close to departing 10 Downing Street, how does one assess his tenure? Apparently, when asked about the historical effect of the 1789 French Revolution, Chinese leader Chou En-lai replied:. &#8220;It&#8217;s too soon to tell.&#8221; So it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","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\/458","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=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}