After a year long goodbye period and over ten years in office, Tony Blair finally stepped down as Prime Minister and also as a member of parliament on Wednesday 28 June 2007. His final act before handing in his resignation to the Queen being one last session of Prime Minister’s Questions which, for obvious reasons, was much less gladiatorial than usual and involved mostly a whole bunch of back-patting from both political allies and foes. Predictably there were several references to the Iraq war and any talk of Tony Blair’s legacy can’t avoid this issue.

Having said that, there have been other significant events and developments in the Tony Blair decade. The primary metric for judging the success of any government is generally the state of the economy. On this measure, there is little doubt that overall Labour has been very successful and although much of this may well have been down to luck or have had little to do with Tony Blair’s own policies, it is telling that no one has really been able to challenge him successfully on this. The public services are where he may well have wanted to have made his biggest impact and only time will really tell if reforms brought in over the last decade and the huge amount of money spent has led to lasting change for the better or was yet another mishandling of the public coffers by a Labour government. The Tony Blair years on this front have been characterised by many promises and targets, an increase in the tax burden to finance reforms, a first term of inaction followed by heavy investment and vocal frustration of those who work in the public services and have to use them. But notably there has not been anything like the Winter of Discontent or the Poll Tax riots as in previous administrations. (Of course there was the Fuel Protests of 2001 which did temporarily paralyse the country and had the potential to bring down the government but in the end this had little long term impact.)

There were of course the infamous “race-riots” in 2000 in the north of England and primarily in Bradford. The actions of the government following this showed how little they understood the realities of what was going on in Britain. The classification of the events as simply “white” versus “Asian” led to the rise of British National Party as a serious force in local politics and possibly even national politics and also started a dangerous trend of promoting self-appointed leaders of minority communities as legitimate spokespeople. As Hindus, we have seen the fallout from this particularly badly. Even now there is little official acknowledgement of the ways Hindus are targeted by extremists groups and the government usually canvasses opinion from the Hindu community as an afterthought rather than trying to actually get to grips with the reality on the ground.

In the years before coming into power, Tony Blair and his Labour party promised to be “purer than pure” and do away with the sleaze and apparent corruption that had come to characterise the closing years of the Conservative government. However, looking back, most people now feel that there was too much emphasis on spin rather than substance. Additionally, the various scandals of the Labour government, notably the “Cash for Honours” controversy and dodgy dealings of senior ministers have pretty much killed off any hopes that the British public had in their elected leaders to be absolutely clean. Recently, the disgraceful decision to scrap the inquiry into bribes surrounding the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia which was upheld and justified by Tony Blair has also thrown out any remaining pretensions to principle over national and political interests. In the end this has basically increased the cynicism and apathy felt by the average British voter towards politicians and the major political parties. This is especially true for younger people but this should not be confused with a lack of interest in politics in general.

Another area where Tony Blair promised much was with Europe and Britain’s place as a leader within the EU. However, this never really happened with the split over relations with the US and divisions with his chancellor over the single currency. In the end it turned out to be just frustration along the lines of previous Prime Ministers as characterised by his last international act of agreeing to a compromised and watered down European Constitution.

Of course the main areas that everyone will remember Tony Blair for, at least in the medium term, will be for his international relations and foreign policy decisions. Labour came into power and promised an “Ethical foreign policy” and it can be claimed that they started off well by leading an international campaign to ban to sale of land mines. Perhaps his biggest successes on the international stage were his decisions to use military force in stopping the wars in Serria Loane and Kosovo. Of course it will still be many years before anyone can say that these were real successes (the apparently imminent partition of Serbia and Kosovo contradicts the original aims of military intervention) but what is not in doubt is that they certainly seemed to create an impression of infallibility in Tony Blair’s mind and also led him to believe that he was “doing the right thing”.

However, when Hindus protested directly to Tony Blair about the treatment of Hindus in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, there was no action taken by him or his government – not even a mention in a speech. This was probably the first public sign, to Hindus at least, that this government was driven more by votes and media friendly campaigns and ultimately national interest rather than anything more noble. The terrorists attacks on New York and Washington of 9 September 2001 meant that all future foreign policy was to be increasingly aligned with the US. In this context it should be remembered that the military campaign against the Taliban for harbouring Al Qaeda terrorists was very popular at the time and initially hailed as a great success. However, the handling of the aftermath, the failure to find Bin Laden and the resurgence of the Taliban means that this is currently seen as missed opportunity at best if not a clumsy failure at worse.

And then there is Iraq. It is this above anything else which seriously caused people to question Tony Blair’s judgement. The real issue was probably not the “Dodgy Dossier” or whether the government lied about “Weapons of Mass Destructions” as most anti-war opponents have focused on. Rather the main problem surrounding the Iraq war is the attempt to link Sadam Hussein’s Bathist dictatorship to Al Qaeda terrorists. In truth, Sadam was a socialist and a secularist who had more in common with the West ideologically than with someone like Bin Laden. That doesn’t make him a good person by any means but explains why he was originally an ally to the West. On the other hand, theocracies like Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban were ideologically at poles with the West and the Iraq War has strengthened both of these as well as those in Iraq who espouse theocracy. It is the failure to make this analysis in 2003 which was probably one of the biggest errors of Tony Blair’s judgement. His argument that the war was right on the grounds of Sadam’s repressive regime ring hollow when compared to his support for other dictatorships – like Pakistan’s General Musharaf or the Saudi Royal Family. Worse, he has used the “War on Terror” and their strategic need as an excuse for not promoting democracy in Pakistan or for scrapping the aforementioned inquiry into bribes surrounding arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The “ethical” foreign policy is well and truly dead.

So in the end, while Britain and the British people have largely prospered under Tony Blair’s rule there is doubt about how much of this can be attributed to his leadership. There is dissatisfaction at how various issues were over-spun, how politics became more style over substance, the sense of corruption and cronyism for appointments and awards in public life and the feeling that the public were misled and manipulated on key issues. Some of this is probably unfair to pin directly on Tony Blair himself but as the face of the last ten years of government that is the way it is. Overall, it comes down to a public who expected much from this man but who ended up becoming sick of him – which corresponds to any celebrity really who is one day the front page darling and the next day has gone out of fashion. In that context he did well to stay in power for a decade and his record of winning three general elections is something no Labour leader had ever achieved and may not achieve for a long time.

He leaves office to take on the role of Peace Envoy to the Middle East. This is in light of his record of achieving peace in Northern Ireland. However, given how deeply unpopular Tony Blair is with the Arab public, with the European and Russian leadership, given how much he has come to been seen as mere puppet of American foreign policy and his general loss of creditability on most things related to Iraq, this seems a somewhat strange appointment. Of course it will be a good thing if he can succeed in his mission but it seems to me that he is better off concentrating on reviving his first ambition of his college years - that is his music career – after all he is younger than Mick Jagger and might well have a few years of success as a rock star.

(Picture taken from www.backingblair.co.uk)