Was Tony Blair the worst PM of 21st century?

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Hatred towards Tony Blair is so over the top. I think this country would be in a better place today had Gordon Brown not prematurely snatched the keys to number 10. Gordon Brown led to Ed Miliband and Ed Miliband led to Corbyn and his Momentum.

I think Boris is the wrong man to be in the top job and he's only there because we have had a very weak and incompetent opposition.

PRSOM.

Reply 61

username402722

Original post by Fruli

May was weak because she lacked vision and leadership. The reason Thatcher was such a great success is because she had vision, had principle, knew what she stood for and wasn't pulled from every side in the same way May was.

As Margaret Tatcher said herself - 'Being prime minister is a lonely job... you cannot lead from the crowd'

Theresa May was not a collegiate person, which did not help when needing support or attempting to get a post-referendum consensus on the form of Breixt that we should have.

Reply 62

peepeedd

Tony Blair is a war criminal who aided in millions of iraq citizens death alongside with George W. bush. **** him.

Reply 63

username5271994

Original post by peepeedd

Tony Blair is a war criminal who aided in millions of iraq citizens death alongside with George W. bush. **** him.

Despite the Iraq War, which he was pressurised by the US to get involved with, there hasn't been a PM as successful as him ever since.

Reply 64

username5271994

Original post by barnetlad

Theresa May was not a collegiate person, which did not help when needing support or attempting to get a post-referendum consensus on the form of Breixt that we should have.

That's true, and she shouldn't have shied away from those TV debates during the election she called

Reply 65

peepeedd

Original post by Kavala

Despite the Iraq War, which he was pressurised by the US to get involved with, there hasn't been a PM as successful as him ever since.

how does that justify the fact that he is a war criminal who killed millions for literally nothing?

Reply 66

Fruli

Original post by barnetlad

Theresa May was not a collegiate person, which did not help when needing support or attempting to get a post-referendum consensus on the form of Breixt that we should have.

Thatcher wasn’t a collegiate person either. In fact some Tory grandees didn’t like her because some of her home ownership policies improved social mobility for the working classes and this was a threat to their position in society.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 67

username5271994

Original post by peepeedd

how does that justify the fact that he is a war criminal who killed millions for literally nothing?

I'm not saying it does, but arguably so is Thatcher and Churchill. And it was definitely not 'millions'.

Reply 68

stargazer2k19

Most British voters outside London are moderate centrists/on the centre-right. In order to win, Labour has to appear as though it is (at the very least) centre-left or centrist. Being hard-left or even "soft left" won't win Labour power. Tony Blair understood this. No Labour leader since has understood it; instead they have wrongly believed Labour can win power as a pretty much fully-fledged left-wing party. It never has been able to win like that and never will. The British people, on the whole and collectively speaking, have never wanted and don't want socialism.

Blair knew it was his job to destroy socialism and remove the socialists from positions of influence within the Labour Party. His New Labour project (which he created with the help of Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell) was all about ridding Labour of socialism and instead creating a social democratic party whose politics would be "Third Way".

Labour has to appeal to the average "small c" conservative Middle England voter - the type of voter whose politics are neither extreme right or extreme left ; basically sane, moderate, middle-of-the-road types! Such voters are usually more inclined to vote Tory, and Blair knew he needed to win these people over if Labour stood any chance of getting into government. Therefore he created "New Labour" and centrist/centre-right voters who had traditionally backed the Tories started voting for the Labour Party in their droves!

Keir Starmer has some lessons to learn. It's being said in the media that Starmer is "soft left". I hope not. Because just like other soft left leaders before him (Miliband, Kinnock, Callaghan etc) he will fail to win over Middle England and also "small c" working-class industrial workers in the Midlands and the North (there are many of these in the South, too - although it's often forgotten).
So, to win: Labour must stop being an extremist leftist party, let-go of the stupid divisive identity politics and the nasty, intolerant wokeness and turn its back on the fan-following culture that defined the Corbyn era. Overall, the party just has to become (or at least fool people into believing that it has become) a moderate party that concerns itself with sensible things and cares about the lives of the majority of people as opposed to only caring about fringe groups and matters.

Reply 69

peepeedd

Original post by Kavala

I'm not saying it does, but arguably so is Thatcher and Churchill. And it was definitely not 'millions'.

first of all, the question says 21st century, so that excludes both Churchill and thatcher. If the question was asking in general who was the worst pm, I would says Churchill. Second, casualties of the Iraq war is estimated half a mill, but I added deaths caused by the aftermath (civil war, us interference), which would bring a lot of numbers.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 70

username1148663

Original post by peepeedd

You would say Churchill was the worst PM ever 😂

Reply 71

peepeedd

Original post by paul514

You would say Churchill was the worst PM ever 😂

he did cause a famine that killed probably millions of Bengalis

Reply 72

username402722

Original post by peepeedd

Original post by paul514

You would say Churchill was the worst PM ever 😂

The question were it about the 20th century would have to distinguish between Churchill the wartime PM and as a peacetime PM, the latter of which was when he was seriously ill and it was covered up.

But it's not so I think the worst in this century by a long way is Boris Johnson, as I have said earlier.

Reply 73

username1148663

Original post by peepeedd

he did cause a famine that killed probably millions of Bengalis

https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/

Reply 74

username1148663

Original post by barnetlad

Johnson is the worst PM of the 21st century by a long way.....

Classic 😂

Reply 75

TJ1997

Original post by SaucissonSecCy

Undoubtedly. His track record on human rights is diabolical. Guantanamo, Iraq, David Kelly. Decimated civil liberties, detention without trial, mass surveillance. Deregulated the banks, that crashed the World economy. Began pfi contracts, the gradual privitization of healthcare. Faith schools, mass immigration. And God willing the investigation pending by the UN human rights will prove that that he and his ministers are complicit with human rights crimes on members of the public. He is an abomination.

Deregulated the banks that crashed the world economy?

Regardless of which prime minister would have been in office at that time, the banks would have been regulated in the way that they were (the Conservatives also called for less deregulation). The banking crisis was caused by the growth of banks that become almost "too big to fail" and the acts of illegal shadow banking rather than wholly because of government policies.

PFI contracts in healthcare were started in 1992 under John Major's government and only accelerated after Blair's second victory in 2001 (1997-2001 they were largely abandoned).