Who was PM during the best of times for you?

Blair

Hate to admit it but Tony Blair!

What happened to Blair? Besides becoming a Sir

It may have been bad but we either take faked information seriously or not

Presumably the MP votes were on the back of the dossier

Partygate was huge, in terms of backlash and scrutiny, and going to war is arguably a bigger outcome.

Maybe it’s the passing of time and nostalgia

For those talking about the Iraq war, Google 'Halabja massacre'. Saddam Hussain was an absolutely vicious dictator who committed atrocities against his own people, including the use of chemical weapons to murder thousands of Kurds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumanrightssinSaddammHussein%27s_Iraq

I'm glad Blair had the guts to step in. I wish we'd done the same with Syria. And I'll never forgive Ed Milliband for abandoning the Syrian people to chemical attacks and atrocities by Assad.

We have staff shortages in key areas - teaching and health - which impact many people day to day. Shortages of housing. Social care is on its arse. My kids will be leaving school in the next few years to what? My parent and inlaw are increasingly fragile and in need of both the NHS and social care.
We are feeling the impact now of austerity (not just cuts to wages but lack of investment in infrastructure of schools and hospitals) and the giant blackhole of Brexit sucking up GDP and vast quantities of Parliamentary time and energy and yet never finishing. Sewage on beaches. Lack of trust in Parliament itself post expenses scandals and all the rest. A revolving wheel of PM's. The threat level in NI is raised which if you are my age (over 50) brings back terrible memories.

Now we have local elections coming up and a GE looming and there is an endless cycle of impractical unworkable uncosted policies wheeled out - none of which will ever come to fruition but are just designed to distract & divide us.

Not everything rests wholly on the Conservatives although lets face it they have had 13 years to fix things and that hasn't happened.
I am not at all surprised people aren't nominating now as their best of times.

Yes- I was older in the Blair years and as I said working in the nhs.

what people are saying here was not my experience at all, watching the NHS being set up for failure.

one of our (very) SLT actually said at the time, the govt is purposely throwing money at the NHS to “prove” it’s not funding that’s the answer, so they can bring in private contractors to fix it.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2006/feb/16/health.politics

I mean the privileges committee specifically, which is cross party and investigating whether Johnson knowingly misled parliament.

A faked dossier which led to war seems pretty up there in terms of lies. Where was the committee, and televisation of Blair’s scrutiny?

Are we able to keep politicians in check and take it seriously now but not then, if so I’m wondering what has changed

Yes absolutely Blair.
I too thought at first that there was an age bias on this thread (everyone likes their teens/twenties...) but actually people are citing real concrete things that were better, and I remember it like that too. Good things were happening, and this country was on the up.
I can't really explain how much I hate the Tories for ruining everything - and even more for making up some bullshit about how austerity was them being sensible after the 'splurge' - any economist could explain why homespun ideas of 'thrift' that do apply for e.g. a family do not apply straightforwardly at the level of a country.

Yep, in the last 13 years we've had bust, bust and more bust.

Blair/ Brown

I am not condoning Blair's dodgy dossier but we can't go back into history - I was answering your question about how he got away with it by pointing out the war had a lot of Tory support. I am not sure what you mean about now, but if lying to parliament, trying to change expenses rules and allow bullying and sexual harassment and having illegal parties was supported by Labour and the Americans maybe Boris wouldn't have been made to resign - is that what you mean?

We all know it's Blair. In retrospect, he fucked up and was a flawed human (obviously), but the country never had it so good.

This doesn’t take away the lying part though. Surely the same applies to now and the public should have had same process, why do you think it’s different now?

Regardless of MP votes the process should be the same shouldn’t it?

Blair without a shadow of a doubt.

Peace in NI, decent maternity leave, surestart, investment in education, NHS waiting lists drastically reduced, actual grown ups involved in government.

(rather than the narcissists and asset-strippers looting the country to make themselves and their friends even richer)

Tony Blair

Lets not forget Brown said "no more boom and bust" - that worked well for him didn't it??

Except for 13 years we've had bust and more bust (unless you are already a millionaire of course).

Boom and bust. Of course the former is more fun but the bust is right behind it
Aye, Trussenomics.

Blair and Boris plus the next two

Boom and bust. Of course the former is more fun but the bust is right behind it,

I voted for Blair but I can easily see it was an upswing we paid for in 2008
Bollocks - you can blame the international (especially the US) banking system for that - we didn't just have a crash in the UK
and I’m really not sure how he got away with the dossier lies.
Because the war had Tory support - there were more rebels on the Labour benches than the Tories.

Factually incorrect - go and look at the borrowing figures from then and then compare to how things are now. It's just a tired and untrue narrative from Tories who are still trying to pretend they are "good with the economy" inspite of all factual proof of the contrary.