Labour Party Scandals Under Blair/Brown

[RowlingStone]

I was only a teenager in the early naughties and yet I remember so many Labour scandals so I often feel surprised that they never get mentioned here in the political threads.

The ones I remember are David Kelly, weapons of mass destruction/Iraq war generally, A-level results falsely marked down to prevent grade inflation (Estelle Morris took the fall for that), PFI, extensive hospital waiting lists, cash for honours, something to do with Peter Mandelson, Carole Caplin and some dodgy flats, Labour offspring getting into fee paying or selective schools, Two Jags Prescott and lots of sex scandals (Blunkett, Prescott, maybe more).

I suppose it’s always given me this sense that regardless of the colour of their rosettes all politicians are ultimately the same (self-serving hypocrites).

I was curious whether everyone else just had very short term memories or those scandals weren’t as big a deal at the time as some of the current ones.

Hear, hear.

And Iraq was horrible, goes without saying. But let’s not give Johnson or the Tories carte blanche now.

Absolutely!

Nothing he did was in the same league as taking the country to war based on lies that led to so many deaths and the destabilising of the Middle East, which ironically he then accepted a job to try and sort it out!

I'm glad Johnson has gone but to put what he did on the same level as Blair's deliberate lies is defending the indefensible. To talk like the Iraq war was some sort of little labour scandal when the result was such an awful tragedy which led to horrendous suffering for hundreds of thousands is whitewashing history. And the attitude if Alistair Campbell to David Kelly's,death was abhorrent. He was more concerned about losing his job than he was that by exposing a guy for just telling the truth had pushed him to committing suicide

Are we going to blame the party that was in power at the a time a scandal was exposed? If so the Labour government of Brown was responsible for the MPs expenses scandal.

I'm a Tory, and do I think it was his fault? Of course not. Someone is left holding the parcel.

It's like saying the current inflation crisis is the fault of the Tories. They didn't start the war in Ukraine.

I remember the hospital waiting lists were 18 months when Labour took over from the Tories in 1997 and very quickly Labour got the waiting list down to a few months. People were even sent to France for routine operations to get through the backlog.

Angry?! Erm nope.

I just love calling out liars and bullshitters, regardless of the topic and whether I agree with them or not; politics, money matters, health, relationships. You are not who you are pretending to be.

Yeh I’m not getting the people talk about the crash more than the war. It ended Blair.

As for op Labour have been out for a long time and probably some rose tinted stuff mixed in. They’ve been in opposition for a fair while.

The power and importance just goes to their head

Just taking the wee out of a very obvious pro Tory attempt by the OP and the constant references to the Iraq war/Blair, whilst completely ignoring the Tories/Cameron and the terrible disaster they caused in Libya, purely done to prove Cameron was also a "Tough Guy"

Unlike Iraq, Libya has had none of the billions Iraq has had in trying to repair the damage the Americans did to Iraq.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the Iraq war was 'just' a scandal.

But also, in another political era, Johnson did not 'just' eat a cake.

I’m aware of all this OP as am a little older than you, so remember Thatcher times too. How far back are we going and where does that get any of us? Managing the economy in 2022 is not the same as it was even 20 years ago. The demographic of the country is different. Global threats and defence looks different etc.

When I vote I’m looking at the MP/PM of the day and their forward looking manifesto, I’m not going back in history thinking they are all the same person.

Rubbish.

Estelle Morris and the A levels you complained about was in 2002, Tuition fee's didn't come in until 2008 - doubtless you were backpacking (or another suitably implausible excuse why you didn't go to Uni after doing your A levels in 2002/3?

Maybe you'd like to highlight the scandal of increasing fees from 3k per year to 9.2k per year and which party did that, whilst removing the Nurse/AHP bursary but kept charitable status of private schools?

This is important. Regardless of mistakes highlighted by op Blair is a different leader and time to now.

Labour today has changed from then and the global situation is very different again.

One big difference back then is that people did resign when they got caught out.

In today's Tory party I can only think of one person who resigned when disgraced - Matt Hancock. (I'm excluding Suella Braverman's resignation last week because that was confected to point the finger and weaken lIz Truss. Anyway she's back in post less than a week later.).

Boris's government and Rishi's new cabinet were / are full of people who have lied, trampled and elbowed their way to the top without a single scruple and are determined to stay there.

'Labour offspring getting into fee paying or selective schools, Two Jags Prescott '
How are those scandals? Ridiculous.

One big difference back then is that people did resign when they got caught out. This is a huge difference. The dodgy contracts are also absolutely off the scale under this government.

I was a teenager at the time of Blair too but I will never forget his speech about Britain being prepared the pay the "Blood Price". I was so angry and I remember saying to my mum I hope he is gonna send his own kids as part of this blood price.

But you know that was 20 years ago? And you know if you vote for Labour now you're not voting for Tony Blair or the "new labour new danger" party?

I find it very odd that the current Labour Party would be held responsible for stuff that happened two decades ago.

I am a paid up member of the Labour Party and of course there are issues and politics is çomplicated and politicians on both sides are dicks, but what I see is a country currently being led by Tories, who we can see are corrupt and making terrible decisions and our country is FAILING. so I am not suggesting we get back Tony Blair and his Labour party, but that we give the current one a go.

Blair is irrelevant to current politics.

Tuition fees were brought in for Uni in 1999. I was one of the last years to get Uni tuition free of charge. Admittedly they were £1k per year to start with and then raised to £3k per year but they were definitely brought in in the 90s as some of my friends who did a gap year got caught out.

All you Tory voters will remember then that the whole of parliament voted to enter the war (including the Tories and bar a couple of left-wing anti-war MPs). If the Tories had opposed Tony Blair (as they seem to now, funnily enough), we wouldn't have been part of it - because that's how it works.

As for 2008, you'll all be horrified to know who's side our new Prime Minister was on...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TuitionfeessintheeUnited_Kingdom#:~:text=Tuition%20fees%20were%20first%20introduced,1%2C000%20a%20year%20for%20tuition.

Brought in in 1998 - see link

The most principled political resignation I can remember was Lord Carrington's. He was Foreign Secretary when Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982. He felt there had been a failure of diplomacy and intelligence gathering and as the man at the top the buck stopped with him, so he resigned immediately. I remember amazement all round as nobody else seemed to think it was his fault. Maybe he was keen to go anyway. He moved on to run NATO.

Re David Kelly - that was a very murky business, and the way he was treated was shameful, but if you assume he was murdered and it was covered up to look like suicide, you have to accept that a large number of people all agreed to cover it up - paramedics, doctors, the coroner, police officers for a start. Is that really plausible?

It’s all about perception though.
Both in the Uk under Blair and in the US under Obama policies at home eg tax credits in the UK and Obama care in the US meant that the electorate’s own lives were better, for most anyway.
The Iraqi war didn’t affect many Brits. I went on a peace vigil in our village, there were 8 of us.
The British public were better off under Blair for most of his leadership than they have been in the last 12 years.
I was talking to a woman whose husband’s medical treatment came to $250000. All covered with Obama care.
I doubt she knew about the 563 drone strikes he oversaw many killing innocent civilians.

i look back fondly on the Blair years as our family thrived after the shit show of Thatcherite policies previously.
But the last 12 years of the Tories has made Thatcher seem almost benign in comparison.
Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss have all treated the working classes with utter contempt. They didn’t value education or the NHS.
Every policy was aimed at helping wealthy people under the guise of a few breadcrumbs dropping to the floor for the poor.

Blair years coincided with growth before a collapse. The growth we had turned out to be unsustainable, hence 2008.

Globally it’s such a different environment, having said that I’d love Blair or someone like that back. But Labour and Starmer are not that, despite trying to use some Blair quotes. Plus Labour is better when there is money to spend, they’ll face issues when there’s none and the markets react.

Winter in particular will be hard, but things can change:

I was 16 when Labour came to power, so my early adult life was under a Labour government.

I was able to rent a naice 2 bedroom flat with my partner in a nice city centre location in the south when I was earning £16k per annum and he was a PhD student.

I could get a GP appointment anytime I needed one and I had an NHS dentist.

I worked for a non profit organisation that provided activities and events for schools who could afford to get in our services instead of worrying how they would keep staff employed and keep the lights on.

I protested against the Iraq War: I was on the million March in London. So I appreciate it wasn't all roses. But it was a damn sight better than what we have now.

Oh and David Cameron went into Libya with no plan other than to get rid of Gaddafi and the country has been a mess ever since so let's not pretend the Tories are entirely peaceful loving citizens. They did vote for Iraq after all.