To not understand the Tony Blair hatred thing

[smashedinductionhob]

I remember Tony Blair being very popular in his day and recall him doing reasonably good things.

I do remember very clearly the run up to the Iraq war and saying to my husband that I did not agree with it as there was no actual plan and the US public seemed to think Saddam Hussain was connected to 9/11 which he wasn't.

I remember passionate supporters of ethnic minorities in Iraq supporting him and only a few brave clever people like Obama calling it as a mistake.

I failed to demonstrate. The dossier was identified in Parliament (by a small minority) as dodgy before the war started but most of us went along with it.

It was clear to me at the time that the PM was supporting the US as a matter of principle (a lousy principle but fairly obvious).

How did we get from there to TB as hate figure? Is he just a scapegoat?

Let's wrap ourselves in the purity of our socialist values.
We are pure and true and Blair is evil.
We would rather have a Tory than a sell out 'champaign socialist'.

Well Sure Start centres actually helped people.
Sending people to university; oh the horror! You evil bastard allowing the working classes access to education.
Kosovo - just luck.
Spin - no spin under Corbyn - look how well that is going.

Why do Labour PM's ' kill our troops' while Tories ' lead our glorious nation'.
Blair was far from brilliant, but look around, under the Tories, brexit, Grammar schools, anti Trade Union legislation. They are the enemy.

That's also the rub. There's no way the Tories wouldn't have been into war at the first click of the fingers from Bush.

Of course the tories would have marched straight to war. Not sure what that proves re tony Blair though

As I mentioned previously we stayed out of Vietnam because of Wilson. Who knows or cares? We go into a war under a Labour PM as any Tory would have done and we hate him forever.

Brexit would never have happened if TB had been leader of the Labour party at the time of the referendum. I couldn't care less if he made shed loads of money after his premiership . What difference does that make to people's lives. The hard left and the hard right, nothing to choose between them , neither could care less about vulnerable people, throw them under the bus for an ideology.

He was a mouthpiece for America, he dragged our troops into a war we didn't belong in.
A war that we are still fighting. That is the only thing that I can think of when I see a picture of him in the paper.
I don't believe there are many who have been in power who do not have blood on their hands though.

Very true, Bird :(

The relevance to Tony Blair is simply that the left-wing's hatred of him means that we are stuck for the long-term with an increasingly right-wing government who would have done exactly the same as far as the war is concerned and are doing much worse domestically. So do we want a fairer left-of-centre government in this country or do we just want to hate the one politician who had good stab at this in the last 30 years? It's entirely self-destructive, has contributed massively to Brexit and probably therefore to the breakup of the Union.

Lottie, honestly I feel about 100 years old saying things like that, but watching the current Labour leadership and their fan base s utter disregard for the vulnerable in society, it's been a hard lesson to take. Anyone who thinks society is better now than under Blair is deluded. To blame Blair for Brexit is just breathtaking.

Sending people to university; oh the horror! You evil bastard allowing the working classes access to education

The working classes already had access to free university education and were more likely to go to university and become socially mobile when university was free and grants were available. These days, you'll saddle yourself with debt and come out with a degree that is barely worth the paper it's written on.

Lying to get the UK to join the Iraq war. Even worse, not providing adequate equipment for British troops.

8% of the population went to uni in the 80s. I was there, and there were very few working class kids there. It cost me nothing but none of my friends went. None, zero, no one else from my school.

I don't agree with tuition fees but I will never criticise widening participation.

Bit of a difference between 8% and 50%, though.

Major's credit for NI peace process? How?
Major did loads of work on the NI peace process. The Good Friday agreement wouldn't have happened without his groundwork.

Quentin totally agree and a lot of the jobs didn't used to need a degree.

armpits so what. Working class kids are still facing an uphill battle in education but there is some chance of going whereas in the past the vast majority had the door slammed firmly in their face.

So what?

Well, there's a lot of working (and middle) class young people with a lot of debt, a useless degree and without graduate level jobs, i.e. nothing to show for it.

Had Tone genuinely wanted to help working class children, and not inflate the results of youth employment, he wouldn't have saddled them with debt that will proportionately affect them more than their middle class peers.

Student loans - I won't defend them.

I struggle to see any education as useless, sad old hippy that I am.

We are talking about the lesser of several evils. The debt is bad, having education denied you is worse.

Blair is no hero, he was no socialist, champaign or otherwise, but he was better than a Tory.

In terms of the war criminal stuff it is not just the sending Britain into a war which was unjustified and for which he clearly did not have the support of his people. He made a LOT of money personally from that war from arms dealers. And he was complicit in the use of torture of those captured. Maybe not to the same level as Bush but enough to make me utterly disgusted by him. And even the fact he condoned the actions of Bush (which I am certain reach criminal levels) to me put a stain on him

He is a war criminal OP. I strongly recommend you go and talk to the parents who have lost their sons and daughters fighting those wars. And try and visit at least one of the still ravaged countries that he helped so much to destroy. Then you will come back and ask "WHY THE FUCK IS HE NOT IN THE JAIL?"
Unless of course you are Mrs Blair and want to "save" us all again.

He's just a bit of a wankbadger isn't he?

Not a particularly exceptional one, but one whose shit decisions are still being felt today so we tend to feel more resentment towards him than other wankbadgers of the past.

Wow that's strong! You might not agree with him, but I remember him introducing the minimum wage, improving the education budget significantly etc
He wasn't all bad!

But just because British soldiers died, doesn't make him a war criminal any more that it makes any other PM who took the country to war following a parliamentary vote.

support of his people

Parliament voted for war. He lied, but Parliament voted for us to go to war.
Any Tory would have done the same.

You could visit Kosovo and meet the people he saved.