AIBU to ask why Tony Blair is so unpopular?

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AIBU to ask why Tony Blair went from being fairly popular to being very unpopular?

I completely understand that factors such as the Iraq War have a huge part to play in why TB became unpopular, but would be interested to hear if there are also other reasons.

On a side-note, I'm quite impressed despite myself by the fact that he, as well as Alastair Campbell, is still in the media so muxh, despite the fact that they are so unpopular. The electorate and the media have lost a lot of respect for him and those close to him while he was in power, but we still can't seem to get enough of them in a way. It's odd

I was 5 when TB came to power and 15 when he left government, so it's so interesting to come back to it all now and think about his time in power from an adult perspective and with hindsight.

Thread from a few months ago worth a read.

Where on esrth did you work for 60p an hr in the 90,s Alltheprettyseahorses

I’d be interested to know that too. As a 16 year old my Saturday job in 1992 in a newsagents paid £2 an hour.

PFI (bankrupting many NHS trusts), ATOS (I know it's MN view that it's the nasty Tories who've clamped down so offensively on the disabled - which only goes to show how short the Electorate's memory is...), Gordon as Chancellor, being smarmy and nepotistic - and that's before the obvious ones!

Blair was a Labour leader who won 3 elections, so the Tories hate him.
His government sucked up to big business and the City, so lefties hate him.
He was pro-EU, so Brexit voters hate him.
He lied to parliament and the country to go to war in Iraq, so people who opposed that war hate him.
He was close to George Bush, so liberals hate him.
He was very religious, so atheists hate him.
He pretended to support Newcastle, so real football fans hate him.

He managed to piss off just about everybody, which is why just about everybody hates him.

Hmmm. Where to start? He thinks he is on a mission from God, for a start. He says, "Look" to preface his annoying little answers as if he is impatient with the questioner. It is very very patronising.

I happen to think his early popularity did him in...at the beginning, he was riding on a coastal wave, especially after the death of Princess Diana.

But then he started to look fallible and even worse...a puppy dog to the worthless Bush Administration. So people felt deceived. And if there is one thing people don’t generally forgive, it is deceit.

Aside from the war It was that awful outfit he wore to meet dubya.
He loved gaddafi wrote him love letters.
He made a miscalculation on lifting work restrictions for eastern European workers and in doing so, changed the face and course of our nation. When feedback started to flood back he deliberately surpressed it and gas lighted the nation.

He developed a way of suppressing concern by calling it racism.
During this time terrible abuse in Rotherham was going on but such was the rabid incoherent ethos of the time, one reason it didn't come to light was because social workers public workers were afraid of being seen as racist.
During his tenure, the gap in child poverty grew. Labour, the party of the people.. Did nothing for children in poverty, it was only brown tax credit that salvaged that hideous failure.... But only toward the end of a long labour tenure.

He left this country in the biggest fuck up mess since the war. He can't see it, he won't admit it.

Because he's a lying, hypocritical, war-mongering bastard.

The Iraq war was kind of a big deal, OP. Isn't that enough of a reason? He sent us into an illegal, immoral war, completely bypassing the UN, because 'god told him to do it' and tried to justify himself by deliberately misleading the electorate and parliament. He knew that the vast majority of the British people did not support the war and that it would further destabilise the Middle East but he carried on regardless and has never shown any remorse for his actions - either he's completely fucking deluded or he just doesn't give a shit.

The man is spineless and entirely self-serving and won't even have the good grace to fade into obscurity. Instead he continues to run his mouth and comment publicly about what's going on with the labour party currently as he doesn't even have the self awareness to recognise that his word means nothing to the vast majority of party members because he had his chance to change things for the better and completely fucked it.

He had no principles, he's a multi millionaire simply from being PM.
I may not have agreed with Gordon Brown and think he did a shit job but he seems to be a decent genuine person

MyBrilliantDisguise I don't object to either religion or people being religious.

What I meant was that him being religious didn't help his public popularity, especially after the Iraq war, as both types of Christianity are supposed to encourage peace and loving your neighbour. Not bombing countries and amassing wealth.

For me it felt a bit hypocritical.

I never voted for TB/New Labour. Against Iraq from the off: it was so obviously wrong (as blatantly wrong as Brexit is now). So I should be in the queue wanting to slap/hate him. But I am not.

So why so much negativity? (See comments above for examples).

I see it partly due to the 'hot ex boy/girlfriend who dumped you' syndrome. In 1997 he was like a rock star. Left/Labour revered him. Right/Cons envied him. So much hope. But life is complicated so obviously he was going to fall short. So now it is...'I never fancied him anyway...'

Another factor is the media. They love to build people up/knock them down. He suffers from this and the right wing press over the years (DM/Sun etc) blame him for everything. Many people get their views from here.

A couple of extra points:

He is not a war criminal ffs. Every mp who voted for Iraq is culpable. A Conservative govt - with 90% MPs voting for war - would have been all over Iraq quicker than you can say 'where do I sign this oil drilling contract'? The Lib Dems only party to be against.

In my part of London in 1997 the local school was a shambles and the park was a drug dealers bazaar. Now the school is amazing, the park a green oasis and the local sure start/library a delight. New Labour investment a key factor.

On balance his record is mixed.

As a statesman, he puts today's 'leading' politicians to shame. The country could so do with him now.

I still wouldn't vote for him...but the hate is way overdone.

The left hate him because he won three elections. Much easier to be ideologically pure and be in opposition.

There's been a few threads with similar titles. Are you trying to drum up support for a comeback or something??

I'm a left-winger who never voted for him. He had some good effects: stopped years of under-investment and started Surestart, stressed education, as pps have said. But he also continued the Tory destruction of the public sector, undermined local government and the professions, and brought in targeting. I lay much of the blame for the shift away from information towards propaganda at his door (Cameron caught on and continued it). Much of the money that was floating around was sucked out of the public sector straight into private pockets of those who were already well off, those who could play the ridiculous systems he invented, and he laid the seeds for the current hatred of the poor.
There's probably economic arguments to be had - it was in his time that globalisation of the banking industry took off thanks to deregulation but I don't know enough about that.

@thecatfromjapan Cherie, is that you? :)

For those wanting to know where I earned 60p an hour, it was in a nursery. Polly Toynbee references even lower wages of 50p an hour in her book Hard Work.

It's interesting how many people didn't support the Iraq War when at one point it had nearly 70% public support. This is a thought-provoking article about how people may misremember what they thought of the war at the time. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/surveys-reveal-how-we-remember-not-supporting-war-in-iraq-but-at-the-time-we-did-support-it-10300854.html

But any support for the Iraq war was based on misinformation (lies?)

Talkingmouse and birdsdestiny - YY, agree with everything you both say.

Had the 'delight' in having both him and Cherie lawding it up at work before he came to power. Horrible pair, it was a sad day when John Smith died, he was a lovely man.

The same lies/half-truths that Blair had no reason to disbelieve though, Davros. Hussein did have WMDs and he used them on his own people. He retained the capacity to manufacture more.

It's easy to forget the hugely positive things his government achieved.
His three term tenure was impressive but overshadowed by Iraq - although it is clear there were no war crimes despite people jumping on that bandwagon.

Tony Blair donates every penny of the royalties he makes from his autobiography to the Royal British Legion.

He can afford to donate. And the fact it's common knowledge makes his act of charitable giving vulgar.

Apart from everything listed he was Bush's poodle basically, very unedifying for the leader of this country. Brown was economically inept but not comparable to Bliar.

David Kelly's death, the only reason he wanted Great Britain to stay in Europe is because he wanted to be president of Europe, I don't think he did anything that didn't benefit him in someway

About tuition fees.

I remember the 1997 election very well because I campaigned for the Lib Dems.

At the university I attended I heard students saying repeatedly that Labour would abolish fees etc. Actually they'd made no such promise. It's just that they were happy to leave people with that impression.

And that, in a nutshell, is how Blair's government operated: being one thing while people believed they were something else.

Now everyone has seen through it.

I actually think they weren't a bad government on in the main, but they made three huge mistakes: 1. under-regulation of the banks 2: the Iraq war 3: the incessant spinning, which has led to people believing in charlatans like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.