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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Blair knighthood

383 replies

Mummyrowland · 03/01/2022 02:54

Nearly half a million people have signed a petition over his knighthood in 48 hours.

It should be removed and he shouldn't be awarded it.

After all what did he do that was good?

What about all the squaddies he sent to their deaths over the supposed wmds?

High ranking members of the armed forces are threatening resignation if his award isn't reconsider

OP posts:
Summerhillsquare · 03/01/2022 12:41

Do remind us, which prime minister has been entirely peaceful and not entered into any military activities overseas in which many civilians died?

Exasperatedhousehunter · 03/01/2022 12:42

He did a lot of good on the domestic front actually. Use of food banks, street homelessness and childhood poverty was hugely reduced under him. He put a lot of money into education and public services. The Iraq war was a terrible decision but even the legitimate wars that are fought have a huge cost to civilians in those countries and lots of ‘progressive’ leaders have authorised military action that harms civilians (eg Obama).
Idk, I’m on the fence on this. Also as someone else said, the tories were fully in agreement with the Iraq war and he didn’t take the decision himself - it was voted on democratically and he went on to win another term after that.

Luredbyapomegranate · 03/01/2022 12:42

He did a lot that was good, specifically minimum wage, boosts to kids living in poverty eg surestart (the opportunities gap has since opened up again), and spent a lot on schools and the NHS (admittedly funded by an economic boom.)

He also led a centrist approach to politics that is sorely lacking in these days of global polarisation, and no electable alternative to the Tories in the UK.

I think he was wrong about Iraq, and he should have asked deeper questions that would have showed how flakey the evidence was - I think he was guilty of negligence and of seeing what he wanted to see - but no, I don’t think he deliberately lied.

So given the above plus 3 election wins, a Knighthood is hard to dispute.

CowMarshland · 03/01/2022 12:43

Couldn’t have used a better pic of him 🤣

WindyState · 03/01/2022 12:43

@luckylavender

Iraq was a terrible error of judgement - but supported by the Tories, a fact that many people chose to overlook. Other than that he won 3 elections and did an awful lot of good, not least the GFA. Compared to the current government he was a saint.
Indeed. It's not like things would have been any different in Iraq had the tories been in power.

And yes, I do hope that those objecting to Blair getting a knighthood do the same for Boris, Cameron and May.

Pirrip1 · 03/01/2022 12:45

@madisonbridges

No, I’m making the point that every Prime Minister has good points and bad points.

Churchill was an inspirational war leader who saved the country. He was also hated in parts of South Wales and the industrial North for his actions during the general strike. He got a knighthood regardless.

Blair obviously made huge errors (one in particular) but to say he didn’t achieve anything is nonsense.

MrsTophamHat · 03/01/2022 12:45

I think he deseves the knighthood.

luckylavender · 03/01/2022 12:49

@madisonbridges - you need to study Churchill a bit more. He's the reverse of Blair, one very good thing, lots of very dubious / bad things as well as being an alcoholic and a racist.

Theeyeballsinthesky · 03/01/2022 12:50

Take it up with The Queen - the Knighthood he is receiving is entirely within her gift and hers alone

Newyearoldyou · 03/01/2022 12:52

Astonishing esp compare to the the papers that came out after his reign, arrogant, wouldn't listen, forbade this and that, child poverty grew out was only tax credit that saved it, his polices turned a bad hospital into an absolutely life threatening one!!
He's Vile, grabby, patronising... And I voted for him Blush

Blinkinname · 03/01/2022 12:52

Some of the good things copied off Google

Minimum Wage
Devolution for Scoland & Wales
Good Friday agreement & peace in Northern Ireland
Freedom of Information Act
Human Rights Act
Independent Bank of England
Civil partnerships (although he wimped on full 'marriage' this was progress)
Progress in reducing Child Poverty
Huge investment in education
Huge investment in NHS (+25% increase in real terms) - taking it to record high customer satisfaction, shortest ever waiting lists - very different to previous orsubsequent governments whowant to privatise NHS
Longest period of uninterrupted growth in UK history
Lowest unemployment for 50 years
Lowest inflation in decades
Lowest debt in decades (in 2007 debt was 2nd lowest in G8). Funny how people forget that.
Some people would say 'banning fox-hunting'.
Personally I'm not over-bothered either way, but for those who do care it is a big one.
Positive & construcve relations with EU
Kosovo & Sierra Leone. Not wholly good and definitely controversial, but many people would say (at least at the time) they were 'good interventions''
h/t Daniel Walker
One of the only Prime Ministers to increase median income — and one of the only ones to hold inequality still. If you look at income for the poorest it is even more impressive

Blinkinname · 03/01/2022 12:53

And he was pretty good at getting labour into power.

He deserves his knighthood

madisonbridges · 03/01/2022 12:54

[quote Pirrip1]@madisonbridges

No, I’m making the point that every Prime Minister has good points and bad points.

Churchill was an inspirational war leader who saved the country. He was also hated in parts of South Wales and the industrial North for his actions during the general strike. He got a knighthood regardless.

Blair obviously made huge errors (one in particular) but to say he didn’t achieve anything is nonsense.[/quote]
I never said he didn't achieve anything domestically but being the catalyst for the shitshow that has been the lives of many people living in the ME today is hardly just "an error". Except he doesn't think it was an error. And he's earned millions from his contacts from being a ME peace envoy. You couldn't make it up!

anniegun · 03/01/2022 12:57

Blair did more good for the country than any leader since. I get more upset that another Tory donor got a knighthood just for funding the tories

madisonbridges · 03/01/2022 12:58

[quote luckylavender]@madisonbridges - you need to study Churchill a bit more. He's the reverse of Blair, one very good thing, lots of very dubious / bad things as well as being an alcoholic and a racist. [/quote]
I think the main difference is Churchill was defending the country and Blair was actually out warmongering.

Mandy63l · 03/01/2022 12:58

@wecando no, it’s Maggie. 🙈

Blair’s Labour Government did achieve a lot, and delivered on many of their promises, but ultimately he is a war criminal and should not be honoured on that basis.

Saville raised staggering amounts of money for charity, yet he was a paedophile. We don’t keep him on a pedestal now we know of his heinous crimes, so why should we worship Blair?

Witchinthedales · 03/01/2022 13:00

@PersonaNonGarter

Of course he should be knighted.

I never voted for him, but millions did and he was PM for a long time and acted on what he thought was right.

Despite thinking he was a tit when he was in office, I have felt genuinely sorry for him on occasion since. His party literally cannot see that without him they would have been out of power even longer. They are so weirdly ungrateful.

To be fair I feel more sorry for the families of those he led to a needless death under false pretences.
idiotmagnet · 03/01/2022 13:01

Disgusting man. Should be in jail.

MapleMay11 · 03/01/2022 13:07

@idiotmagnet

Disgusting man. Should be in jail.
Absolutely.
GladysTheOstrich · 03/01/2022 13:14

Iraq was a mistake. I don’t know if it was a good faith or bad faith mistake; my feeling is that Blair tried to keep Bush onside in order to mitigate the US government’s most hawkish actions, and to abide by UN resolutions. Then - like the proverbial boiled frog - he found himself too far in.

It’s difficult to say if this is outweighed by the excellent decisions he made domestically. I still think that he and Brown are our best leaders of the past 50 years.

Blossomtoes · 03/01/2022 13:15

@Mummyrowland

I def agree he should be in jail.

Veterans mothers are going to returned medals earned in protest

Then they’re fucking idiots who don’t value their sons’ service. The war in Iraq wasn’t the first by a very long chalk to be the wrong call in retrospect and it certainly won’t be the last.

In his decade as PM, Blair achieved a great deal of very positive things domestically, finalising the peace process in N Ireland being one. Swathes of children were lifted out of poverty and there were vast improvements in the NHS.

BiggerBoat1 · 03/01/2022 13:16

Signed.

I love that whoever set up the petition has chosen a picture of him looking like Voldemort!

luckylavender · 03/01/2022 13:18

@madisonbridges - Churchill the Saint

In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission: "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

Churchill has been criticised for advocating the use of chemical weapons - primarily against Kurds and Afghans.
"I cannot understand this squeamishness about the use of gas," he wrote in a memo during his role as minister for war and air in 1919.
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," he continued.

In 1943, India, then still a British possession, experienced a disastrous famine in the north-eastern region of Bengal - sparked by the Japanese occupation of Burma the year before.
At least three million people are believed to have died - and Churchill's actions, or lack thereof, have been the subject of criticism.

Churchill even appeared to blame the Indians for the famine, claiming they "breed like rabbits".

Churchill had strong views on the man now widely respected for his work in advocating self-determination for India.
"It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir… striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace," Churchill said of his anti-colonialist adversary in 1931.

A 1937 unpublished article - supposedly by Churchill - entitled "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution" was discovered in 2007. "It may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution - that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer," it said. "There is the feeling that the Jew is an incorrigible alien, that his first loyalty will always be towards his own race."

Churchill's 1899 book The River War, in which he wrote: "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
"Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live."

Churchill's reputation as being anti-union primarily stems from an incident in 1910.
His handling of the Tonypandy Riots that year was the source of much controversy and invited ill-feeling towards him in south Wales for the rest of his life.
His grandson even had to defend Churchill's actions as late as 1978, when Prime Minister James Callaghan referenced "the vendetta of your family against the miners of Tonypandy".
The riots had erupted in November 1910 in the south Wales town because of a dispute between workers and the mine owners, culminating in strikes that ultimately lasted almost a year.
When the strikers clashed with local police, Churchill - then home secretary - sent in soldiers.

Not long after the Tonypandy Riots, Churchill was under fire for rash involvement of a different sort.
The siege of Sidney Street was a gunfight in London's East End in January 1911. Some 200 police surrounded the hideout of a gang of Latvian anarchists led by "Peter the Painter", who had killed three policemen the month before.
A long gun battle ended with the deaths of two of the gang, after Churchill had ordered firefighters not to put out the burning building they'd been hiding in until the shooting had stopped.
But the controversy for Churchill arose from the appearance that he'd been issuing orders and directly meddling in police operations.
Arthur Balfour told the Commons: "He and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the right honourable gentleman doing?"
For Churchill's opponents it was an example of rashness and instability, says Toye. A newsreel film had caught him in the midst of the action.

In January 1919 Churchill assumed the role of Secretary of State for War and Air. Eleven days later the Irish War of Independence began.
Churchill's role in Ireland is most associated with deploying the controversial "Black and Tans" to fight the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Named after their uniforms, these temporary constables soon developed a reputation for excessive violence.

"In return for a fee of £5,000 two oil companies, Royal Dutch Shell and Burmah Anglo-Persian Oil Company [later BP], asked him to represent them in their application to the government for a merger," Gilbert's official biography stated.
By modern British political standards, the 1923 payment would be considered highly inappropriate.

I could carry on.

Mummyrowland · 03/01/2022 13:18

Colourfulpuddles mind my own business should I despite being married to a ex bomb disposal squaddie directly affected by the Conflict??????

OP posts:
PlanetNormal · 03/01/2022 13:19

It’s such a difficult issue.

I was a very proud Blairite when I was a Labour activist in a very important marginal constituency in the 90s. After decades in the wilderness, Labour had finally decided it was serious about winning, and I wanted to do my bit. I met Blair several times when he campaigned in our seat and he is by far the most charismatic person I have ever spent time with. When we won in 1997, the feeling of elation made all the hard work worthwhile.

What followed over the next six years made me even prouder : The minimum wage, massive investment in schools & hospitals which slashed waiting lists, a strong economy, Sure Start, civil partnerships, Britain at the heart of Europe. The list of achievements goes on and on. For six years Blair was by far the best PM of my lifetime.

Then he lost his mind over Iraq, and I left the Labour Party in protest, totally disillusioned and betrayed that the government I campaigned for could launch an illegal war based on a dossier of lies. Does he deserve a knighthood? In many ways, yes. Does he deserve to be in jail? In many ways, yes. And that is why he will always be such a divisive figure.