As someone who lived through the Blair years it was not a nirvana.
There was a similar amount of cronyism in play, cabinet members who had an odd relationship with the truth (looking at Peter Mandelson here - who was reappointed despite being proven to be very untrustworthy ) and not to mention going to war based upon a document of fiction. Unchecked power, regardless of which party is in charge is never satisfactory.
And at the end of the last Labour reign there was no money left, no bankers held accountable for their stupidity because of Blair’s pandering to the city with ‘light-touch legislation’ (indeed we actually paid them and helped them save themselves) and having handed the keys to the economy to the Bank of England, no gold left because the chancellor had sold it all, and a legacy of funding facilitated by kicking the can down the road for hospitals schools in various guises including PFI. So when there are comments about austerity, the lack of access to benefits including child benefit being limited to 2 children, the closure of sure start centres and a lack of funding for councils we need to remind ourselves how this position of austerity arose - and it is not the sole fault of the Tories as much as we’d love to think. The Tories didn’t introduce tuition fees or open the borders to East Europe - a decision that cost a lot of existing UK skilled workers their jobs. Neither did they stop right to buy or build any significant amount of social housing. Blair left office and promptly became the richest ex-prime minister we’ve ever had and now heads ‘The Tony Blair Institute’ which employs more than 600 people. At least Gordon Brown had the decency to stick to his principles and seems to have lived those principles.
And before a whole load of people post GDP growth etc under the Blair years consider the impact that the world economy has had in that time. Personally I was the richest I ever was under Blair - he was cautious on taxation and I even received child benefit despite being a high earner. No one considered if this was fair under Labour - but was one of the first things to go under the Tory coalition. Maybe had Labour considered this years before it wouldn’t have been necessary to penalise the less well off or limit that benefit to 2 children. They could have introduced that change and lost no votes. No Labour administration at the time wanted to or even attempted to make ‘the rich pay’. There were many, many missed opportunities.
My point is this - scrutiny is now more important than ever as decisions are taken that affect all parts of society. Women’s rights being a key issue. Moving forward and regardless of your politics, be that person who speaks up and continues applying the same pressure for transparency and accountability as was demanded of the last administration. Labour has one chance to get this right before they lose momentum and before the county lurches to the right again.