Tony Fucking Blair

[MangoMoon]

Interviewed on Sky News - apparently the people have spoken..... But we don't necessarily have to listen.

I hate that man.

With a passion.

Although technically not a War Criminal according to the Hague.

However under the Nuremberg laws, yes!

Absolutely right Bungo.

I don't see how Blair made austerity the only path, tbf his economic way out of it would have been Keynsian much as Obama's has been.

In reality the Labour party had moved away from the old style Labour under Kinnock, and further under John Smith ( who would have been amazing), Blair just embodied the change and made it more noticeable than it had been, oh and removing clause 4 was a big step, but a necessary one.

Essentially I feel that the politics of the 1960s and 70s can't be replayed, Thatcher brought an end to that.

He helped to create the idea that there is only one way, a centralised way relying on the "talents" of a chosen few, because no one else could be trusted or was sufficiently 'talented' (by which it meant had enough money from birth). As soon as the credit crisis hit it became worse: but the path was already formed.

Blair's Keynesianism consisted of giving money to those chosen few to insist that the rest of us worked harder and harder to achieve less and less. And then we could be blamed a bit more and whipped a bit harder.

I think you have a bit of a selective memory.

Living standards went up under Blair.

In from 2001 to 2005 unemployment was under the low figure it was now. How can he have centralised everything when power was devolved to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales? What about the regional development agencies?

Once the credit crisis hit there was a cut in VAT and an increase in public spending.

I think you're revisionist, yet again.

Bit of revisionism yourself smallfox : VAT was dropped in 2008 when Brown was PM (Blair very skilfully got out just before the full crisis hit )

Don't know as much about the English Development Agencies but in Scotland, development agencies were active in 1992 (when I met dh who was involved in Inward Development for one of them) and were part of Scottish Enterprise. All that happened in the late 90s was an expensive rebranding and a bit of shuffling of chairs between the local enterprise companies and Scottish Enterprise.

Dh also remembers meeting Blair 4 times when Blair was taking the credit for the hard work the inward investment team had done and says he was rude every time, not even bothering to get names right

It was part of the Labour government though, which is what I meant.

The point about the regional development agencies was that they got more funding and obviously a lot of power.

You also make the point about centralization what Scotland got devolved?

Iirc, Scottish Enterprise was cut back and some of its functions moved into the enterprise companies. Even more so in recent years, with the enterprise companies being disbanded and their economic development responsibilities being taken back by the local councils. Although SE seems to have grown again and "Locate in Scotland" became part of "Scottish Development International".

There are new(ish) initiatives, like the "Scottish Cities Alliance", jointly funded by the SG and the seven cities.

The City Deals have also contributed to economic development (at least, I presume they have )

Dh had a few years out of inward investment (has only recently re-entered), so I'm not as au fait with the changes in the intervening period. His particular skill was in getting public and private sector to work together to their mutual benefit (not just the "obvious" suspects like the property developers, but the property agents, the recruitment consultants, the lawyers....). Neither "side" has horns

But none of this is to do with Plastic Blair

I have to say smallfox, we will never agree on the Leave or Remain vote but I've learned a lot about different political & economic stuff from all your posts; I've enjoyed reading them all.

Also (I mean this in a nice way), you remind me so much of Claig - anther prominent poster on these things.
You're like complete mirror images of each other in your content, but equally as passionate and irrepressible as each other.

Claig writes very well.. but is rather a conspiracy theorist!

I know!

Her threads make me laugh!

If you were indeed separated at birth, then you are most definitely the rational twin

Surferjet It's about more complex than that.

1. Blair moves Labour further into centre ground.
2. Working classes (so called) benefit from the boom in culture and economy.
3. Iraq war damages Blair's credibility.
4. Gordon Brown pushes Blair out.
5. Market crash caused by bankers. Narrative: Labour spending spree caused crash
6. Tories seize power in coalition and start peddling the narrative hard. 'We've over spent and now we have to pay our debts'.
7. Banks are bailed out but all the gains in services are cut to the bone. Poorest hit hardest and first. Working families really feel the brunt. Narrative: immigration is killing the NHS. Immigrants are stealing your jobs.
8. Cameron decides to step down in 2020. Cue massive in fighting in the Tory party. Cameron makes move to secure his majority in Parliament by giving Eurosceptic MPs what they want. Narrative: the EU is to blame for us not being more successful. Brussels steals all our money. Britain is being held hostage.

And that's how you manufacture consent for a Brexit.

Side note: all this time the Labour Party have been trying to recover from the end of the Blair/Brown years.

What is sad is that working class voters have been convinced by a false narrative that the EU and immigration are to blame for their problems- when really it is the ideological cuts made by the Tories and the banks we 'had to' bail out.

Hiddenaspie1973 your comment was despicable and irresponsible. How quickly the murder of Jo Cox has been forgotten by some!

Smallfox,
Going back to your list... what of his so called achievements created wealth?... Borrowing money and hiding it in the accounts by calling it PFI and splashing it on sending half the school leavers on a university "experience" does not necessarily create wealth.

But apart from that minor proplem, I think we agree that Blair caused a lot of trouble via his invasion of Iraq.

I wonder how much of the security problem would be resolved if he was handed over to the Mullahs.

Smallfox, you forgot to add the Early Years - actually it didn't exist before the Blair Government.

Not only did he introduce the Early Years as a sector, he also introduced the free Early Years Education entitlement for 3 and 4 year old children - and it was properly funded, too.

Well, who knew?!

Tony Blair is a snakey, lying-by-omission git who didn't give a toss about anything or anyone other than 'his legacy'.

Tony Fucking Blair indeed.

So, what happens next?

Who knows.
I hope he's held to account for this.
He wilfully misled & misdirected so many people - and for what?!

Judging by his response to it, I think Tony has been given a different version of the report to the one everyone else was.

Are there any threads on the Chilcot Report? I can't see any other than this one. (And not Brexit related)

Either that Mango, or he read the wrong pre-prepared speech 😒😒😠

I came on MN expecting a load of threads about Chilcot, but nothingm nada, nowt.
I was standing at the checkout in Lidl at 11:20 worrying about not being home in time to hear the report being announced... I must be one of the few worrying about it!
So, in the end not a surprise, but yes, reading Blair's statement he still thinks he did nothing wrong. here
I feel so very, very let down by Tony Blair, I cried with happiness on general election night in 1997, after working in the NHS for 10 years under a tory regime. There were good things done by that government, but I will never, ever vote labour again after the invasion of Iraq.

DM says families intend to take out a private prosecution.

Just make him hand over all his properties and moneys he's made since leaving office to victims families.
That'll do nicely ...for starters.

Bliar is a dangerous narcissist: he genuinely can't see anything wrong with what he did.

People like that should be barred from any position with control over other lives as a liability to others