View Poll Results: Is it time for Tony Blair to kindly SHUT UP?

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Thread: Poll: Tony Blair

  1. #1
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    Default Poll: Tony Blair

    Is it time for Tony Blair to stop talking?
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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    I remember seeing him on TV in the mid 90s, as Shadow Home Secretary, and being very impressed by his intellect and ability. Such a terrible waste- to see him as Bush's poodle and now Murdoch's poodle makes me detest him. BTW, that's probably unfair to poodles, a fine breed of dog

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    Senior Member Annie's Avatar
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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    Yup it is - way past time. One of the biggest WMDs of the current age is his drivel. Just my tuppence worth...
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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    Even the more free and easy attitude of this forum, is unlikely to tolerate the negativity of my opinion, so I will keep it to myself.

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    Senior Member Newjelan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    Poor old Tony, another former leader who's suffering from "relevance deprivation syndrome"

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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    Quote Originally Posted by Newjelan View Post
    Poor old Tony, another former leader who's suffering from "relevance deprivation syndrome"
    I marched against the war in Iraq back in 2003. I don’t regret that but I don’t feel that Tony Blair as a Prime Minister must not be just defined over Iraq. It may well be that later historians see his decision as the right one at the time to avoid that fate that has recently befallen Syria and the instability in the area. My view is that intervention is better after a country’s own people have created civil war and humanitarian need has gone beyond the need to just give “aid”. But at the time in 2003 the belief was that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of mass destruction (probably moved to Syria) and had gassed 70,000 of his own Kurdish people. Some also think Blair stepped in after the September 11th atrocity to stop Bush using a nuclear device. If true then very worthy.The left in the UK saw his relationship with a Republican President as being the final straw. Prime Ministers cannot just be seen with political equivalents on the world stage.

    However, it is worth looking at the bigger picture regarding Tony Blair: Yes, I guess Tony Blair may well want to lose the negative taint of Iraq with new initiatives but that is not what drives him in his recent Middle East speech. The Tony Blair brand to many is still toxic in Uk. But abroad, in many countries, he is seen differently- a man of wisdom and a shrewd strategist. He has numerous important connections around the world and may well be able to still influence all the big players in International Politics some of whom we would be reluctant to shake hands with should we meet them. But hand shaking is needed and careful words also. Even the Queen sits down to dinner with former IRA leaders and many of us feel for her as she does so.

    This coming together even with Putin is Blair’s basic recent idea. The world needs to come together to "deal" with Islamic extremism is right. For that matter any extremism that leads to death. And he also points out the extremists are just that i.e. not the real religion but an aberration of their religion. The problem is how this "coming together" will be manifested. Because of his still toxic "brand Blair" many feel he is the wrong person to be promoting this idea. But few others have his International status or influence in this area. Many feel, "Oh, not again Tony." Hence this thread I suppose. I feel that we do need a re-assessment of Tony Blair. A bigger picture has many details.

    He agrees his legacy is still tainted by Iraq. However, revisionists consider a "what if" scenario that what if Iraq had been left alone it would have eventually had its own "Arab Spring" of revolt like Egypt or worse ended up like Syria. If it had been left to more years of Saddam for a 8-10 years say, then the UN would have kept the no fly zone going, WMD may have been re-started but may be not. Most now realise that is how Syria’s Bashar al-Assad had such a big stockpile of chemical weapons - Syria took much of Saddam's mustard gas is the belief. Journalists at Reuters when the weapons inspectors were looking for WMD 11 years ago said it had all gone over the border to Syria. It is true that under Saddam the child mortality rate was extreme whether due to the legacy of Iran - Iraq war, Saddam's neglect of people or international sanctions. It is true that child mortality has dramatically decreased since his regime has been over-thrown.

    ""Researcher Richard Garfield estimated that "a minimum of 100,000 and a more likely estimate of 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August 1991 through March 1998" from all causes including sanctions. Other estimates have put the number at 170,000 children. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight-year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."" From Wikipedia.

    The “what ifs” of Politics end up in the History books. Hindsight is the stock in trade of the history writers and journalists. The legacy of perceiving the invasion of Iraq as a disaster is that the British Government is reluctant to intervene in countries like Syria. When we saw repugnant images of lines of children gassed it was hard not to feel that International intervention was urgently needed. But the legacy of Iraq stayed Britain's hand. People said it would escalate, more British lives would be lost as we saw in Afghanistan. There would be more hatred around the world for intervening if things went wrong like in Iraq. So now we have just aid and people from the UK going out to fight on the side of in some cases Hamas inspired factions. David Cameron said on Thursday

    "But what we don't want to see is people from the UK going to fight, going to get radicalised, potentially coming back here and threatening others.

    "That's a major risk to the UK, one we take extremely seriously - and everyone can help us stop it from happening."

    So, what good things did TB do in his time as P.M.? The NHS under John Major was seriously under funded. The Minimum wage is seen by many to be a good thing. TB dealt with child poverty and to some extent pensioner poverty.

    However, the domestic front is not what I feel has been Tony Blair's exceptional legacy:
    It is evident Blair was right to get international support to intervene in Kosovo. To have left it would have ended up like the genocide of Rwanda and spilled over into central Europe.
    TB's exceptional success has also been in Northern Ireland. If you read Alastair Campbell's Northern Irish Diaries it shows the brilliant strategy TB and AC and others used to bring a lasting peace to N.I. I lived in N.I. for 4 years in the 1980s and the changes after The Northern Irish Peace Process and the subsequent power sharing have been remarkable. Many hundreds of lives have been saved by the stopping of random bombs and tit for tat shootings in NI and mainland Uk and many millions of pounds saved as a result of the reduction in security forces needed. Lasting peace has probably kept London at the top as an international Financial trading centre. Remember the Baltic Exchange bomb. It scared the City greatly. Do not forget that Britain relies heavily on the money from the City of London to make it a wealthy nation.

    So post PM what has TB been doing? It is hard to know exactly the successes TB has had in the Middle East: has he had much impact with Israel over Palestine? More likely it is in persuading "families" in power in other Middle Eastern countries to be vigilant and apply approaches against Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah inspired groups. And I expect Blair may also be warming the “families” that change is needed or they will end up like Egypt. Middle Eastern countries’ leaders do not want extremism to rock their countries’ “stability” and it is obvious that the rich powerful “families” will want to maintain their status quo of power and also they hardly need to be told what to do that by a former UK P.M. But they listen as strategy is all. It is not just the Middle East and Blair has discussed extremism in his recent speech as clearly affecting all continents.

    The Blair strategy was evidently applied in Albania last year to get Edi Rama elected. The country is 60% Muslim and mostly Sunnis (Saddam's sect). So why would Albania like Tony Blair? TB is much liked because he supported the Albanians in Kosovo. Rama is a moderate and has modelled his politics on "new Labour". There's a surprise. Both TB and Alastair Campbell helped Rama to win. Why bother to help Albania? Well, you could argue Albania is part of the initiative to keep stable any country that could be unsettled by Islamic extremism. Or perhaps the Cold War continues. Blair would like to see Albania in the EU. This is also probably to keep Albania out of the clutches of Putin. The EU has been expanding its borders I feel to partly give former Eastern European countries more stability and to partly to keep Putin from re-claiming countries. An attack on an EU country would be far more serious than the Ukraine.

    So, this is my assessment of Tony Blair.

    After I went on the 2003 march against the war in Iraq, I remember my very Conservative neighbour boasting to me that her son in law, the then NATFHE union leader, was on stage with Harold Pinter and Miss Dynamite. Curious one upmanship.

    Adrian.
    Last edited by Adrian; April 28th, 2014 at 01:01 AM.

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    Default Re: Poll: Tony Blair

    No, Tony Blair should not shut up. Yes, if a person were an ardent leftist, or an apologist for Islamic terrorists or Palestinian terrorists, like George Galloway, I guess Tony Blair's opinions would be anathema
    Last edited by Wolverine1; April 29th, 2014 at 11:23 AM. Reason: typo

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