It may seem very odd to some, I dare say it downright offends others, but I genuinely do miss our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. No he wasn’t great at Cabinet re-shuffles, no his party were not dead keen on him but he had two invaluable qualities which are distinctly lacking in the current First Lord of the Treasury. That is to say, he was not stupid enough to let a massive government crisis continue for over two weeks, in order to make himself look like a strong leader, as it is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the government would have to give in, or else be defeated in the lower house. The second thing is that he would have done it in a way that people would have thought “core blimey, that Tony Blair does listen to the public”, as opposed to the incredible (I use this word in the negative sense) way Gordon has handled it all. Adding to this people did, despite his wife, like the man and he did perform well in front of the commons, something Gordon cannot be accused of under any circumstances. Blair was a show man, and we all loved him for it, admit it, go on you know I’m right.
As a Conservative I am both happy and sad he is gone, I am happy as it means the NuLab project is tearing itself apart. But I am sad on three counts; the first is that I would have enjoyed seeing Blair defeated at the General election, it would have shown that he wasn’t invincible, but then he was far too smart for that and that is one of the reasons why he went. The second reason is that between now and the next General Election we have this shower propping up, or at least trying to prop up, the Government and making a total hash of more or less everything in their efforts to do so. The third reason? I did have a genuine affection for Blair, I was 13 when he swept to power and I never was able to stop admiring his pure abilities as a politician, public speaker and for getting himself out of the sh*t.
At the end of the day it was Tony Blair who drove me both into politics, I did admire the man who threw out “those crusty, grey looking” people in 1997. But it was also Blair who drove me to understand that whatever qualities I admired about him I did not, on further inspection before the 2001 election, like his policies or his way of running the country. That said, I can’t stand Brown’s policies, style of Government or his genuine ineptitude in front of cameras, parliament, the press or the general public. So come back Tony, all is forgiven (until May 2010).
