I know that the comments beneath online newspaper pieces aren’t exactly where you go if you want sane, balanced opinion, but the forum which followed the Guardian’s news story about Tony Blair’s speech yesterday nevertheless took me aback. Appropriately enough, there were 666 comments when I read them. And how many had anything positive to say about the former Prime Minister? I counted one, possibly two, if you count calling him a ‘charismatic commentator’ before saying you think he is out of touch.
It has been clear since around 2002 that Blair has been seen on the left as a generally negatively influence, but is there really no-one among Labour’s grassroots supporters left, even grudgingly, to admit that winning three elections, taking the Labour party from irrelevance into what briefly looked like Britain’s natural governing party, introducing the minimum wage, passing all the equality legislation which I thought the Left wanted were not worthwhile things to do?
True, Blair seems blind to his biggest failure in office – the Iraq War.
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