Tony Blair
Bliar, Bliar, pants on Thatcherite fire. I review Tony Blair ahead of this year's General Election. He ain't running, but his shadow might be...
“The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.”
I spent my childhood and much of puberty with Tories in charge. When I was ten, the Iron Lady melted from the scene to be replaced with a grey, Spitting Image puppet. For seven years, John Major bounced from crisis to scandal and back again in a very busy stint for tabloids. The Conservatives rode the last wave of Thatcher’s bizarre popularity until it petered out and left them stranded on the beach with armfuls of outrageous headlines and nowhere left to go.
Enter Tony Blair.
Dare to D:ream
Things could only get better, right? After all, with the family silver sold and the previous residents of 10 Downing Street flogging even the good china, what was left? Well, it would take over a decade for Liam Byrne to leave his famous I’m afraid there is no money note for the incoming Tories. This note is a good place to start because aside from the Iraq War and a neverending series of gate or cash-for scandals, this note points to the most pernicious things at the heart of Tony Blair’s government: the embrace of Thatcher’s three big lies.
In this Sneer Review I shall review Tony Blair, his legacy and why he would have gotten one more star if only he had not poured misery onto an agony-drenched Middle East.
The Shiny, Happy 90s
Far from the piling rubbish and endless strikes of the 1970s, the final decade of the millennium was a hope-saturated PR blitz of amazingness. Geri Halliwell’s arse hung imperiously beneath her Drool Brittania dress as she lived her Parklife, and we were all just sitting around, waiting for TikTok to be invented whilst rejoicing at the solitary National Lottery draw per week. Mr Blobby lived his best life as we watched Noel’s House Party, safe in the knowledge that the Berlin Wall was down and these mean, auld Commies were all busily queuing for Big Macs.
There was a feeling that things were getting better, especially in 1997 when the perma-smiling Blair and his equally manically smiling wife, Cherie, rode into Downing Street, ready to clear those neoliberal cobwebs away. So they all lived happily ever after?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tony McCann Makes Things Up to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.