Filibuster Cartoons
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Tony Blair is Prime Minister no more. He officially stepped down yesterday, making Labour Party leader Gordon Brown the new PM of Great Britain.
Mr. Blair was in power for almost exactly 10 years and his decade of rule was enormously transformative for the country. His government sought to reform or abolish anachronistic institutions of governance, while simultaneously expanding the role of the state through new and powerful bureaucracies. He sought to make the UK a more welcoming place for immigrants, and ushered in a new era of “British federalism” by delegating unprecedented powers to the regional governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Added up, there can be no denying that conventional notions of “what Britain is†have been irreversibly challenged.
In foreign affairs Blair has of course become best known for his unwavering support of the War on Terror and the War in Iraq. People often call him a puppet or poodle of Bush, but such labels disguise Blair’s own passionate belief in the need for an aggressively interventionist, pre-emptive foreign policy. For good or ill, he’s as much a “neo-con” as anyone in Washington.
Mr. Blair was the most successful Labour Party PM in British history, but it seems his successes were always greatest with the UK’s “silent majority,” that is the centrist voters of the middle class. Hardline conservatives and liberals alike both dispised him, and since their views tend to dominate the media and internet discourse, one can be excused for thinking Blair was the most hated ruler in British history. In my mind, that was Blair’s single greatest achievement- his willingness to transcend traditional notions of “right†and “left†and embrace a much less ideological and far more pragmatic, personality-driven approach to partisan governance.
