Author Archives: Jeremy Hargreaves

When Tony Blair announced his resignation, everyone seemed to want to give their assessment of what the Blair years had been like for Britain – giving history’s first judgement of the legacy into which he’s put so much effort. 

Many sought to measure his achievements in numbers: numbers of teachers under Blair, the change in waiting lists for hip ops under Blair, the spending on international development, the numbers unemployed under Blair. 

But they didn’t tell me what I want to know about the Tony years.

For although I’d voted Lib Dem in the misty early morning of the 1st May 1997, before doing the 7am stint telling, I shared in the excitement of the new regime that weekend – like almost everyone who wasn’t a Conservative, and, one sensed, even quite a few who were. 

I hoped that the new government would do something about what I thought was wrong about Britain after 18 years of Conservative government. 

What was I looking for from Tony?

I wanted a government which would not be weighed down by sleaze and a relentless stream of ministers and MPs apparently interested mainly in just feathering their own nests.

I wanted a political system which actually made sense – where a party’s strength in Parliament depended on the number of people who voted for it. I wanted a system which accepted that some decisions were best taken at a different level than a monolithic Westminster, in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Europe, or locally – and a House of Lords which had at least some legitimacy in its composition rather than being just a random collection of aristocracy. 

I wanted a government which wasn’t anti-European. And which would act to prevent governments making war on their own peoples, as had just happened on Europe’s doorstep in the Balkans.

I wanted him to do something to stop British education falling behind other developed countries. I wanted the government to stop just relentlessly cutting things, and instead invest in education, in health, in teachers, doctors and nurses. 

I desperately wanted the government to do something to make British society less unequal – to do something about the huge and growing gap between the obscene salaries and remuneration packages earned by some, and those who were too poor enough to play a real part in British society at all. And I wanted it to do something to tackle the sheer social tension bequeathed by Thatcherism and a government which seemed keen to show in every way it could that it believed there was no such thing as society.

And most of all, I wanted the people who ran the country to show some sign that they believed they were doing it for the benefit of the whole country, and particularly those who needed its help, and not just for the benefit of themselves. 

So has Tony given me what I wanted?