I'm not going to go on the defensive about Tony Blair's record or his decision to retire slowly but one thing that has annoyed me over the past few days, and I suppose is indicative of a country that doesn't take politics seriously, is the narrow mindedness of the political obituaries that have been written.
Let's put aside the Iraq question for one minute and look at the two issues that have been repeated over and over again: health and education. Now surely the most we can ask of our politicians is that they due their best with the resources available. Waiting lists have been cut at our hospitals whichever set of statistics you use and the fact that people want to spend even more money on a service that doesn't need more money merely more direction shows a lack of thought.
Charles Moore in the Telegraph wrote that the schools and hospitals left behind as part of the Blair legacy were a disgrace. I'd like to know when Charles Moore last visited an NHS hospital as a patient, given the fact that he's been cosied up in the world of private health care for the past thirty odd years but that's besides the point. Read the heart warming pieces by Six on both his blog and the 5Live boards to see how, despite heavy criticism over the approval of drugs, cancer treatment is being carried out in the NHS. Yes there are mistakes being made, yes wards are being closed but we are talking about a national institution which, as I showed last year, has been creaking under the weight of expectation since the get-go. If I look at the experiences of people whose blogs I read everyday, I can see that Six, Shy, Mags, Sarnia, Gildy, Augustus and myself have had, in the main, good experiences of the NHS. Given the fact that we are geographically spread from the north east, down through the 'here be dragons' West Midlands, London, Berkshire, Dorset and Hampshire (in Sarnia's case) are we not as representative of a 'good' NHS as those in Cornwall, Scotland or Lincolnshire can claim to be representative of a 'bad' NHS?
The voting public in this country are a fickle bunch confusing national with local, voting for David Cameron in the local elections and the part leader at National Elections - this is not me being pompous (as I was wonderfully described on 5Live yesterday) but there is anecdotal evidence to prove it and I speak as somebody who worked for two mayors and an advisor to the Labour NEC. They believe that the NHS, underfunded and over bureaucratised to the point of standstill under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997, would be better in the hands of that party again and who am I to argue, we hope that politics like life evolves and mistakes are learned.
As for education one of the constant jibes in the media and the messageboards is the quality of graduates and those leaving full-time education. This is the same gripe we've had for the past forty years and ask yourself this question, those teachers in our schools today, under which political party did they train and under which party were they educated, certainly not Labour. You can talk about changes to the curriculum but that has always been the case, Grammar Schools come and go, funding comes and goes, children come and go. Education is seen as a cornerstone of political ideology, the people who suffer in the short term are those children who are caught in the middle, those who suffer in the long term are all of us. We all want our children to have the best but what that best is will always be subjective beyond the reasonable expectation that they can read and write and perform basic mathematical functions. I never thought I'd see the day when one of my clerks would need a calculator to work out what something mulitplied by ten was but then I didn't grow up in an era of calculators at school.
As Anthony Howard wrote in the Independent this week, history will judge Tony Blair, not as a Churchill, a Thatcher or probably even as an Atlee but as a politician who believed what he was doing was right even when it was wrong. In that respect he's no different to any other politician who has ever lived. Is he?
6 comments:
Paul, he is judged on what he shouted loudest about.
24 hours to save the NHS...
Education, education, education...
Tough on crime...
As you say almost any politician will get stick from all sides, I cannot think of a single one that has left office a 100% success or anywhere near that; however, what gets me, media and MB aside, is that the government have been so corrupt I don't mean sleaze, I mean CORRUPTION, nepotism, gross derliction of duty, gross ineptitude...all blatant. The lies and spin I guess go with the territory...do they?
I don't think voters are fickle; I wish they WERE fickle: what would the election, local and otherwise be if there were compulsory voting? Who's to know, Labour would probably get MORE votes.
I think the main (good) thing about Blair is that he tried to do things that weren't steeped in dogma, many things Conservative voters should be more than happy with and conversely many things that got 'Real Labour' apoplectic.
Re NHS, you'll find many impressed by the 'centres of excellence' but they are exactly that: CENTRES, made possible by weeding the surrounding catchment areas..."the fact that people want to spend even more money on a service that doesn't need more money merely more direction shows a lack of thought" hear, hear.
P.S. I thought the UK was the worst in Europe for cancer care, maybe I'm wrong. However I too have had very good and very bad experiences of the NHS...so what's that? "average"?
The end of your third paragraph brings up the point that annoys me most and that is the acceptance of corruption as part of life - why should it be? As I said on your blog about RS and how he stood out from the crowd re payment, isn't it sad that more than ten years on I remember him as the exception and he was the one who was honest!
When I said voters I should have said electorate - we know that voters vote for leaders and not policies that is wrong. Look at the two elections of last week, our locals get a 40% turnout, when people moan about the lack of a democratic process they should look closer to home than Westminster.
With the cancer article that appeared last week I believe we came last because of the time it takes drugs to be approved. There's a wonderful sense of British irony in that, in Europe despite the EU rules that say state funding musn't be given to privately owned companies it happens and things move along. In this country where the rules are obeyed (slavishly as with all things EU) the process gets held up.
I agree with your opening and that is the fault of himself and nobody else. Funnily enough in the local free paper this week in the town where I work there's an editorial that could come straight from the pages of the Daily Mail. It bears no resemblence to the town I've worked in for 25 years and is all about how dangerous the streets are to walk at night - there is no evidence whatsover and all it does is feed the paranoia. As I've said before though I'm lucky in that resprect.
Iraq was his nemesis and it will be that he is remembered for. Not for actually taking us into war but for the bloody, filthy lies over WMD's, 45 minutes and so on. It was then that any faith that people had in him disappeared.
I do applaud some of his education policies and their success although not all. Cheers for smaller class sizes, classroom assistants and the improvements to buildings. Jeers for loans and tuition fees.
As to the NHS, cheers for the end of long waiting lists but jeers for not really doing anything about dental treatment and for the total f*ck up on administration and its costs.
I think one of the reasons Blair gets such a bad press is because he promised so much and nobody could have lived up to the promise and the faith that was placed in him. I think we forget how awful those 18 years of tory government were and just how bad things got over the last few years. Blair was going to save us, make us feel good about ourselves and for a while he did. However, he was human and his fall was bound to happen. His rise was so high that the fall was more calamitous as a result.
Interesting BBC poll here not sure if it's been updated after I voted (Sunday morning) but re Blair:
Hit - Ireland (42%)
Miss - Iraq (49%)
I voted 'Hit' Minimum wage and 'Miss' Sleaze in politics, although as I said my earlier reply it goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond 'sleaze'.
The Ireland 'result' is interesting, most people interviewed on T.V this week when asked who the winners were said either "IRA" or "Terrorists."
Iraq has become our Vietnam, a conflict reduced to ideology that nobody can win or lose without huge loss of life. I think we have now reached the point where more bombs and bullets have been fired in Iraq than between 1939 and 1945.
If I had to use one word to sum up Mr A C L Blair it would be "vain". So much of what we've seen from him can be explained by his enormous (IMHO) vanity.
Post a Comment