Dr Kelly

Fame Monster said:
There was no such thing as post-war. The war we entered into against Iraqi forces led to a subsequent civil war. Blair, Bush and the rest share a huge portion of moral responsibility for that because the consequences flow from the initial action. You can't separate the two. Iraq has had 15 years of chaos because of Blair and Bush's decision and many of them problems were exported to Syria on a much worse scale than Iraq because of the rise of ISIS in Western Iraq. It's been an unmitigated disaster based on a false justification and it will rightly be the decision that defines his tenure more than any other.



It's not just NHS contracts, it's his entire legacy of public sector reform that, domestically, he wanted to be defined by. So that means the enormous number of operational contracts with private consortia for public projects that he entered into over his 10 year tenure (which he didn't invent but proliferated under him). We now know they were ludicrously over-priced and have been universally condemned for ripping the country off. It's going to cost the country £200billion up until the 2040s (off-the-balance sheet of course) all because he was brainwashed by utterly stupid Thatcherite ideology that private structures always produce better outcomes than public ones. It simply isn't true.



I would say almost all Prime Ministers have done better than him taking into account domestic and foreign policy (although he deserves a lot of credit for the minimum wage) but that's not to say I don't strongly dislike many of the recent ones we've had either.
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You know exactly what I meant by post war. We hadn’t planned for what followed and what followed in May 2003 (I think it was May) was a shit show going forward, I agree. I still think going into Iraq was the right idea done with the right intentions. It was done well up until the point that we’d defeated Saddam’s forces.

I don’t see the alternative. What would you have done, kept Saddam in power?


The public sector went through an unbelievable amount of change under Blair and there were many successes. You make good points on the cost of privatisation, I am for, in a general sense of my perfect country, nationalisation of more than what we’ve mentioned so far, such as the railways, utilities etc. But was he brain-washed by Thatcher or was the motion of privatisation already set in and he had little choice to continue the trend but try and make it work without bankrupting the country? I don’t know. Staying on the NHS he did massively reduce waiting times for GP’s, the good work of GP’s helped, saw a huge increase of doctors and nurses and generally kept things together in the NHS, despite services always being strained.

What I do know is that the overall picture of the 10 years of his leadership was a positive one. For every mistake made in Iraq you have NI, the Balkans, Sierra Leone. His foreign policy also included being the only PM that hasn’t had to decide between strong relations with Europe or the US, he managed both to great affect.

I think Blair’s reputation in this country suffers from a reverse halo affect, which is only natural in politics. No one will remember Cameron, as an example, for reducing the deficit, it’ll be for Brexit and austerity.

I don’t know how you could say Thatcher was better, based on what you’ve told me there. Her domestic policies crippled mass areas of the country and she originally set out the privatisation you dislike, in the public sector, in fact if you had to pin it on one person and whilst I appreciate that may not be useful, it would be her. Blair, in comparison, brought living standards up across the working classes and created an environment where people from my background could succeed. As you say the minimum wage was a fantastic policy that dramatically improved people’s livelihoods.

My criticisms of Major are his lack of action in Eastern Europe whilst fascism once again resulted in ethnic cleansing on the continent.

Cameron, well the main thing is calling a referendum on the most important decision since WW2, rushing into it with an uninformed parliament and general public, purely for his own personal gain and to settle a rivalry he had at school.

But I don’t want to get onto the others too much, was just keen to read your thoughts on how Blair compares because, for me, he’s been the best in the modern era.
 
Fame Monster said:
How long have you got?

To start, the war in Iraq was an expensive and humanitarian disaster. Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs, and the removal of the security forces in Iraq led to a brutal civil war that brought about the rise of one of the most evil groups this world has seen - ISIS.

Idolising Thatcher.

Privatising parts of the NHS and saddling hospital trusts with huge debts to PFI consortia. Even the Conservative Party has abolished these scandalous contracts which saddled the country with enormous levels of national debt.

Same applies to the expensive academisation of schools.

Half-destroying grammar schools, thereby reducing social mobility for many children, despite half the front bench sending their kids to grammar schools.

Overspending when we should have been paying off the national debt, leading to us paying eye-watering interest rates when the crash occurred.

Increasing immigration to unprecedented levels that exceeded the number of houses built in this country every single year thereby causing a housing crisis that's left thousands on the streets (once it became clear that pre-crash budgets were unsustainable). Housing benefit subsequently skyrocketed (due to the explosion in rental costs) which is another budget drain. The only profit to be made was by buy-to-let landlords of which he is one and makes millions from it year-on-year while people have to wait 15 years to be moved into social housing.

His immigration policies also paved the way for Brexit (which he has part acknowledged) which could potentially be disastrous for the country if it doesn't get a good deal.

Locking people up for 42 days without charge.

Being complicit in torture.

And many many more that I've not mentioned.
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Grammar schools and social mobility - 3% of pupils who attend grammar schools are eligible for Free School Meals (the generally accepted indicator of a “disadvantaged” pupil) compared to 14% nationally. Grammar school advocates like to talk about the one kid who went to grammar school from an impoverished background and went on to do well as if that child wouldn’t have done equally well out of the comprehensive system. Grammar schools are a known reducer of social mobility. And should have been binned long ago.
 
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