The argument makes sense against the counter factual claim of Blair's popularity. Yes, he won two elections while in office and in a first past the post system that's all that matters, but in the face of very weak opposition he lost millions of voters and finally, the crushing blow, he lost his party.
As for Blair's achievements, if you were around at the time you benefited from them, but very few have survived austerity because they were not rooted in societal change, so the Tories could dismantle them very quickly.
I guess I'm older than you, but I get the impression more survives today from Harold Wilson's time in office than Blair's.
If the Northern Ireland agreement folds they'll be little left of Blair's achievements, other than a fading memory.
It's a bit easy to suggest that the opposition was weak. Do you really think it was an aberration in the last forty years and the Tories were only poor when Blair was in power? John Major won more votes than any other PM in history in the election before 1997, and William Hague and Michael Howard weren't noticeably poorer than Cameron, Johnson, May or Truss.
"Not rooted in societal change" seems to be an easy way of dismissing without actually making an argument. Of course austerity reversed many of Labour's achievements, but plenty sustained. You can argue details, but I don't see the Tories dismantling the minimum wage (instead they tried to rebrand it as their own). It's taken 12 years, and a genuinely crazy chancellor, for the idea of automatic holiday entitlement to be challenged and I'd be pretty shocked if that went.
Austerity couldn't knock down schools built under Labour, and while it hacks away at budgets, staffing levels at schools are hugely different to when I attended. Apart from the class teachers, our entire primary had one part-time assistant to cover the whole school - now my son's school has multiple people in his class, help for kids with special needs, specialist sports teachers, cover for the class teacher to prepare work and much more.
While there are many issues with self-employment and zero-hours contracts, you won't get many Tories arguing about "natural levels of unemployment" anymore, or policies which put people out of jobs in order to meet some abstract target elsewhere in the economy.
We still have free nursey places, and no sign that's going anywhere, with the scheme being expanded under the Tories.
The Scottish and Welsh assemblies still appear to be in place.
The changes made to pensions and benefits for over-65s have bedded into society so well that we now have arguments over whether pensioners are too well off!
Are the Tories likely to bring back section 28 or withdraw civil partnerships?
I could go on, and I'm sure you can argue details, but a lot of the changes under New Labour weren't just positive at the time, but have also endured.
