Farewell Blair

Published: 25/06/2007

Farewell Blair, your failures will haunt us
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
On Saturday night we dined with a couple, consistent mates for over twenty six years. As we were leaving, the husband said he thought Blair was the best PM we have ever had. My jaw dropped to the beautiful wooden floor. My friend has never been one of those Labour apparatchiks from whom one expects nothing but dumb loyalty and he clearly means what he says. How has a decent, intelligent, conscientious man come to such a conclusion about such a leader? It was too late to argue then. I thought all night about what he had said and respond here to my dear friend and others too who share his assessment.

Tony Blair has been a disaster for progressive Britain, arguably even more so than Margaret Thatcher the left’s voodoo doll. She did much wrong but a chorus of disapproving battlers always exposed her crimes against those who lost out in her times. Blair got away with worse because fewer opposed him. For many years those who should have held him back from his impulses and excesses were too in awe of his powerful image, too grateful to him personally for the New Labour victory, too gullible to the charm he turned on with alarming ease and just too obeisant. And we, black and Asian Britons genuflected even more humbly before this messiah come to deliver us from the horrid Tories. I confess I was one of them for a short while. Until reality came along, a sharp slap across the face.

When he came into power Britain, Britons seemed to be at ease with racial difference, and, believe it or not, with immigration, in spite of Thatcher’s xenophobic presence. Britishness itself was finally changing and opening up to its many hued citizens too long kept at the fringes. The Stephen Lawrence enquiry ( one of a few admirable New Labour race initiatives) made white Britain wake up to the evil of racism and millions responded with genuine rage. The BNP was moribund and an NOP survey I had commissioned for the Institute for Public Policy Research and another larger poll by Mori found immigration and race were low on the list of anxieties for the electorate.

After the first term our society shifted into unseemly pride, dangerous fragmentation and unwarranted paranoia. The Leader promoted imperial fantasies whilst embracing reassuring blacks like Trevor Phillips. Coalitions of activists disintegrated and with encouragement from politicians each sub group now competed to be the most oppressed, Muslims in particular. Before Blair there was no ‘Islamaphobia’ only racism.; the left supported immigration and abhorred the victimisation of incomers. Now these comrades became the enemies of migration with the zeal of converts. The alchemist Blair mixed to exact effect right wing populism with left wing platitudes; rabid capitalism with moral purpose; illiberalism with patriotic posturing, religious fervour with global politics, expediency with ethics. The people swallowed the potent mix and were ecstatic. Until the Iraq war when most woke from the trance.

As he leaves though the old vapours intoxicate the nation once more, a misguided act of decency perhaps. Blair presents himself as a noble steadfast leader too good for his people and the feral press, a tragic Christian figure whose one unpopular decision wiped away the extraordinary record he leaves which one day we will truly appreciate. He stoops to conquer our misgivings and cynicism. Don’t let him.

He has broken up our nation. Under his tent we squabble and terrorise each other. The divisions have deepened between black and white Britons; between peoples of various faiths, between them and atheists, the rich and poor, devolved nations, settled folk and migrants, children and society, the powerful and powerless citizens, town and country, the EU and us, the Middle East and us, go on add on others to the list.

And then there is Iraq, our undying shame. The impenitent PM claims the illegal adventure would have been another jewel in his crown if only the post war chaos had been better managed by the USA. That he had no choice. He did; we did; European nations did and most chose to do the right thing. Over 700,000 Iraqis so far have been killed because our divinely inspired PM worships the US, had to punish Arabs- any Arabs- for the acts of September 11th and still believes the massacred innocents on the killing fields of Iraq die for the best cause ever. That position has lost this country any moral authority in world affairs and left us looking deceitful and corrupt.

Even in the build up to the fight against British imperialism, when subject nations knew the perfidious cunning of Albion, the reputation of this country was upheld by its most vocal detractors. Blair has taken us as low as we can go. Brown let him. Now the new PM expects to break from the ignoble decade and raise us up with resonant words. The desperate nation is once more vulnerable to the bringer of good hope, Careful now, hold back, stay alert and don’t be swept away this time. Blair never learnt any lessons, but we must.

Published in The Independent