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Is it right for Labour "not to do God", nor even social justice?
Perhaps religion and politics don’t mix, but there is a certainly an appetite for moral and religious matters amongst some of the wider electorate at large. For ages, right wing critics have emphasised that the right wing “does” religion too, and the left does not have a monopoly on moral or religious issues. A fewer number on the left likewise feel that the right does not have a monopoly on business or enterprise, as they pursue, despite all the odds, the movement of “responsible capitalism”. In amidst all the turmoil of the implementation of the recommendations of the Leveson report, or furore about whether there was an ‘excess number of deaths’ at Mid Staffs (and if so, what to do about it), the Catholic Church elected a new Pope. Pope Francis has said that he wants “a poor Church, for the poor” following his election as head of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics on Wednesday. He said he chose the name Francis after 12-13th Century St Francis of Assisi, who represented “poverty and peace”. Spectators of UK politics will be mindful of the speech made by Margaret Thatcher on her election, for the first time, as Prime Minister outside Downing Street in 1979. Pope Francis urged journalists to get to know the Church with its “virtues and sins” and to share its focus on “truth, goodness and beauty”. He takes over from Benedict XVI, who abdicated last month. The former Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was the surprise choice of cardinals meeting in Rome to choose a new head of the Church.
Changing the subject from religious figureheads to Mr Blair is interesting from the perspective of how the English political parties have latterly approached the issue of religion. There is a doctrine that religion does not play a part in politics, and particularly not when going to war with a non-Christian country. Tony Blair is reported to have said he had intended to echo the traditional closing remark of Presidents in the United States, in one of his speeches. These presidents typically sign-off television broadcasts by saying, “God Bless America”. For much of his time in office, Mr Blair was accused of adopting a “presidential” style of leadership, and became close to former American presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. His former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, once famously declared “we don’t do God”, when the then Prime Minister was asked about his beliefs.
Wind on a few years and you find the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warning that changes to the benefit system could drive children and families into poverty. He said society had a duty to support the “vulnerable and in need”. His comments backed an open letter from bishops criticising plans to limit rises in working-age benefits and some tax credits to 1% for three years. The Department for Work and Pensions said meanwhile stuck to their tried-and-tested line that changing the system will help get people “into work and out of poverty”. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that Archbishop Welby was “absolutely right” to speak out and described the proposals as “immoral”. So is this the beginning of a divide between the Church and parliament? Probably not a big enough divide who wish to see the disestablishment of the Church altogether.
Many recently would have been alerted by a tweet that used the hashtag ‘blacknoseday’. The sentiment behind it is in fact interesting. David Cameron, alleged to be the man responsible for cutting welfare benefits for the most needy in society, played a cameo role in a Comic Relief video. Nonetheless, Comic Relief made a record amount of money, it is reported. There is a further accusation that Cameron is encouraging us to donate to the charity by waiving VAT from sales of the song and covering this loss to the exchequer with money from the Overseas Budget. So now those people overseas who would have won direct government funding are relying on the UK population downloading a One Direction track.
And are Labour much better? Today, Dr Eoin Clarke’s peaceful rallies against the Bedroom Tax went very successfully, but against a background of discontent within Labour amongst activists. Shadow Cabinet member Helen Goodman MP, who served in the Department of Work and Pensions in the last Labour administration, said in a TV interview that that “We’ve said that the bedroom tax should only apply if people have been offered a smaller place to live and turned it down”. It appears that, time and time again, Labour have made half-hearted criticisms of welfare cuts, but Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne has already said that Labour will make further cuts to the welfare budget if Labour wins in 2015.
Furthermore, Labour will not yet commit to reversing specific changes contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, the shadow justice minister said this week. However, Andrew Slaughter MP promised a future Labour government would ‘rebalance the justice system’ in favour of those seeking civil redress. It would also make more savings from criminal legal aid. The challenge for a future Labour government will be to ‘rebalance the justice system so that it can be seen to give access to justice to all… irrespective of their means’. And in the near future Labour wishes to back Iain Duncan-Smith on some retroactive changes to the law over workfare also. The DWP has introduced emergency legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision and “protect the national economy” from a £130m payout to jobseekers deemed to have been unlawfully punished. The retroactive legislation, published on Thursday evening and expected to be rushed through parliament on Tuesday, will effectively strike down a decision by three senior judges and deny benefit claimants an average payout of between £530 and £570 each. Apparently, Labour will support the fast-tracked bill with some further safeguards and that negotiations with the coalition are ongoing.
So is it right for Labour “not to do God”, nor even social justice? All of this appears to be screaming out for Labour to say to its membership, ‘Go back to your constituencies, and prepare once again for a hung parliament.’ Laurence Janta-Lipinski, a pollster from YouGov, has recently revealed his survey which has Labour on 43 percent, the Conservatives on 34 percent and the Lib Dems and Ukip both on 8 per cent – suggested a Labour majority. However, he said that unlike in 1995 and 1996, “Labour are not so far ahead in mid-term to be assured of victory”, and “anyone predicting an election at this time is on to a loser. This far out before an election, I wouldn’t feel comfortable predicting a Labour or Conservative government or a hung parliament because all three of them are still possible. There is a good chance of a hung parliament at the next election. Realistically, it is the best the Liberal Democrats can hope for. Vince Cable is probably right to prepare for a hung parliament.”
There is a real sense now of Labour making its own destiny, where bad luck meets lack of preparation. Having laid the groundwork for the privatisation of the NHS, it might be time for Labour to cut its losses, and to concentrate on its ‘core vote’, or even its ‘founding values’. And it can look this time for Margaret Thatcher ironically for inspiration.
Ad valorem: What's the purpose of the law in a powerful state?
‘Ad valorem’ is a new feature on ‘Legal Aware’, to act as a fulcrum of challenging intellectual debate, resulting from recent legal and social blogposts. It is loosely based on the ‘LegalAware’ blog survey conducted at the end of February 2012.
A ‘powerful state’ is often left undefined by contemporary politicians and lawyers. The problem may not come from determining what lies in scope of the state, perhaps including the judges, the MPs, the police, or their Lordships, but explaining what that power is and how it is manifest. The law relating to whether the UK should intervene in Syria is a different entity to the laws regulating how the UK should intervene with its own citizens, and the general notion of the ‘abuse of power’ is an important one. David Allen Green has done much to highlight its significance, and, in his regular column in the “New Statesman”, David recently considered the relationship between civil disobedience and the rule of law.
It is perhaps the easier option to consider the meaning of the saying ‘everyone is equal in front of the law’, by considering what happens if individuals are not equal in front of the law. It may be possible to obtain a super injunction contra mundum if you’re rich. It may be plausible that the law has to treat invididuals equally to be just, if one can find readily examples of individuals who have been treated unequally which gives the semblance of injustice. For example, the Justice Gap recently reported that criminals are to be banned from making claims for injuries from a special fund set up to help victims of crime, as originally reported in the Guardian. Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, is expected to tell MPs that he will prevent prisoners from making claims from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.
Meanwhile, David posits that:
The key problem with the Rule of Law in this country is not that, from time to time, protesters may stay in certain private and public spaces too long. It is rather that many with power feel — or know — they can get away with far worse abuses, from non-complying with financial regulations to bribing public officials. Indeed, the police officer happily using excessive force is as much a law-breaker as the aggravating trespasser, and his or her culpability is actually much worse because of the coercive force they are abusing.
There is a public perception, from many, that ‘there’s one rule’ for one group of people, and other for another. Did the law fight a battle regarding the tax affairs of Premier League football managers in a disproportionate way to how it had fought the tax affairs of large multinational companies? David’s point above is a good one, but one which I feel results for the ‘rule of law’ having an emphasis on equality, rather than fairness per se. I am certain whether this distinction is a significant one, but one which I am quite mindful of.
David is, of course, correct to say that E.P. Thompson was a great left-wing historian, but he was also a remarkable socialist often highly critical of English Labour politics. E.P. Thompson may represent himself a reconciliation of liberal and more radical approaches to the ‘rule of law’. The beginning of Thompson’s “Whigs and Hunters” appears to reinforce an argument that the law appears to be an instrument of brute force by which the ruling class exerts its hegemony; however, a significant point is that Thompson does not view the law as having an ideology, but rather that it must have its “own logic, rules and procedures.” The interrelationship between the law, society and economics is clearly one that intrigues Thompson, and Thompson specifically advances the notion that the law’s partial autonomy from the pure politics of power that renders rulers (unwittingly) “prisoners of their own rhetoric.”. According to Thompson, people in power themselves must not be seen constantly flouting the law or else the general public will not accept and respect law as a legitimate social institution.
The regulatory bodies have as a major concern the perception of the law by the public. It is impossible to divorce the power of the State from the public’s faith in the functioning of the state. The exact operations of the Extradition Act (2003) has raised now the issue of whether one state is more important with another; Christopher Tappin, who has just flown from England to the U.S. (see article by Owen Boycott in the Guardian), has claimed that Abu Qataba has more rights than him. Abu Qataba has brought into sharp focus again the power of the state in protecting its own citizens. The UK Human Rights blog recently reviewed latest developments in the Abu Qataba case in an excellent article by Sam Murrant:
Qatada’s release from prison has sparked a great deal of commentary, including from Rosalind English, who posted on the case here, and from freemovement, who makes the point that this decision is actually based in British rather than Strasbourg law, here. The Attorney-General Dominic Grieve commented in the Guardian on the tension between concerns over the release of a dangerous suspect such as Qatada and the implications of indefinite detention without trial for the rule of law in this country.
Simon Jenkins writes that Britain should either give Qatada the law’s full protection, relying on ‘British robustness’ to safeguard against his extremism, or deport him, ignoring the ECtHR’s ruling. Bagehot’s Notebook in The Economist is more guarded on the subject of breaking international obligations, commenting that to do so would harm Britain’s reputation.
Our MPs have recently decided on whether criminals who have (or have not) repeatedly flouted the law should have voting rights. However, likewise, the UK is in tricky territory if it decides to flout the law of European Convention of Human Rights, and perhaps the purpose of the law in a powerful state is tempered by being part of a wider community of powerful states. What the state chooses to do to its own citizens, and whether citizens feel part of a truly liberal society, is however of fundamental importance to all of us.
Will the new proposed Bar Course Aptitude Test be fair to aspiring barristers?
The completion of the training of barristers is a genuine regulatory concern of the Bar Standards Board (BSB). According to recent statistics, the number of students who want to become barristers shows little sign of diminishing with 3,100 applicants to the Bar Professional Training Course (BTPC) in 2010/2011 and 3,016 in 2011/2012. There is a growing level of concern at the Bar and amongst law students that the rising demand for the BPTC is not reflected by rising availability of pupillages, coupled with increasing fees for the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). BPP Law School, one of the main providers of the BPTC, recently announced an increase in fees by five per cent for September 2012 to £16,540. It is hoped that introduction of the Bar Course Aptitude Test (BCAT) will introduce fairness, by decreasing the number of law students who fail the BPTC, and the public consultation until 29 February 2012 is encouraged to see if this will be the case.
The BSB proposes that, in addition to existing entry requirements as specified in the Bar Training Regulations, all BPTC students should attain a minimum pass threshold on the BCAT, which has been carefully developed and piloted specifically for this purpose. It is proposed that this implementation of the BCAT by Pearson Vue should commence with the cohort of candidates applying from November 2012 to start the course in September 2013. Whatever is proposed by the Bar Standards Board, it will be for the Legal Services Board to determine whether the proposal may be implemented.
The BCAT is based on the established and recognised Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Test which is used by some law firms in recruitment assessment days and by the Graduate Management Admissions Council. The Wood Review of the BPTC’s predecessor, the BVC, had been commissioned by the BSB with a Working Group chaired by Derek Wood QC, and published in July 2008. Learners will now be able to take the BCAT at any stage of their education or career, including after applying for the BPTC. The requirement will be that applicants must have scored the threshold pass before enrolling on the course, similar to the current English language rule and other entry requirements. It is staggering that, despite the fact that no socioeconomic data in the pilot were collected, the Bar Standards Board find that the test will not any effect, adverse or otherwise, on socioeconomic factors of enrolment on the BPTC.
Students in the UK are already prone to be most over-assessed in Europe, and it is an embarrassment to our educational system that academic competences will not have been identified by other means by the time a learner sits the test. The cost of taking the test will be a consideration for some learners at a time when some may in future be coping with university course fees. Unfortunately there is a slightly higher cost of taking the test for international students due to higher cost to Pearson Vue of testing and processing results overseas. The BSB has apparently explored the chance of a reduction with Pearson Vue but it has been confirmed that this cost is non-movable.
Certainly the equality and diversity impact assessment will have to be evaluated critically. For example, while no significant differences were found for age, or disability, statistically significant but small differences were found for gender and primary language. Indeed, Pearson Vue intend to mitigate against the effects of disability, indeed as they are obliged to under current equality legislation, through “reasonable adjustments” at test centres. The BSB will need to ensure that these are enforced rigorously, as anecdotal reports on the success of implementation by legal recruiters have been unimpressive for training contract applications.
A legal secretary commented on Twitter today that diversity would be ensured according to ‘how easy is it to pay for coaching to pass’. Formal education is currently expensive, and it is unlikely that educational providers might draw attention to the finding in the report that ‘coaching can have a small effect’, and indeed It is the view of the Bar Standards Board that it is more important to ensure fairness by allowing an unlimited number of re-sits, as the risk of applicants being coached sufficiently to achieve a pass is limited.
Views of current BPTC towards the proposed BCAT are mixed, but few current students are enthusiastic about what it will achieve. One current BPTC student ‘tweeted’, ‘I did LNAT and failed. According to that I shouldn’t have done law at uni, or anything further. So sceptical at aptitude tests.’
It is hugely impressive that the BSB have put produced such an excellent report into the development of the BCAT which is now open to consultation until 29 February 2012. It will be very interesting to see how the profession responds. The Law Society has already commenced investigations into a similar LPC aptitude test, and will undoubtedly follow the progress of the BSB BCAT with enormous interest.
Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose)
@DAaronovitch directly challenged me as to what I felt was good at Ed’s first ever PMQs. Aaronovitch made the faultless remark that it was the same format; it was business as usual, and just an exchange of quotations and facts, and there had been indeed plus ça change (plus c’est la même chose). I can only only bow to David’s authoritative commentary on this, which, on further reflection, has always been very perceptive to me.
I was struck by the measured unpredictability of Ed Miliband. Firstly, he wrong-footed most of the punters with his choice of shadow cabinet, then he went with child benefit, when most political spectators thought he’d run with the graduate tax, which was left up to the lack-lustre Esther McVey to ask about later in the proceedings. However, the overwhelming verdict from my Labour tweeps that Ed floored David in this first exchange. Ed started with a very straight-forward question.
“How many families where 1 parent stays at home will be affected?
“15% of families are higher-rate tax-payers“. This was a total answer, and then David asked a question.
Ed reasonably replies: “I may be new to this game, but I’m afraid I ask the questions and he answers them” Ed then asks why the formulation of the system is not fair, and again David did not give an answer to it.
“I’m afraid it’s 0 out of 2 on straight answers. We must change the tone of these exchanges, but we must provide straight questions to straight answers“.
The Speaker then asked for calm in the house, but it seems that many people watching the spectacle do in fact enjoy the exchanges; they seem particularly like the new passive aggressive stance by Ed Miliband, while David Cameron was shouting and ranting his head off.
David then came up with his beleaguered, “It’s Labour’s Fault”. Only Nick Clegg seemed to find that convincing. Then he moved onto an antiquated quotation from Alan Milburn, and said, “I love this”, like a third-rate imitation of Margaret Thatcher. The problem is that not many on the Coalition’s side ‘loved it'; they just saw a leader of thee Tory party sinking without trace. Ed Miliband then returned to the point that he simply did not believe his budget reduction plan was at all fair, and again David Cameron gave a really poor performance.
It’s no surprise that all the commentators thought that David Cameron was easily beaten in this first performance, including @TimMontgomerie.
Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
This is no time for a psychodrama
One thing that I am sure that the Sky party at my conference was high on was gossip. Reporters such as Nick Robinson, Laura Kuenssberg and Adam Boulton would have been interested in the psychodynamics of the relationship between David Miliband and Ed Miliband. There’s no hiding the fact that the Ed supporters were jubilant. At best, Ed Miliband is ‘Red Ed’, despite the fact that most experienced political journalists converge on the notion that Ed is more right-wing than people first imagine, and likewise David is more left-wing than you would expect. Whatever purported media-zappy ‘rifts’, this is nothing compared to Brown and Blair, and while the idea of a Mandy media seems cute, no pseudo-Machiavellian candidates have emerged from the wings.
I met Audrey outside the conference centre aka Starbucks yesterday. A very nice lady from Kent who’s Labour (and socialist) through-and-through. She had received a setback originally that John O’Donnell was not able to stand, but quickly Her badges on her lapelle though gave away her loyalties, quite possibly.
The sore message for the reporters that we have a strong history in the Unions, that we are proud of. Ed Miliband was backed by his unions, but so were the other candidates. Welcome to the Labour Party sunshine! The thing is Ed and David are likely to wish to destigmatise membership of the Unions, and emphasise how the Unions serve as the important interface between workers and their management. This is a critical issue in modern corporate governance, and anyone who knows the history of this save for the psychodrama headline grabbing antics of Lord Myners, will know that modern English corporate governance introduced non-executive directors for that reason.
Sure, there are members of my party who are jubilant, and really pleased that Ed won. I have previously set out my reasons for doing so. If David Miliband wishes to leave the Shadow Cabinet, that is his decision, and there is no doubt he could get a lucrative job elsewhere, such as in Europe. Others have tweeted to me this is a personal decision that is essentially a personal decision as well as one for our party; it’s up-to-him to decide. Ed Miliband has made his views known, and you can’t say fairer than that.
Meanwhile, Ed Miliband will be seeking to govern the country as well as the Party (and the Unions). As Tim Horton, Research Director for the Fabian Society, has advised, major policy issues await for the rejuvenated Labour Party, in an article “How to win on values”. These issues include immigration, benefit fraud, localism and diversity in public services. However, there is no doubt that Ed will wish to seek out some clues as to his response to the banking crisis, the future of banking regulation, poverty, inequality, and the unions, if his campaign is anything to do by.
Insecurity and fairness
The Fabians discussed this morning insecurity and inequality.
Whilst these are huge topics, I was impressed with the amount of breadth and depth of the discussion.
Whatever the economic solution to the global financial crisis is, and whether it will work in this country, we still have an on-going problem that has existed for the whole of this century in England.
The Fabian meeting was a starting-point for discussing some of these issues, this morning at breakfast.
Politically, the issue has been thrust to the front of the Labour agenda through the Fabian Society. Many blame Labour for not doing anything over the banking crisis, as regards the huge salaries of certain CEOs of banks. Economists on the whole appear to believe that the extra revenue that would have be gained from a high rate of taxing the bankers would not make a massive amount to the revenue of the Governnment. At the other end of the scale, despite the welfare state, there are still people living in relative poverty.
I suppose part of the problem for me is that the welfare state is not meant to be simply a desperate measure for those who’ve fallen off the edge of the cliff. It should support the successful, as indeed the NHS does support the acute medical care of all the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. Labour’s inequality divide, we all know, got massively worse under Blair and Brown, and this is not a record that socialists should be proud of. The recent experience of the Swedes, possibly, is that socialism is not seen as a relevant solution in this global modern economy. Taking this in its wider context, socialism should be for the good times as well as the bad, but the Conservatives attempt to shatter this notion through their repetitive chant that ‘we always fix the broken economy by Labour’.
Fairness is incredibly difficult to define. I have only seen attempts by the Law Lords in cases concerning grounds of judicial review, such as legitimate expectation or procedural impropriety. I actually have never seen it discussed at length in relation to a more obvious candidate, the Human Rights Act. Of course, we are yet to see how the case law of the Equality Act will develop. Insecurity, I sensed, was likely to be exacerbated when voters felt that circumstances were out of their control, akin to learned helplessness in depression. There are two scenarios I can immediately think of where this lack of predictability in events might lead to insecurity; the increasing globalisation of the jobs market (and immigration), and (b) the global financial crisis. Gillian Duffy, and many like her, may feel insecure about her family’s jobs, but in fairness to her (pardon the pun), in law there might be a proportional check on the freedom of movement – and that is a right to work in your domestic country – however contentious that would be.
Lilla Bruce, worried about her bus pass, is voting for Ed, whereas Andy Coulson receives a £140,000 salary. Fairness, Mr Clegg?
Soon the reality of the spending cuts will bite, making the Andy Coulson stuff, whilst potentially illegal, pale maybe into insignificance. Lilly has her mind on other things much closer to home, away from Mr Coulson’s £140,000 tax-payer funded salary.
Lilla Bruce, 83, who lives in the North East of England, is worried about pensioners because of the bus pass and the winter fuel payments.
It turns out that areas in the North East are possibly least likely to withstand the economic shock of cuts which are proposed by the Coalition, new research suggests.
Tony Blair – The Journey : A failure to tackle inequality is a dangerous precedent for Labour
Actually, reading a book with such a careful index is like reading the abstract of a scientific paper. You can easily miss out the best bits, and get such a soupçon that you totally miss out on the real flavour. This could be the detriment of understanding Tony Blair, or possibly be an advantage. Despite my protestations which principally come from the Andrew Marr interview on the BBC, I went into the journey with an open mind, I hope..
The thing I instantly liked about “The Journey” is that it is easy to underestimate the nadir from which Labour actually came at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s popularity. I remember in my 20s what a disaster the Conservatives had become internally, and how they had virtually imploded on the issue of Europe (a topic which still threatens their infrastructure today). So, it was for me as Blair described indeed, having lived through the experience that Tony Blair talks about. I feel that I can actually empathise with his account, even though I have zero emotional intelligence, arguably, myself.
I had got used to defeat myself, I didn’t expect Blair to win, when I was at the age of 23, having experienced so many defeats in the past for me during the Thatcher generation. Quite early on in the book, Tony Blair seems to have an acknowledgement of not making his writing too self-congratulatory. Whether he’s actually succeeded on this I feel is a very tough call. His prosaic style varies from being candid emotionally, to being rather unemotional, as if he is talking in ‘legal speak’. However, the sense of excitement is there, as well as some sense of expectation management.
Some things in the book are pretty predictable. For example, the glowing reference of Alastair Campbell shines through. However, I find Blair very unclear on obvious certain failures of domestic policy. For example, I don’t feel that Tony Blair really tackles head-on the equality (inequality) divide. An epiphenomenon of this is that neither ‘poverty’ or ‘inequality’ are words are in the index, which I am sure that Tony Blair didn’t compile. There is an appearance of lip service to the Fabian Society, on a somewhat academic footing, with a surprising acknowledgement of Tony Benn and Tony Crossland at the University of Oxford. Blair seems to identify the problem:
“Once so altered, [Benn and Crossland] became staunch advocates of social action and of the party of the trade unions and the working class whose lives had to be liberated from the conditions of poor housing, poor education and poor health care.”
Critically, there is no explanation – or even an attempt at an explanation – of whether improvements in social indequality were achieved. However, it does seem that the culture of Blair, with the emphasis on September 11th, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell Iraq and Islam, seems to have somewhat overshadowed all this, and this really shows in the book. These topics have been described extensively elsewhere, so I won’t mention them. However what I did find incredibly interesting that a much publicised move was that of Gordon Brown to reduce the capital gains tax to a rate of 15%. Even Blair calls this move by Brown as heralded by politics than any real conviction, so the overwhelming impression for the reader like me is that Gordon Brown deliberately wished to court the city against any notion of anti-business rather than having thought carefully about the social and economic sequelae. Robert Peston has indeed cited this as a reason where the Blair/Brown axis failed, and I agree. Was the Labour government successful on this single issue, irrespective of Iraq or Afghanistan, more school and nurses, etc.? No.
This is a big deal, because parties tend to lose when they systematically alienate groups of people. I noticed this with Margaret Thatcher first of all, but I have latterly felt that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did this with the working, middle and upper classes. “Somethings got to give” as Marilyn Monroe said, and it must before the next election, in addition to Labour formulating a coherent response to the effect of cuts on the economy and real people.
Is he a great leader? Well, he certainly achieved a lot, but it’s a moot point whether he made his domestic policies so toxic so as to make them rather uninspirational. Thankfully, there are other features of a good leader, such as intelligence, passion, focus, risk-taking and enthusiasm, and you can conceivably argue that Blair had all of these in abundance.
