...... in the cesspit of British politics: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... itics.html Is this a plot? Share a platform with Ed, which completely destroys Ed at conference season and hey presto David M becomes leader?

...... in the cesspit of British politics: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... itics.html Is this a plot? Share a platform with Ed, which completely destroys Ed at conference season and hey presto David M becomes leader?

Nice to see an improvement in the quality of journalism following on from phone hacking etc.

Oh sorry, wrong thread.

Be more impressed if they brought a socialist in, rather than a different type of conservative.

I would be quite happy to have Blair back as Prime Minister.

Why?

Dally must be on commission to increase the click stats for the Wail site. I'm not falling for it.

Capitalism is a wonderous thing.

Less of a dick than Cameron?

Its always ironic when all the Tory-voting Mail readers get stuck into Tony Blair, yet were all prepared to vote into office David Cameron, a man who has based his whole political persona on Blair, and even has admitted a high admiration for him.....Didn't Cameron even lead the applause for Blair on the day he left the job as PM?

For all his critics, if Blair had been Labour leader at the last election, then Cameron would still be in opposition.

Blair damaged his reputation with his wars and his foreign policy was bad and left long standing consequences. To be honest I expect most British PMs would have gone in with America to Afghanistan and Iraq however what grates with Blair is he seemed to be even more enthusiastic for war than Bush and he helped Bush presentationally.

However taking aside his foreign policy and looking at Blair's domestic policy he was a good and effective politician, and Blair's Britain was a big improvement on the Tory Britain of the 1980s and 1990s. I think he was generally in tune politically with where most of the electorate are, centre left but quite close to the centre, and authoritarian on law and order and security. I think there were definitely downsides, excess of reliance on target setting etc, but overall I think if most people are honest, even if they criticise Blair, if you ask them was Britain better under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown or Cameron, the vast majority of people would take Blair's Britain every time.

So why blow it all by not only getting in bed with Bush but also chaining himself to the bedposts with a butt plug in place so he squealed with excitement to boot? Where was his logic? Pure bloodlust or poor strategy?

You have to remember that Blair had miraculously brought peace to Ireland, and was instrumental in a successful Kosovo campaign.....Coupled with his dominance in domestic politics, perhaps a feeling of supreme invincibility took over and his ego got the better of him, or more likely, he naively felt he could bring peace to even the most unlikely places, even if it meant going through a bloody war first?