The Tony Blair Memoirs
One reason Tony Blair is such an interesting politician is that he tends to downplay the importance of ideology. He seems genuinely to believe there is a third way between capitalism and socialism. He says Margaret Thatcher was right to emphasize aspiration, but she did not have enough compassion. It is not enough to want to succeed, we also must have an opportunity to reach the goals we set for ourselves. Government’s role is to act as an enabler, so that individuals can achieve self-realization.
Most of the reviews I have read about Blair’s book (A Journey: My Political Life) pay too much attention to what is unimportant. The book is too chaotic. It is not chronological. It jumps from topic to topic. It is cliche-ridden. It includes too much of a strictly personal nature. To my mind this just makes it more authentic.
Early in the book Blair writes about reading Chamberlain’s diary. He concludes he was not naive about Hitler. He understood he was dealing with a madman. The problem was he did not think deeply enough about the situation. He should have realized fascism was a strong and evil force that had to be confronted. It could not simply be contained. A reviewer wrote that this discussion about appeasement should have been saved for the portion of the book that dealt with Iraq. However, Blair was trying to establish early that it was necessary to “dig deep” in order to solve problems. When he writes about Northern Ireland he refers to the importance of’first principles.’It has to do with the question the Supreme Court justice directed at Dean Acheson: “What is this case all about?” (That was the problem during Obama’s lengthy deliberations about Afghanistan. Because it was not first established why we are there the generals were talking about winning the war and the Obama team was talking about getting out).
One reviewer (London Review of Books) asked the right question. If Blair thinks it is important to “dig deep” he should have dealt with the Gordon Brown matter early in his term as prime minister. His failure to do so raises questions about whether Blair had his priorities right. Blair was anxious to reform the public services. His ability to realize this goal was compromised by being surrounded by so many people who had different priorities.
The health care system was most in need of reform. Blair writes that the reason surveys showed the British public thought well of NHS (National Health Service) is because their expectations were so low. Granted, the waiting times were long, but sick people eventually did get treated. Blair writes that systems that provide a measure of individual choice are usually best. He writes:
“It was true that the failing of the U. S. system was the numbers of poor people left out, but–and this was an uncomfortable truth too many ignored–for those who were covered, the standard of care and the responsiveness (together with the second-order things like food, the environment, the ability to switch appointments and so on) were often much higher than a purely state-run service. Surely it must be possible to combine equity and efficiency.”
(One reason so many Americans oppose the health reform law is they understand that covering 30 million more people without adding to the deficit will lower the quality of service for those already covered. Also, it is understood that more government involvement means fewer individual choices.)
Because of Iraq, Gordon Brown, and other factors, Blair did not achieve his goal of reforming public services. I also think he is too optimistic about the ability to realize private sector efficiency in a government-run monopoly. He seems to think that targets and performance measurements can make up for the absence of real competition.
One Response to “The Tony Blair Memoirs”
Leave a Reply
I see Tony Blair is warning the Arab leaders concerning the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. He goes on about this and he goes on about that but seems to say nothing about what some feel is the real issue; the worth of the dollar. For those who don’t know, Hussein was interested in abandoning the petrodollar and demanding that Iraq’s oil be bought only in Euros, raising the value of the Euro and lowering the value of the dollar. Ghaddafi went one better, proposing that he and other African countries create a new currency, the ‘gold dinar’, and insist that their oil be bought using only those, thus potentially not so much threatening to lower the value of the dollar as its complete destruction. America’s poodle Tony Blair was happy enough to pack British people off to war in Iraq to defend the American dollar, yet oddly there’s not a word about this I can see in his new book, ‘The Journey’. How strange.