Tony Blair History Essay
Kershaw says ‘The ten years of Mr Blair will surely go down in history as a lost opportunity, a time when much was promised but relatively little attained’. Do you agree? (45 marks)
When looking at Tony Blair’s time in office, although economically he seemed to be doing sound as he kept inflation and tax levels low, in many other factors he failed to deliver. Promising too much, Tony Blair did not fulfil his never ending list of policies such as achieving full equality and completely ending child poverty. However, perhaps these broken promises wouldn’t have been so negatively portrayed if it wasn’t for the Iraq war which effectively ended Blair’s time in office. Dumping Britain into war created more problems for Blair. His concentration and effort towards the Iraq war meant the great economic base that had been left behind by his predecessor could not be capitalized.
In his early years, politically he did very well managing to reinvent and revive the Labour party. Inheriting his constitutional programme from John Smith, he moved towards the centre of the political spectrum proving to be very popular amongst the public. Winning the 1997 election, he proposed his popular political policies to the nation. ‘Laying down the foundations’(Seldon), Blair’s huge amount of promises and concentration on ‘education, education, education’ not only won the public over, but managed to get major newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ on his side. However looking deeper into his cabinet, their seemed to be a lot of jealously mainly from the Chancellor Gordon Brown. Growing impatience as to when he would become the next Prime Minister as agreed prior to Blair becoming Prime Minister, the Blair-Brown divide was at times quite fierce and caused division within the party. Kavanagh backs up this stating the dual premiership was ‘inherently destabilising’. These divisions slowed down there successes and didn’t allow them to fulfil their promises as debates constantly aroused over different
When looking at Tony Blair’s time in office, although economically he seemed to be doing sound as he kept inflation and tax levels low, in many other factors he failed to deliver. Promising too much, Tony Blair did not fulfil his never ending list of policies such as achieving full equality and completely ending child poverty. However, perhaps these broken promises wouldn’t have been so negatively portrayed if it wasn’t for the Iraq war which effectively ended Blair’s time in office. Dumping Britain into war created more problems for Blair. His concentration and effort towards the Iraq war meant the great economic base that had been left behind by his predecessor could not be capitalized.
In his early years, politically he did very well managing to reinvent and revive the Labour party. Inheriting his constitutional programme from John Smith, he moved towards the centre of the political spectrum proving to be very popular amongst the public. Winning the 1997 election, he proposed his popular political policies to the nation. ‘Laying down the foundations’(Seldon), Blair’s huge amount of promises and concentration on ‘education, education, education’ not only won the public over, but managed to get major newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ on his side. However looking deeper into his cabinet, their seemed to be a lot of jealously mainly from the Chancellor Gordon Brown. Growing impatience as to when he would become the next Prime Minister as agreed prior to Blair becoming Prime Minister, the Blair-Brown divide was at times quite fierce and caused division within the party. Kavanagh backs up this stating the dual premiership was ‘inherently destabilising’. These divisions slowed down there successes and didn’t allow them to fulfil their promises as debates constantly aroused over different