The Loser Left’s.

I wonder who those fools really want, someone like Livingstone or better still, Galloway.

This comment by Blair, responding to accusations that he subscribed to the War on Terror because he was Bush’s poodle, is Blair in a nutshell.

Note the slippery POV in the initial clause…from whose POV is it “worse”? Blair’s? Why is it worse if he actually believes in it?

Even in a statement of conviction, Blair is enigmatic, evasive, slippery…yet somehow there is also something THERE.

While everyone knew who Thatcher was and what she stood for — “The lady’s not for turning”…she famously asserted in response to her own party dissidents, a weird turn of the phrase like Blair’s — no one really knows Blair.

He is a shapeshifting Trickster figure…infuriating (note how the “Left” voice is even more bitter than the “Right” in the exchange Michael links to), yet undeniably Magic.

UK society has gone downhill in many ways under Blair. The social fabric unravelled more…crime has increased, while its reporting has been politicized (it is generally agreed by scholars that one has to multiply the official UK crime stats by a factor of 4 to arrive at the reality)…devolution in Scotland and Wales has fragmented the so-called United Kingdom.

At the same time, he has solidified peace in Northern Ireland. He has co-opted and infuriated Muslim leaders by indulging their pretense of moderation and engagement, while on the other hand showing his full awareness that what they same in mosques is quite different from what they say to the liberal media.

Muslim leaders might get away with that in North America (cf. “The Flying Imans”). But not with Blair. Never try to trick a trickster.

He spents his prime ministership dealing with radical Islam at home and abroad in ways no other European leader has been willing to do (Spain anyone?). Without Blair as a bridge to America, the ties between Europe and the US would have been shattered possibly beyond repair by American arrogance and European envy.

Tony Blair was magic (as even a conservative must admit). Gordon Brown, his successor, will be more acceptable to the Labour cadres.

But the British public will likely find him greyer…more boring…and long for the Trickster and the days of “Cool Britannia”.