Pondering Tony Blair

From Mark Daniels:

Tony Blair’s premiership was wrought ten years ago through clever Clintonian triangulation. Blair told British voters that he represented “new Labour,” a left-leaning party no longer wed to a socialist agenda or to the trade unions.

As when Bill Clinton won the presidency here in the States in 1992, also in a three-way race, Tony Blair represented a moderated leftward agenda, one that traditional Labourites could grudgingly accept and that voters who liked the policies of the Tories but hated that party’s perceived smarminess after years of Margaret Thatcher and of Thatcher-Lite under John Major, could vote for.

After a decade of Blair in 10 Downing Street, it’s tempting to compare him to Churchill or Thatcher. One wants to speak of a Blair Era. But the analogies to historically significant PMs don’t work at several levels.

Read it all and find out why.