apparently he wanted to go and pay his respects to Gadaffi, but he's too busy giving Syria foreign affairs advice.

Correct answer.

Makes a change from ganging up with Murdoch to find ways to justify his and his mate's religious war in Iraq.

is there a single high ranking politician in the UK that has any integrity, of any party?

Come off it Minty. He had WMD. Was harbouring the 9/11 plotting types, and was responsible for the murder of a trillion Kurds!

He would never win a Labout leadership election so it ain't going to happen.



I would say he is no worse than Cameron and Clegg which isn't saying much as I doubt he would undo much of the mess these two are making especially the NHS changes and he is big on faith schools and academies. It would be no change on the crucial policies of health and education IMO. As to Milliband his main problem is IMO one of perception as I do genuinely think he and Cruddas are trying to come up with a different way of doing things.



That is quite a scary thought in a way as I am sure that would appeal to many including the right wing press and those who see themselves a "one nation" Tories. It has about as much chance of flying as him getting back to be leader of the Labour Party though given it seems the right wing of the Tory party see Cameron as Blair MkII anyway and don't like that at all.

Not a lot that I can think of.

Still, Blair was just a Tory by another name – continued what Thatcher had started. Paved the way for this lot.

The utter disaster that is PFI, for instance. Dreamed up by the Tories, given a big kick by Blair, now seeing health trusts go bust, which will mean that this lot can sell it off so that their mates can make fat profits from health.

As Dr Phil Hammond tweeted yesterday, there are already examples of private healthcare companies giving patients money to go back to the NHS for cancer care, rather than it cost the private company loads of money.

Immoral scum, the lot of them.

And yet Bob Diamond will get off, with a fortune that will mean he never has to worry about anything – and the disabled person down the street will be vilified as a scrounger who is harming the country.

And there are plenty of cretins who are all too ready to believe this sort of drivel.

You'll be confusing the fook out of some of the lesser well aware types on here. (no banana split for guessing who). The one's who increduously still believe that being the leader of the Labour Party means you have to be a socialist.....Doesn't it?

There is another side to that, though.

The likes of Murdoch helped to ensure that anyone who was even close to being a socialist had little chance of electoral success without their backing.

There's a reason that many in the country even now still believe that there is 'no alternative' to austerity – even though history has shown us, time and time again, that austerity does not work.

I was at a conference on economics the other day. Off the top of my head, even the IMF, looking at around 170 (IIRC without my notes) austerity packages in the last 35-40 years – concluded that not a one has worked.

Let's just reiterate that, because it's important: austerity is not working. Austerity does not work.

Yet the government gets away with pursuing this path (for ideological and greedy reasons) and it is getting away with it far more easily than in other European countries, because the bulk of the people believe what the bulk of the media tells them.

Apathy/UK Plc.

Aye. And it's not new either. There are reasons nothing much happened over here in 1848.

Blair would never get back in, even if he seriously wanted to. His name has become toxic over the last few years regardless of how good he actually was.

People are going to remember him for illegal wars, spin, 'Bliar' and cosying up to Murdoch before they remember him leading a country that had a good, if not solid, economic base.

It was pretty much as it is now – a country where the economy is out of balance, with something like 75% of it dependent on the service sector.

Now Blair didn't start that process, but he did continue it. He didn't do anything to deal with the housing issue, which in part helped provide the fuel for the crisis. And he did do things like push forward with Tory ideas like PFI.

PFI is a minor issue Minty, you know that. In comparison to the state of the countries finances, it is a small drop in the ocean.

I'm not one for blaming Brown, or even Cuddly Dave, for the state of the country/Europe/world's economies, that finger can still be pointed at bankers, but Blair would be still seen to be at the root of it all when the Tory party and it's media lackeys have finished pointing their fingers.

I'm not sure how pfi works. But, it a health trust is bust surely one solution to be considered ought to be to let the Trust go bust and the private investors lose out (I suspect HMG guaranteed the deals though).

Yup, it was described as a copper bottom guarantee when the story broke earlier in the week.

No. It's not. It's far from it. Not when you've got hospital trusts going bust because of the charges levied by the private companies that own the building etc. And that is what is about to happen.

But it's okay – the private sector will be able to step in and run hospitals for profit.

This is only a 'minor' issue, Scooter, if the NHS is a minor issue.

Ah, the usual "sidetrack the argument down your favourite street" trick Minty? This is a discussion about why Blair would or wouldn't get re-elected, you've decided to make it yet another rant about PFI, not me.

It's minor in comparison to the state of the country's finances, certainly. Minor in relation to Blair getting re-elected too.

I'll give you that PFI may be an almost terminal blow to the NHS, no argument there, but that isn't something that will worry the average man in the street, they simply don't understand what PFI is about.

I'll spell it out in simple form to give myself a chance of not getting redirected by yourself:

Blair will never get re-elected for the following reasons:

The majority of the press is against him.
People are concerned about troops coming home in boxes.
People are concerned about the state of the pound in the pocket.

People are not concerned about how the NHS is being run, only those in the ivory towers of academia and/or politics are really worried about that. Yes, as a journalist you have a very good insight into how it's all going wrong, but those are not insights that the average Joe shares.

Feel free to pick odd words out of that post to back up your personal gripes, you often do it with others so I'm expecting it, but at the end of the day PFI is not something that will stop Blair getting re-elected.
Blair will stop Blair getting re-elected.

Hang on – this is about Blair, yes? And whether we (the electorate) would have him back if presented with that option, yes?

And you've quoted things about his legacy as PM that concern people, yes?

And you acknowledge that the state of the NHS does concern people, yes?

But you don't think that reasons for that concern people – right?

Or is it just that things that concern me (or, presumably, any other poster here, if they don't tally with your own list of top concerns) are not to be considered in a thread on this subject?

PFI is one of the ways in which Blair took up the baton of Thatcher, in terms of economic ideology.

Are you saying that, for Joe and Joanna Public, economic ideology is not a big concern? So would they not be concerned (one way or the other) about the austerity programme?

As has been pointed out, he'd have to be selected first anyway, and then elected leader. Let's assume that would be by the Labour Party. As has been said, that's a tad unlikely. I suspect that economic ideology might have something to do with that.

And his having headed a government that paved the way for what is going on now, as a result of economic ideology (including but not limited to PFI) would be a substantial factor in that.

And when people see their hospitals going bust because of PFI, will you still assert that 'it's a minor issue"? What happens when, because of "the country's finances", those hospitals are privatised? Still "a minor issue"? It is an aspect of the financial situation when the taxpayer is expected to continue paying for, say, a hospital building (and outsourced 'soft' services) instead of having stopped doing that when the initial costs of building were paid. You don't buy a home through a mortgage and then, when the mortgage is up, continue paying it for a further 25 years. This is a financial issue. And with the austerity programme, hospitals going bust as a result will not be rescued by the state.

And it won't be a minor issue when people's jobs are sold to some private company, that then decides they're going to take the axe to pay and conditions in order to make more profit.

PFI is part and parcel of why Blair was Thatcher's child. That is exactly what I said. [uI didn't claim it was the biggest issue – I said it was a part of the situation[/u. Which bit of that do you consider to be factually incorrect?

Frankly, I can't see what your problem is. What do you consider to be inaccurate in what I have posted? Or put another way, what do you actually disagree with?

Hilary Benn
Alastair Darling
Michael Gove
David Davis
Menzies Campbell
Charles Kennedy

I doubt that Blair would be re-elected, four main perceptions prevent it ...

1. The right wing hate anyone who is not "one of us" (except Louise Mensch who liked him and briefly changed sides because of it ... say no more!).
2. The left wing still feel let down by him.
3. Many of the left and centre can't forgive him for his capitulation to Bush and the Iraq War.
4. The Labour Party are still waiting for the memory of Blair to wear off, they won't want his real or apparent "mistakes" aired again.

There are many more arguments for and against him but I see those as the big blockers.

Falstaff on honour
"Who hath it?
he that died o’ Wednesday"
Henry IV Part 1.

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/who-does-tony-blair-think-he-is-7901922.htmlSomeone else thinks he's a deluded narcissist[/url

That Shakespeare bloke had a lovely way of putting things.