In response to an FT article on 8th July 2016 by Janan Ganesh, entitled ‘The Chilcot report has killed off the innocence of the Blair era’
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/48740bf4-442b-11e6-b22f-79eb4891c97d.html#ixzz4DqQJeT62
"The former UK prime minister symbolises a second Jazz Age followed by crisis and war...
...When Noel Gallagher, the musician, asked him how he stayed up through election night in 1997, the new prime minister said: “Probably not by the same means you did.” No other politician would — could — have said that. The cultural meaning of Mr Blair is nothing like his (perhaps deserved) political infamy…
..And still I and my friends, who grew up in the nineties and started work in the noughties, think of him as “our” prime minister. The reason is perfectly shallow. We tasted our own Jazz Age and associate him with it...
...If the coming years are as bleak as they might be, nostalgia for his era — if not for him — will overwhelm those of us who were there"
Thank you Mr. Ganesh. Here's another perspective - no more 'truth' than yours, but definitely different:
I grew up in the late sixties and seventies, at the same time as Mr. Blair. He was the Prime Minister we all get at some point...the one from our own age group. Until then, my PMs had all been one or two generations above, from the ridiculously old fashioned Alex Douglas-Home, through the distant 'parental' figures of Harold and Teddy, through maddening Maggie and boring Uncle John...to Tony Blair.
Personally I found his apparent quest to ‘save the world’ quite cringe-worthy, masking, as I felt it did - a deep narcissism. Tony Blair was about Tony Blair. His emotional pleas struck me as 'schmaltz', and his comments at the end of the Irish Peace Process just about finished me off:
“A day like today is not a day for, sort of, soundbites, really - we can leave those at home - but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders, I really do”
At the time, I felt a deep embarrassment at the idea that this shallow and self-obsessed man was the best my generation had to offer - he wasn't and he isn't. He is living proof that politics is not the height of contribution - not even close.
As for the future, the politicians that it needs are not more snake oil salesmen, spinning the yarn that they are the ‘decision makers’ - the ones who know what is best for the rest of the world. No more self-indulgent adolescents with God on their side please. Personally, I would settle for, and welcome, honest men and women who tell the truth about what is going on and honour my right to choose.
I don't need Tony Blair, and I never did.