Redstate

Here's Hoping Things Can Only Get Better

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Classy and to the point. It had to be hard to say goodbye and from my perspective, there certainly are serious aspects of the Blair legacy that will not be missed--I think of the nanny-statism and the general philosophy of government that at the very least, does not square with my philosophy of government. But Blair is to be praised for having worked so hard to ensure the continuation of the Anglo-American friendship and his alliance through the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan is to be admired and applauded. Hopefully, the British people will soon see just how much value he added to international relations by heeding Churchill's dictum and never separating Britain from the Americans.

Of course, the question now is whether Labour will continue to be New Labour or whether it will revert to Old Labour under Gordon Brown. I have to think that the party will continue to try to hold the center-ground in Britain, if only because the Tories have veered to the Left wildly in the search for more votes and a larger coalition. But who knows? For the past ten years, Blair has sought to keep the old-line ideologues in his party at bay and they have chomped at the bit to try to implement a program that would make Michael Foot and Tony Benn proud. Perhaps under Gordon Brown, the ideological dam will finally burst and Old Labour will have its way, at least until the next election.

In closing, it is worth remembering that Blair has redefined politics in Britain. No mean feat, that, and his achievement is part of the reason why the Tories have veered to the Left. Of course, this is an explanation and not an excuse for Tory veering; policywise, there is no excuse for not adhering to a free market agenda and the serial failures of David Cameron in this regard are most distressing. As I have written before, I never thought that I would root for a Labour party leader over one of Margaret Thatcher's successors. But Cameron is no successor in the truest form--as my article, linked above, references--and for the good of the Tories, he should lose the next elections (which will come in 2010 at the latest) so that the Tories will perhaps recall that they cannot win by being Labour-lite.