Like Emma Brockes, I watched Channel 4’s documentary The Tony Blair Story (It’s said that Tony Blair thought he was Jesus. At least Jesus never thought he was Tony Blair, 18 February). The last episode was the saddest, as Tony’s friends and family mithered about his legacy. Like all premierships, the Blair years were a mixed blessing – some great domestic policy, largely pushed by Gordon Brown, and a patchy foreign policy.
But Tony’s biggest legacy would be the destruction of the coalition that had been the Labour party for the previous 90 years. I joined Labour in 1966. During those years we accepted that there would be different factions within the party. Occasionally, we had to show the door to various Trotskyite groups and careerists, but to say that the Labour party was something of a family is no exaggeration.
Sadly, Blair and his faction saw any questioning of his approach as treason. I know, because when I publicly questioned his gimmick of ditching public ownership, I felt the full force of a ferocious personal attack that led me to being deselected as a Labour member of the European parliament.
Just to make certain that Labour MEPs were under his personal control, his Labour government engineered an extreme form of proportional representation that gave Nigel Farage and Ukip their first parliamentary platform. That hasn’t ended well.
Blair’s ruthlessness was noted by the hard left, many of whom watched and learned from the sidelines. Once Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader, they appeared from the shadows and used the same ruthless tactics, bringing the party close to extinction. That’s not a legacy to celebrate.
David Hallam
Labour MEP for Shropshire and Herefordshire, 1994-99
