The liberalism of Tony Blair

By any standard, the Blair legacy is going to be a mixed blessing. In domestic policy, ten years of Prime Minister Blair have delivered little of real value. The one novelty for this longest ever Labour government is an economy which has at least managed to stay on the rails, whatever pitfalls lie ahead, and for this the forthcoming British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will no doubt claim credit. But the constitutional mayhem, the damage that has been done to individual freedom in any number of ways - from the proliferation of CCTV cameras to the official sifting of our household waste, from the effective curbs on freedom of speech and expression to the outrageous decision of Members of Parliament to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act (a rare example of a beneficial Labour political reform), all will bring lasting condemnation on the Blair years.

There is, however, a nobler side to Blairism, but it is not one which is widely recognised at home. Ten years ago Tony Blair promised us an ethical foreign policy. By and large, he has delivered, albeit that you practically have to be an American to notice. Michael Gerson of the Washington Post comments:

In the conventional wisdom, Blairism has been buried under the debris of Iraq. Yet Blair insists there is no substitute for an active internationalism. "The alternative, in the end, comes down to a combination of either hope that it [terrorism] doesn't come after us, which after 9/11 isn't very sensible, or alternately in certain parts of Europe, leave that to the Americans."

Whatever the outcome of the Iraq war, the world Blair describes is not going away. Will the next prime minister and the next U.S. president serenely accept the proliferation of terrible weapons to unstable regimes? Will they ignore the pleas of dissidents and the suffering that comes from treatable disease? Perhaps. But those leaders would find that there are moral consequences to inaction as well as to action and that retreat can lead to some nasty and dangerous places.

Predicting a legacy is a tricky thing, but Blair's is clear. Thirty years ago, Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield mockingly asked, "Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?" By this high standard, Tony Blair is a liberal.

In much the same way as a previous incumbent of 10 Downing Street, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair's premiership has not been without its blunders and absurdities. Nevertheless, a lot depends on whether or not Blair's successor has the determination to persevere with what is right when presented with so-called easy options or the opportunity to court cheap popularity. For all his faults, there may yet be cause to miss Tony Blair when he is gone.