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Happy Fannish Birthdays to coalescent and ladymoonray!

Lives in passing: a Blair confessional

Way back in 1979, this politically naïve eighteen year-old was fed up with a stagnant United Kingdom, and I shamefully recall using my first vote to help usher in Margaret Thatcher to power. Well, it seemed liked a good idea at the time, but when later I looked around and realised what I had helped bring about I partly blamed myself for a Disunited Kingdom and all Britain's considerable woes for the next eighteen years, to the extent that it turned me into a die-hard socialist.

So now it can be told: in 1996 on a flight from Washington DC to London, given to my care in Business Class were Tony Blair MP and a rather taciturn and unapproachable Gordon Brown MP. They'd been to the White House, presumably to introduce themselves to their new Overlords. Once again, fed up with a fractious United Kingdom and fully intending to vote New Labour in the following year's election, on that flight I actually talked with Blair a little, liked him, and as he stepped off the plane I broke with professional protocol somewhat and told him "Good luck." He gave me that trademark big smile, shook my hand and said "Thank you!". Once again, there have been times over the last decade when I've regretted those two words, blaming myself for some, if not all, of the nation's ills.

The best days of New Labour were their first: I remember Friday 2 May 1997, the day after Blair's landslide victory, as being an impromptu national holiday. The nation breathed a huge sigh of relief, the weather was beautiful and half the country took the day off work. In the next six months New Labour set a furious pace, putting a huge number of White Papers before Parliament. A decade later the result has been a legacy peppered with some triumphs of which they can rightly be proud – consistently low unemployment, a stable economy, the minimum wage, peace in Northern Ireland. But this is nothing more than what we expect of our elected representatives, to get things right. Then back in late 2001, people began to detect a large and gathering storm cloud on the horizon when it was first rumoured that the US was seriously considering an invasion of Iraq. I had that rather shocked and uneasy feeling shared by many, hardly able to believe that Bush could possibly be planning on doing something so misguided and scary and stupid, but as America's many wars had already shown, it was in fact completely conceivable.

Well, it got worse, because Blair made sure we did it too, and my conscience is eased somewhat by two memorable anti-war marches through central London in the company of hundreds of thousands. Who would have thought in 1997 that a decade later there could be such a blot on the British political landscape, one that is still huge enough to overshadow all other achievements? As it stands today, Blair probably knew long before it happened that Bush's war was an inevitability that had to be dealt with somehow, so instead of being a proper European by standing up to Bush and saying "Non!" he chose to lie enormously to the country in order to drag us into this disaster too. Now he leaves office with no finite end to the war in sight, a war that he also started, and I wonder what his private feelings are on that.

There must be a full inquiry as to how we got pulled in, and soon, though with Gordon Brown we will never see it because he is implicated too. Wait another ten years.

For this reason I will not miss Blair at all. Lately I'm somewhat relieved that I didn't also talk to Brown that day, or shake his hand, so whatever disaster befalls this country next, my conscience will be in the clear.