Tony Blair has hit back at his critics saying that 'not everyone' hates him, and that abroad, he remains highly popular. Blair has been mercilessly attacked for the riches he has attained post Downing Street and criticized for hiding his earnings from the eyes of the public through a vastly complex legal structure. From the Daily Mail:
They don't approach me in an objective way,' he said.
'Their
first question is how to belittle what I'm doing, knock it down, write
something bad about it. It's not right. It's not journalism.'Reading
the papers in Britain, you'd end up thinking I'd lost three elections
rather than won them. There is a completely different atmosphere around
me outside the country.'People accept the work that you
are doing, as it is. They don't see anything wrong with being
successful financially and also doing good work.'
While Blair has certainly done some good after his tenure in office, his obsession with is own popularity shows why the British public grew to hate him in the first place. Blair's immense narcissism and unwavering belief that anything he did must be right led the country into a series of catastrophic choices with profound repercussions.
Blair led Britain to war under false pretense in both Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were not only illegal but strategically disastrous. He also deregulated the city and allowed the banks to determine economic policy that ended up in one of the worst crisis in British history.
Blair's economic policies have polarized society to the point where the divide between rich and poor is greater than in any time in human history, and the ladder upon which he climbed to get to the top was kicked down one rung at a time. Free university is a thing of the past, and unlike Blair, today's brightest must go into massive debt if they have a chance of financial success. Property prices have ballooned to the point where many workers cannot afford to live in the city they work in, and wages for the majority of the population has stagnated even though the cost of living is rising.
While Blair may still think he 'did the right thing', most of the people he presided in power over don't. While he insists that everyone outside of Britain loves him, he wasn't their prime minister, so it doesn't really matter. Hundreds and thousands of lives have been lost through his decisions, and millions of people have suffered immeasurably due to the economic implosion that he helped create.
The fact that he is earning millions of pounds by through speaking and advising banks just makes it that much more offensive, and he shouldn't spend too much time wondering why the public harbours such visceral resentment.
It's pretty bloody obvious.
Ben Cohen is the Editor of TheDailyBanter.com and founder of BanterMediaGroup.com