I can't believe there are actually people who will miss Tony Blair. Seriously. Have you guys never heard of Stockholm syndrome?! 
Let me just remind you.
Septicisle: "I think Blair will eventually be remembered for two things, both connected. The mendacity of his government has made the public so cynical that politics may well have to be completely rebuilt, from the bottom up. This will be an uphill struggle because in destroying trust in government, he's at the same time helped convince vast parts of the media, if not the public, that ideology is dead, that long-held principled beliefs, whether they be on the right or the left of the political spectrum, are something to be suspicious of"
"The most CCTV cameras in the world, the removal of the right to protest within a mile of parliament, the police more powerful and influential than ever before, despite all the moaning that they can't do anything without filling in a form. In the name of the war on terror, we've been complicit in the transporting of suspects to places where they can be tortured, we're prepared to deport people back to their country of origin on the basis of a piece of paper which says they won't be mistreated, honest, and for a while we even suspended habeas corpus. Blair has led us into four separate wars, only one of which can be called truly successful"
Jan in San Fran: "Because Blair has always had an elastic relationship with truth, he thrives on a dazed public. Encouraging fear after 9/11 and even more the London 7/7 bombings served his purposes. Fear enabled his government to gut historic British expectations of civil liberties... So today, Brits find themselves in the condition we hope to bring ourselves to in November 2008: a reviled politician is on the way out; something/someone will come next"
Blair is a scoundrel-in-jeans. He has been a terrible influence on this country's civil liberties. And he's caused an absolute mass of terrible things to happen. The fact that this man is soon to be leaving a position of 'leadership' (yuck) in this country is something to be loudly celebrated. Unfortunately, this only means that another liberty-sucking scoundrel will come and take his place. Politicians never die, they just metamorphose in to worse politicians.
