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They have, predictably, got round to asking whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair made too long his goodbye.

Written by Minikapoor

May 7, 2007 12:00 AM IST

4 min read

They have, predictably, got round to asking whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair made too long his goodbye. With Blair expected to announce this week the date of his exit from 10 Downing Street, in THE ECONOMIST, Bagehot reminds us that it is in fact a very rare moment. The desire to see out ten years in Downing Street was understandable. But the price has been drift and boredom: ‘‘That Mr Blair, usually an instinctive thespian, should get the timing of his exit so wrong is not surprising. It is almost unheard of for an inhabitant to leave Number 10 voluntarily. In the last century only Stanley Baldwin, who handed over to Neville Chamberlain after Edward VIII’s abdication crisis, comes close.’’ And think, what could he do next, at the age of just 54. The top posts at the UN and the European Commission may be out, still one may fall vacant at the World Bank. But: ‘‘Mr Blair’s knowledge of economics is notoriously shaky.’’ No, to fill the days ahead he may have to go the Bill Clinton way: write books (though a little more difficult, with his own government still in power) and make speeches, without the comfort of possibly seeing his wife in his old office one day.

What was the Blair decade all about? The NEW STATESMAN has a special issue (‘Blair: The reckoning’, May 7). There are laments about broken promise. Suzanne Moore says, ‘‘Ten years ago, we saw ourselves reflected by Blair as young and energetic. Now we are broken down, isolated and anxious.’’ David Marquand calls the Third Way a class fudge, and others despair over his decision on Iraq. Geoff Mulgan is more balanced: ‘‘Tony Blair, more than most leaders, will confound the judges and juries for a long time to come. Few will doubt that he became an extraordinarily skilled politician. He effortlessly found the dead centre of public opinion. He articulated it with ease and showed again and again that the most important quality in any leader is resilience …’’ Blair made Labour winnable. But: ‘‘It is far too soon to judge whether Blair was on the side of progress, whether he struck the right balance between doing what is right and doing what is expedient.’’ The magazine leader returns to the timing: he should have gone in 2003 when those WMDs didn’t show up.

A new version of the Third Way is being examined in the US. In a profile in THE NEW YORKER (The Conciliator’, May 7), Larissa MacFarquhar writes of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: ‘‘There are three things that Democratic political candidates tend to do when talking with constituents: they display an impressive grasp of the minutiae of their constituents’ problems; they rouse indignation by explaining how those problems are caused by powerful groups getting rich on the backs of ordinary people; and they present well-worked-out policy proposals that, if passed, would solve the problems and put the powerful groups in their place. Obama seldom does any of these things. He tends to underplay his knowledge. He rarely accuses…’’ Because: ‘‘Obama has staked his candidacy on union-on bringing together two halves of America that are profoundly divided, and by associating himself with Lincoln—and he knows what both of those things mean.’’ Meanwhile, Obama’s there on TIME’s list of ‘‘most influential people in the world’’ (May 14 issue).

BUSINESSWEEK (Crazy like a fox’, May 14) explains the method behind Rupert Murdoch’s interest in acquiring Dow Jones & Co, and thereby The Wall Street Journal.

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