Ben Gamblin Online - Blog: New Prime Minister, New Britain?

New Prime Minister, New Britain?

27 Jun '07, 19:38

As Tony Blair departs from the office of Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown takes up the reigns of power; Britain today entered a new era, albeit still a Labour one.

It's been a long time coming - Seven weeks in fact since Tony Blair announce the date that he would step down from office; even longer ago that he announce he would step down at around this time - but it's still quite an event. I'm not a Labour supporter but it was quite sad to see an undoubtedly skillful leader leave office after 10 years. Although Tony Blair was the third Prime Minister of my lifetime, he was the first from when I became interested in politics back in 1998.

I can recall only a couple of years into the Labour government, that I didn't particularly like the way things were run. Of course, not having followed politics during the Major or Thatcher years, I couldn't really compare to the previous governments, but the first things I recall thinking against this government was that the NHS didn't appear to be improving from the news I was hearing, that the petrol crisis was bad and that the handling of the foot and mouth outbreak was poor to say the least.

Since then, contrary to what figures state, crime appears to be bad with frequent stabbings in our cities and anti-social behaviour putting fear into the streets; the NHS has had money ploughed into it, but with disproportionate results; and dare I mention the fiasco that is Iraq.

Credit where credit's due though. Our economy has been stable although interest rates are creeping up now, and inflation was higher than targets. The Northern Ireland Peace Process has been a definate plus point as well.

Now reading back on this, it does sound like I'm simply repeating what has been said on news programmes and articles all across the media, but I do want to highlight the fact that although I wasn't particularly keen on his politics, I do acknowledge that Tony Blair has done some good things for this country. It's just a shame that the promise "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" didn't really amount to anything, and he misled the nation over the war in Iraq. I don't think the endless "spin" was particularly good. Nor was the introduction of many new unnecessary laws, when all that may have been needed was the cutting of bureaucracy to ensure law enforcement officials could do their jobs.

In his speech, when arriving at Number 10 for the first time as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has promised change. He appeared to make a clean break from the Blair era by stating that his will be a new Government with new priorities. What these changes and new priorities shall be remains to be seen. I do hope though that this really will be a new Governement, and not just a continuation of Blair's Britain under Gordon's name.

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