Blair in Beijing

Tony Blair has been in Beijing in recent days, apparently on an environment mission, according to the journalist from China Daily who met him. No specifics. But the very presence of the man irritates me deeply these days - I am working in Beijing. Looking back on my years in the UK, I have to say that everything Margaret Thatcher did was predictable, although more extreme and ruinous than expected. She managed to shut down half of UK industry, skew the economy to the City and services and leave very little of long term substance in the wake of the global financial/economic crisis. Britain is a much poorer country as a result. Some recovery could have been made during the Blair-Brown years, but they continued down the same path. The UK, unbelievably to many other countries, has squandered its energy wealth in a mad fit of extreme liberalisation, which saw the coal industry virtually wiped out on the cross of competiton with low dollar imported coal prices (when the petro-pound moved skywards) and subsidised (initially) gas plant in the new privatised electricity system. The country will be broke in energy terms by 2020, from being the wealthiest EU country in the 1980s. Very few accessible fossil fuel reserves will remain. So sad.

It is difficult to find anything which Blair contributed to the country of a positive kind. True, he started a kind of constitutional change process, but that was inevitable under any government - the Scots and Welsh would not have had anything less than they got. Peace came to Northern Ireland, but Mo Mowlam made the most important political contribution, along with many, many other politicans from the UK and abroad, from the US to South Africa. And the local politicians delivered in the end as well. What Blair will be remembered for is not his hot air on climate change - the UK's rapid reduction in CO2 levels came with the rapid closure of the coal industry, when the introduction of cleaner coal technology could have enabled a transition to a lower carbon economy and maintain coal reserves. But the brutal sacrifice was made by Britain's miners and very little else has been done - where is the renewable energy or the energy conservation and efficiency programmes we knew would be needed from the first oil shock?

True, there is the minimum wage, but in the end employers grumped but did not block, as they did so easily the sensible introduction of a European style industrial relations system the country needs so desperately to modernise. Blair hates European social dialogue, because he dislikes trade unions.

However, his overwhelming legacy is his role as a warmonger and China Daily noted this in its first paragraph. The last position he should be put into by his fellow politicans in Europe is as the first President of Europe. He has simply created too much damage in the world. I cannot see him being taken very seriously in Beijing.