The Unfulfilled Prime Minister [antikvár]

PrefaceAny assessment of a Prime Minister still in office is bound to be interim and provisional, rather than final: indeed, it will remain interim until several years, or even longer, after he or she has resigned. But the longer a Prime Minister is in office, the less tentative even a provisional verdict can be. That was true when the first edition of this book was finished in August 2005 and is even truer now, nearly a year later. Tony Blair obviously does not have much longer left in Downing Street. So it is now possible to make firmer and less qualified judgements about his record than a year ago - as reflected both in this preface and a new, and retitled, final chapter, largely replacing the original version.The when and how of Blair's departure have become questions of obsessive interest in the political and media worlds. But even on the most optimistic hopes/fantasies of ultra-Blairites, he is the final phase of his premiership, possibly measured in months rather than years. There are, therefore, obvious limits on what he can still achieve in office. His room for manoeuvre is restricted not only by time but also by the reduction in his political authority, and by the smaller Labour majority in the Commons after the 2005 general election. Most of what Blair can do as Prime Minister he has already done. His options are limited. Much of his record is already set.Yet Tony Blair himself is naturally uneasy about such suggestions. He commented about the title of this book on the publication of the first edition in autumn 2005: 'What's all this about me being unfulfilled?' Then, he went on to justify the title by oudining for more than ten minutes what he still wanted to do. This late phase of his premiership has been marked