More Great Deception than Great Society

Now that 24 hours have passed since Tony blair definitively ceased being British prime minister, I would like to offer a little retrospective.
At the outset of his reign, Tony Blair said "we will be whiter than white. We will govern as New Labour." Most people at the time thought it would usher in a new period of sleaze-free government even if some sceptics thought it idealistic (and were right). But Blair wasn't talking of the Augean task of washing out the corrupt halls of power with Daz Automatic. He had actually committed a mental aberration, indeed without realising it himself initially. Having been listening to Jonathan Ross on the radio earlier, his subconscious adopted Woss' best known characteristic, substantively changing his speech. He had intended to say "we will be righter than right. We will govern as New Labour." It all makes sense now. This was before the time when Blair could admit he was wrong, ever, and so he let it stand.
In another soundbite, he promised to do what works." There would be no ideological dogma interfering with good governance. A course of the third way (remember that) would be steered. Of course, for Blair doing what was right really was right. A series of keystone policy proposals in health, education, crime and transport were all of a right-wing nature and usually not value for money of the public funds poured into them to make them work. The increase of wasteful Public-Private Partnerships on health and the London Underground railway; city academies which are an offshoot of Tory plans; the belief in prison and punitive measures which were constantly advocated despite a soaring crime rate, a soaring prison population in overcrowded prisons that means we have more prisoners than France, Germany and Italy put together and a rising recidivist rate. And there's the war in Iraq which clearly is an example of doing things that do not work. Market-driven dogmas had captured Blair's (and Brown's) mind and hence because Blair believed them, the government deemed them to be right. The Labour Parliamentary Party followed along for after 18 traumatic years of opposition they thought this would get the voters to trust them. All the while that Blair pretended to be the inheritor of the Labour tradition because people would not have voted for him if he labelled himself a Tory. He performed a trick on the electorate. The nouveau riche liked him and saw him for what he was, but the Labour heartlands largely kept on voting him in because he called himself a (New) Labour man.
And then there was at the start another phrase. "We may live our entire lives without going to war." This from a guy who would take Britain into more wars than any other prime minister in British history.
It is written that people would cross the road to hear him speak, something that could not be said of some recent prime ministers. But I would cross away not to hear his turgid tripe. It would be delivered masterfully by the ex-lawyer but still be turgid tripe. And the detail of his words are more offensive than the general thrust of his argument. No, I would not willingly listen to this man who gave us a great deception rather than a Great Society (more an okay society).