Our World

What’s making headlines elsewhere in the world?

The big news in Britain is Tony Blair’s impending resignation as British Prime Minister. As head of the majority party, he is now serving his third term since first being elected in 1997. Things have changed since then, however. The Labour Party has experienced a drastic fall in popularity and holds the majority in Parliament by only 66 seats, a slim margin compared to the 179-seat majority after a landslide victory in ’97. The next election isn’t due until 2010, but increasing pressure from both his own Labour Party and the opposition has forced Blair to announce that he will be leaving soon. He won’t give us a specific date, but it’s expected at the latest to be May of next year.

There are a couple of reasons for the decline of the Blair administration, but what was his Big Mistake? Just about all journalists have reached a consensus in answering our question: his support of the United States in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. To quote the immortal Douglas Adams: “This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move.” (1) Even today, as of this month, upwards of 7000 British soldiers remain in Iraq, and as of Sept. 10, 36 had been killed in Afghanistan this year. (See the article here.) At the time, it probably seemed logical to support Britain’s greatest military ally; add to that the strong suspicions that the Middle-Eastern countries held weapons of mass destruction, and we see the thought process that brought us to this point. Hindsight, however, shows us a classic example of something blowing up in one’s face.

Blair is also criticized for some decisions on domestic concerns, but the main issues that sunk him were foreign policies. This illustrates many aspects of our globalized society, particularly the complexity of world politics. Countries are no longer only concerned with themselves, and politicians now deal with issues on a global scale. Though this has been around since colonization, with the information age, instant communication across any distance and quick transport to anywhere in the world suddenly seems to have shrunk the planet and left countries jostling for elbow room.

Here are links to some of my sources and many more details:
"Britain Without Blair..."

“Satisfaction with the performance of Tony Blair… has hit new lows…”

“If not for the criminal folly of the Iraq invasion…”

“The long inevitable goodbye of Tony Blair…”

posted by Anonymous @ 9/18/2006 07:20:00 PM