Que restera-t-il de Blair ?

TB nous a donc annoncé son départ. Dans sept semaines, il donnera sa démission. (Dernier cadeau : ce curieux intermède de sept semaines, avec un Premier ministre sans aucune autorité. Mais Tony Blair tenait à être le PM britannique au sommet du G8 et au sommet européen de juin.)

En attendant, on commence à faire les comptes. Le Guardian a interrogé quelques historiens. Le jugement est beaucoup, beaucoup plus nuancé que l’enthousiasme habituellement déchaîné à l’évocation du Premier ministre.

La plupart de ces historiens ont une attitude assez proche : tout serait acceptable s’il n’y avait l’Irak. L’aventure irakienne a complètement perverti le destin historique de Tony Blair. Certains tentent de le sauver tout de même, comme Margot Finn, professeur d’histoire moderne à l’université de Warwick : «I don't think it's fair to call the Blair years a disastrous decade, partly because of the economy — although not everyone is going to associate that with Tony Blair as opposed to Gordon Brown. In terms of international relations it is likely that for the short to medium term we'll judge him, probably rightly, very harshly. In the longer term, history has this wonderful way of discombobulating everything we thought we knew, so in the longer term I think he may well do significantly better than that.»

Eric Hobsbawm, de l’université de Londres :

«In many respects, the government's domestic record is pretty respectable — due to people around Blair, as much as him. If not for Iraq, the critique of the government would have been that it carried on a Thatcherite tradition at the expense of Labour ideals.

»He, and his administration, had three great domestic failures: in the first place he failed to create, or even renew, New Labour. He essentially created his government from people who had come to the fore under Kinnock, with the odd exception like Miliband. This left him with no successor but the one he clearly did not want — Brown. Second, his was the first government that completely subordinated governing to the needs of the media. He introduced an era where future prime ministers will be judged mainly on how they look on screen. Third, he continued to weaken the structure of British governance by short-term initiatives with unconsidered long-term implications (Scotland, Wales, the Lords) and headline-grabbing snap legislation which was poorly thought through.

»The major positive is Northern Ireland. Blair is mainly responsible for what looked like an armistice turning into a lasting peace.

»Except for Iraq, he would have been remembered as a reasonable PM, about the same level as Harold Macmillan. But Iraq wasn't an accident. He stopped being the brilliantly successful intuitive vote-getting politician and developed a missionary conviction for saving the world by armed interventions, most catastrophically with Bush. As Eden is remembered for Suez, Blair will be remembered for Iraq.»

Mis en ligne le 10 mai 2007 à 17H41