This morning's media is of course full of extracts from the memoirs of Tony Blair. It is at times like this that the Labour Party realises how much we lost when John Smith died. Blair is like a number of politicians I have met in all political parties. They are attracted to power but lack the underpinning values that act as a compass when difficult decisions are required. John Smith had such a compass - Blair doesn't.
The Labour Party does not exist to make people like Blair, Prime Minister. It exists to promote democratic socialist values, to create a fairer society. As his memoirs show, Blair was easily sucked in to the world and values of the rich and powerful. He became ever more detached from the Party and socialist values. That's why he refused to take the redistributive actions necessary to create a more equal society and we ended up, at the end of his tenure as PM, with an even greater disparity between rich and poor. That is his real legacy.
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