Sometime within the next several weeks, Tony Blair will end his remarkable ten year run as British Prime Minister and turn over the reins of 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
British politics are continually fascinating, as are the politics of other British Commonwealth countries.  If I were British, my political philosophy would be Thatcherian Conservative.  Blair has made some remarkable accomplishments.  The British Labour Party, during the heyday of Thatcher in the 1980s, was a virulently left wing party committed to socialism and appeasing the former Soviet Union through unilateral nuclear disarmament.  It is to Blair's credit that he moved his party toward the center and moderated its policies enough that it was able to win power in 1997 after an 18 year Conservative reign that ended with British Conservatives fatigued and plagued by scandal.

Blair has been able to lead his leftist party to three consecutive electoral victories through relatively favorable economic policies, Conservative disarray, and good fortune.  Americans of all stripes, particularly Conservatives, should always be grateful to Blair for taking part in military campaigns against Islamist terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.  His relatively realistic understanding of this struggle and his willingness to take unpopular stands against Labour Party opinion reflects genuine courage. We should also mourn the British soldiers who have given their lives in this just struggle.  Blair is also a skilled orator and debator who is a formidable opponent in the rough and tumble of the British House of Commons.

Nevertheless, Blair's Britain has significant problems.  Crime is way up because of family breakdown, moral relativism, and preening multicultural political correctness that refuses to make individuals responsible for their behavior and maintains imbecilic opposition to the death penalty.  An example of this political correctness in fighting crime is reflected in the British Home Office website http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ which proclaims the agency's mission as building a "safe, just, and tolerant society."  A tolerant society?  Could you imagine an American law enforcement agency spouting such nonsense?  Safe and just are fine but a "tolerant" society is one that is indulgent of morally relativistic criminal behavior.

Another problem with Blair is the continuing growth of the British Government.  Britain's National Health Service remains a bureaucratic monstrosity six decades after its creation and it still fails to provide Britons with quality health service despite expenditures of tens of billions of pounds.  Blair's government actually thought hunting was such a grievous "societal evil" that it ramrodded legislation through Parliament to ban it.
Taxation of industrious Britons has gone up and there has been no tangible attempt to integrate large numbers of Muslims into British society with the July 7, 2005 London bombing and recurring arrests of Muslims in terrorist plots being further indication of the abysmal failure of British authorities to confront the enemy within.

In addition, Blair's ill-advised experiment with devolving authority to Scotland has resulted in the election of a Scottish Parliament that will be lead by the petulant Scottish Nationalist Party that wants Scotland to be independent.  Fortunately, this party just won a bare plurality of seats and shouldn't have the public support to pursue its independence fantasies.  The recent bizarre episode involving so many British marines who were more concerned with being buddies with Iran's terrorist regime, than defending British military honor was also troubling.  An especially galling strike against Blair is his permitting the legalization of sodomite civil unions on his watch.

Gordon Brown, as Blair's successor, is a paternalistic socialist who wants to throw more western money into the foreign debt sinkhole known as Africa.  It's unclear how long Brown will continue Britain's military commitment in Iraq.  The Labour Party is running out of steam as witnessed by the drubbings it took in last week's local government elections.  The Conservatives are making some resurgence, but I'm not sure if David Cameron has the intestinal fortitude to be the tough leader the British need to confront Islamist terror.  Cameron has instilled some new life into the Conservatives but the jury is still out on him and he didn't help himself several months ago when he said that criminal hooligans known as "hoodies" needed to be hugged.

I am an Anglophile and haven't given up hope Britain will regain its moral compass and remain a significant force for good in the world.  However, I don't expect Gordon Brown to be the leader Britain needs to enable it to prosper morally and be an aggressive fighter against Islamist terror.