Tony Blair without a British invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq

What would Tony Blair's reputation be like today if he had decided not to have Britain invade Afghanistan or Iraq? Would that alone be enough for him to be seen as a 'good guy?'
 
I dont think Afghanistan was really that big of a deal for most people, but I believe if he kept us out of Iraq he would be remembered more fondly. History is littered with leaders of left wing parties who governed moderately, and most of them are remembered far better than Blair is right now, especially with their own parties. Bill Clinton, Harold Wilson, Barack Obama. Even Gordon Brown is well liked within Labour now, even though he was culpable in Iraq, and took the lead in new labour economic policy. I think Blair would be thought of like Bill Clinton is in the US now, popular with the general population, though there would be sections of the party membership who criticise his other policies,that could be smaller than OTL, and the man himself would be still be well thought of, when he said something in public it would still carry a bit of weight rather than being universally disdained. David Miliband would probably win the leadership if he runs in similar circumstances to 2010. Maybe Labour would still move a bit to the left eventually, especially if David lost in 2015, but I doubt to the extent that it would elect someone like Corbyn.
Immensely higher. Blair was extremely popular before Iraq , to the point that he was voted the 67th greatest Briton of all time in 2002.
Yeah, that list is somewhat of its era, Princess Diana is ranked number 3 and Robbie Williams number 77. Blair was at the height of his popularity then, he would probably slip down a bit as people got sick of him eventually.
 
If he didn't go into Iraq (Afghanistan was never an issue - there was a valid reason for it in the eyes of the people), he would certainly be more popular, and the 2005 election would go way, way better for Labour, especially in the popular vote.

I imagine he would probably serve his full third term, but it's hard for me to imagine him serving a fourth (an unprecedented thing for modern PMs) because of Gordon Brown, who's original deal with Blair to turn over over power would still be long broken.

That being said, if Blair managed to sack Brown after 2005 or so, then he has a good shot at half of a fourth term (Labor would likely win the election, due to the sheer ground the Tories would have to make up). The financial crisis would likely still happen, so he may become unpopular due to it.

David Miliband might take over in 2013 or so, after token opposition in a leadership election caused by Blair's leaving office. He probably ends up losing the next election or having to going into coalition with a less strong Lib Dems.

I think though that by around this time OTL there would be the beginning of a reappraisal of Blair's and New Labour's legacy, just like there is with Bill Clinton's in the US. The Left would probably reassert itself in Labour as soon as they were to lose an election ATL.
 
I think though that by around this time OTL there would be the beginning of a reappraisal of Blair's and New Labour's legacy, just like there is with Bill Clinton's in the US. The Left would probably reassert itself in Labour as soon as they were to lose an election ATL.
Maybe, but I wonder if New Labour holds power in the party for a sustained period of 21-26 years, and without being discredited by Iraq, you might see Labour morph into a permanently centrist party, and the left migrate off to other left wing parties, like the Lib Dems, and the Greens, as new generations come through unable to remember a time when Labour were the left wing party, and give up on it as a vehicle for there ideas. The Lib Dems could become the left wing party in politics on a more permanent basis past the leadership of Charles Kennedy, especially if his resignation is butterflied by no Iraq, or the leadership election after he departs goes to a more left wing candidate, like Chris Huhne (he technically beat Clegg in 2007, if Blair was still in office then it is perfectly possible they would opt for a more left wing candidate by a bigger margin)
 
Labour would win 2005 with a hugr majority, at least 100 seats. Balir would retire in 2009, and he would be blamed for causing the financial crisis but credited for handlibg it well. Brown probably calls a 2009 election but the campaign goes badly and there's a hung parliament. Labour has enough seats to form a coalition with the LibDems, which it does. Brown passes some austerity measures and the coalition is stable. By 2014 the government is unpopular and tyere is a lot of voter fatigue so the Conservatives win in a landskide, gain maybe 100 seats to get 370 ish seats. Blair is a respected former PM and David Miliband is Leader of the Opposition, leading a Blairite party that is still struggling in the polls.
 
Maybe, but I wonder if New Labour holds power in the party for a sustained period of 21-26 years, and without being discredited by Iraq, you might see Labour morph into a permanently centrist party, and the left migrate off to other left wing parties, like the Lib Dems, and the Greens, as new generations come through unable to remember a time when Labour were the left wing party, and give up on it as a vehicle for there ideas. The Lib Dems could become the left wing party in politics on a more permanent basis past the leadership of Charles Kennedy, especially if his resignation is butterflied by no Iraq, or the leadership election after he departs goes to a more left wing candidate, like Chris Huhne (he technically beat Clegg in 2007, if Blair was still in office then it is perfectly possible they would opt for a more left wing candidate by a bigger margin)

Good points, but I can't help but think the leftist part of Labour wouldn't go away, even in the extremely, extremely, unlikely scenario of a Lab government for two decades. The centrist part of it didn't when the leftist part had control of the part for a good 15 years.

I can't help but think though as well that Blair would still end up doing something, really anything at that point, (the leftists were content to bite their tongue for a few years, but not forever) that would end up going over like a led balloon with the leftists and then they would want him gone. I don't think the Lib Dems would be the party they would go to, nor would the Greens be. They would want their party back at some point once New Labour collapsed (even if it took 5 government terms to do so).
 
No leader is popular forever, just like who would have thought George H.W. Bush would go from 90% approval to below water from 1991 to 1992.

Here is the problem with this TL. Tony Blair wasn't pushed into going into Iraq and Afghanistan, he wanted to do both. In fact Bush told him if you politically feel you want to opt out of Iraq it would be fine.

You would have to change his personality not to want to do Iraq and Afghanistan.

Blair in fact screwed himself and Bush for that matter in pushing Bush in the spring of 2002 to go to the UN. For a whole year it let anti-war fervor build in Europe and the enemy in Iraq to prepare for the coming war. Politically if he didn't do that then America does Iraq in 2002. It goes quite better for America as the enemy isn't ready, Bush says see after finding a several thousand nerve gas rockets that Saddam was holding out. Britain might or might not help out training Iraqi troops after.

Britain actually didn't do much in Iraq nor did they take a great deal of troop losses. It was the idea that Blair was a poodle and was pushed into war by Bush that killed his poll numbers. This is what I meant when I said his big political mistake was pushing Bush to go to the UN. If Bush just did it and then Britain helps after it would have been vastly less controversial, Bush's team doesn't oversell the war to the UN and the whole issue would have hurt Blair far less.

Honestly if Blair didn't help out period though in Iraq or Afghanistan, well you would need Blair with a totally different worldview. Blair was the only world leader left in 2002 helping America enforce the No Fly Zone in Iraq at the time and getting their planes shot at still.
 
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Here is the problem with this TL. Tony Blair wasn't pushed into going into Iraq and Afghanistan, he wanted to do both. In fact Bush told him if you politically feel you want to opt out of Iraq it would be fine.

You would have to change his personality not to want to do Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well you could just opt for a Gore wins TL, Blair would be insane to want to go into Iraq on his own.
 
Second Term...

It's generally the case that in the first term a new Government seeks to sort out the mess left by its predecessors and it's only in the second term it can do the radical measures the party wants.

Thatcher's radical period was 1983-87 though the foundations were set in 1979-83. The key moment in the first Blair Government was when Brown started to increase spending in 1999.

As others have said, IF we assume no 9/11 and no Iraq invasion, that still means a substantial military presence in Kuwait to remind Saddam of his post-1991 guarantees.

Yet 9/11 derailed and dominated Blair's second term and forced him to deal much more with external and much less with internal matters. Without the distraction, we'd have seen perhaps some more radical measures on education and welfare and while UK-US relations might have been strained in the one-term George W Bush presidency, the election of John Kerry in 2004 would have seen a rapprochement between the US and Europe/UK.

It's hard to see how Blair would have failed to win a huge majority over Iain Duncan-Smith's Conservatives in 2005 - would it have been Cameron or David Davis as his successor ?

The third term is difficult - fatigue sets in as do quarrels and territorial issues between Ministers. Having seen the example of Thatcher, Blair retires in 2007 after ten years at the helm to general acclaim and Brown takes over, quickly winning his own mandate at a General Election that autumn.

It's also hard to see how the financial crisis wouldn't have occurred at some point - Brown and the newly elected President McCain and other western leaders are battered by the biggest financial meltdown since the 1930s following the fall of Lehman Brothers and AIG.

Brown staggers on from crisis to crisis until the spring of 2012 when Labour are swept aside in a landslide by the Conservatives under David Cameron while in the US the luckless McCain retires after one term and a new young Democrat Senator named Barack Obama takes over.
 
9/11 derailed and dominated Blair's second term and forced him to deal much more with external and much less with internal matters. Without the distraction, we'd have seen perhaps some more radical measures on education and welfare and while UK-US relations might have been strained in the one-term George W Bush presidency, the election of John Kerry in 2004 would have seen a rapprochement between the US and Europe/UK.

It's hard to see how Blair would have failed to win a huge majority over Iain Duncan-Smith's Conservatives in 2005 - would it have been Cameron or David Davis as his successor ?

Yeah, I still think a 'no 9/11' scenario is the most feasible way to create this alternate situation. Since people wouldn't be so distracted by the threat of terrorism and the government's increasingly aggressive countermeasures, odds are Blair wouldn't have alienated the left so much and won a third landslide in 2005, but I suspect it wouldn't be over IDS; he was absolutely useless as Leader of the Opposition, that was obvious from day one. Howard replacing him and doing worse than OTL in 2005 is plausible.
 
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