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From The Times

May 10, 2007

I’ll give Blair six and a half out of ten

Mary Ann Sieghart

So how was it for you? Think back a decade and ask yourself how different life is now. Are you better off? Is your house worth more? Do you have a good job? Does your children’s school still have a leaky roof? Is your father stuck on an 18-month waiting list for an operation? Are there no nursery places for your toddler?

If your answers were “yes, yes, yes, no, no, no”, you might conclude that the Blair legacy was pretty solid. There are millions of people whose lives have been improved in the past decade in many small ways. They may not credit the Government for the fact that they now earn a decent minimum wage or that their child has a place at a SureStart centre. They may have forgotten the old winter crises in the NHS (when was the last one?) or the horror stories of grannies lying on trolleys. They may not realise that the tax credits that boost their income are a deliberate Labour policy rather than a Revenue & Customs contrivance. And they may not appreciate that ten years of continuous economic growth is almost unprecedented.

For many of the successes, there is a failure, often the flip side of the same coin. Your house is worth a mint but your grown-up children can’t afford even a small flat. Your local school is new but discipline is so poor that pupils spray graffiti all over it. Waiting lists have virtually vanished but we now complain about cleanliness instead. More people can afford a car and more are in work, so the roads and railways are clogged.

Then there are the failures that are relative, not absolute. Hundreds of thousands of children have been lifted out of poverty, but not as many as ministers hoped. Teenage pregnancies have fallen but are still higher than in most of our European neighbours. Crime is down but violent crime is up. Exam results are improving but those in other countries are improving faster still.

There are slam-dunk tangible achievements, such as peace in Northern Ireland.

Who would have thought, ten years ago, that such a thing was even possible? The conflict seemed as intractable as the Middle East, and ministers were sent to serve there as a penance. Blair put an immense amount of time, energy and patience into that, and deserves history’s pat on his shoulder.

The introduction of tuition fees was highly controversial (not least with Gordon Brown) but Blair put his premiership on the line for it, and now 77 per cent of voters approve. What is more, three of the world’s top ten universities are in this country (all the others are American), and the ability to charge fees will help them to stay there.

Other achievements are more nebulous but no less important. Can you remember, for instance, how uptight and strait-laced Britain felt under John Major? We seemed trapped in a 1950s, Dralon vision of the world in which homosexuality was wicked, working mothers only marginally less so, and Shirley Bassey was the epitome of cool.

Now Britain is seen the world over as modern, vibrant and tolerant. Civil partnerships came in with barely a murmur and gay men get into trouble only if they commit perjury about finding a boyfriend from an escort agency (and had Lord Browne of Madingley done the same with a woman, he would have been equally discredited). Meanwhile, the Leader of the Lords is a black woman and hardly anyone has even noticed. Can you imagine that happening under the Major Administration? Britain has really come on in a decade.

And yet . . . Iraq will be seen as a giant blot on Blair’s record, to some people all that matters. He believed that there were weapons of mass destruction there, but he should have put the intelligence under far more intense scrutiny. As the Butler report showed all too devastastingly, the sources were at best dubious. The trouble was, the intelligence services had failed to predict the Falklands conflict, 9/11 and Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. That they overcompensated when it came to WMD was understandable and disastrous in equal measure.

For me, Blair’s worst sin has been to make the entire political class seem deceitful, and so to erode people’s trust in the political process. Before 1997 the Tories were seen as uniquely sleazy, and Labour promised a fresh start. After Ecclestone, Mittal, cash-for-peerages and a habitual economy with the truth, voters began to believe that “they’re all the same”. From there it is but a short step to political disengagement.

This should not have happened. It is entirely Blair’s fault that it did. He was far too careless with his fundraising and his favours, and he allowed his distaste for the whole process to cloud his judgment.

All premierships, though, are a mixture of successes and failures, and my tally suggests that Blair will score better than average when the historians come to evaluate him. Worse than Churchill, Attlee and Thatcher, perhaps, but certainly better than Major, Callaghan, Eden, Douglas-Home, Heath and Wilson.

Tony Blair the political equivalent of Harold Macmillan? That seems about right. This Prime Minister deserves a respectable six-and-a-half out of ten for achievement. It could have been a lot worse. maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk

Lost cause

One Labour minister told me that he was really quite encouraged by the mood he met on the doorsteps while out canvassing for the local elections last week. “They’re not angry with us,” he told me cheerfully.

I have bad news for him. When voters are angry, they are still prepared to engage. They want to vent their rage but they may be willing, having let it all out, to be persuaded that the party they normally support is listening and changing.

As John Major’s Conservatives discovered during the dog years of 1992 to 1997, the most unpromising voters are those who are no longer angry but merely withdrawn. The chances are that they have already decided to desert you and support another party.

If canvassers meet with a perfectly polite “no” on the doorstep, that’s when they are in trouble.

Splitting mad

Yesterday marked the first day of the new Ministry of Justice, half of the old Home Office. The Guardian also reported yesterday that Tony Blair toyed with splitting the Treasury into two after the 2005 election.

In the past ten years we have had endless reorganisations of departments, with more time, money and energy spent on renaming offices and reshuffling officials than on delivering whatever it is that the new department is supposed to do.

Now there are rumours that Brown, too, wants to make his mark by splitting up some departments and beefing up others. Is there any evidence that voters care a jot about this? And is there any evidence that the business of government is improved by it?

I fear not.

"Shirley Bassey was the epitome of cool"

With regards to Shirley Bassey, are you aware that she closed Glastonbury on the final day two weeks ago? So, if anything, logically she must be now be cooler than she ever has been.

So what does that tell us about Mary-Ann's attempted comparison of Major's Britain to Blair's?! Looks like she's got things completely upside down!

ps BTW, Cool Britannia was a product of the Major Years, and it finished almost immediately after New Labour took over.

Andy, London,

Tony Blair was one of the greatest Pms. i would certainly give him 9 of 10, better education, better health service, good job in international affair, he will be missed, hope the next job for him to be president of europion union.

Eddie, London, uk

I would second 9 out of 10. Politicians have always accepted favours for priviliges, it is just that today's media smoke it out. And they can do that because they are granted the freedom to do so, largely due to Blair's Freedom of Information Act.

Ben, York,

The only way life has been made better for me has been the introduction of the civil partnership. Everything else has been due to my own effort and little to do with the Blair government. The foundation of our economic progress was laid down by the Thatcher government (I wonder how old you'd have to be to remember what the country was like before Thatcher) and our economy has progressed in tandem with the rest of the world and property values have gone up and down irrespective of governments.
The Blair government has created a two tier society:
- in pensions where those working in the private sector have had their pension schemes destroyed by Gordon Brown's tax raid
- in the introduction of university fees so that a good education is now becomng the preserve of the rich. What will this do for social mobility in the future?
In my 47 years here this is the sleaziest and most dishonest government I've experienced and I agree that Blair has made politics disreputable.

Kenneth Cordeiro, London,

Blair was one of the great PMs. The reason his many achievments are overooked by so many writers here is his essential modesty. The country to which I came 16 years ago is changed out of all recognition, and for the better. Minimum wage, devolutuion, a greatly improved standard of living for the many, inflation under control, schools and hospitals, if not as good as they could be, nonetheless better, and above all the UK has become a land in which the bluster and idiotic bomabst of the Tory years have gone. Xenophobia, a legacy of the Tories, is no longer a major factor (I can speak my native language on the streets without being insulted)...And Kosovo, yes, and Iraq. Who, in the case of the latter could have reckoned with the devilish brutality of Muslims towards their fellow Muslims, when the alternative was democracy? Blair was a great man, as history will show. I give him 9 out of 10

Richard, Salisbury, Wilts.

Funny this N.I. thing I thought peace was acheived when, after 9/11, the blatant hypocracy and double standard of the Americans supporting the IRA stopped and Gerry Adams was no longer flavour of the month in Washington. I suspect you wont find a State dept. Mandarin who doesn't think they acheived peace in N.I.
Does the Spin ever stop

Gareth Davies, Munich, Germany

"Can you remember, for instance, how uptight and strait-laced Britain felt under John Major?"

You mean it still had a sense of morality and social cohesion?

Permissiveness is not something which should be lauded, and this government has presided over, and indeed encouraged, the creation of an increasingly immoral society.

Martin, Hereford, England

Blair's day to day management of the country has been fine, with only a few nitpicks about Millenium Domes, NHS computer systems, and the like. The fundamentals have collapsed. The economy is no longer growing through innovation but by the increased participation of women in the labour force, and the replacement of expensive British machinery by cheap Third World sweated labour. The disaster in education is beginning to feed through to the wider economy.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

TB is fortunate that the economy has been good. Rising house prices, wages, employment and increased tax reciepts make up a large part of six and a half. But lets be realistic the idea that a political party can have a meaningful positive impact on an economy in 10 years is absurd. The best that can be said for it is that they successfully did not get in the way. The combination a free economy (inhereted), exceptional global growth and productivity improvement ( lead by technology) and a tax system that incents the global supper rich to live in london ( Gordon's legacy) had nothing to do with Mr Blair.

PE, london,

It is the sheer scale of total incompetence: passport office, Millennium Dome, NHS computer, child credits, control of immigration, prison facilities, military provision, housing, public transport, state education, public service reform, running an election, costly PFIs, Iraq and so on - coupled with endless meddling and muddling, rising levels of tax and borrowings that question the real strength of our economy and your generous score.

Peter York, Tonbridge, Kent

Most labour voters hate Tony because he is a Tory, and most Tories hate him because he isn't one of them. All seem to apply an absolute standard which no man could match, and few have any perspective on how Britain has done relative to its peers.

Britain has been in Historic decline for almost a century, and while Thatcher may have partly stopped the rot, she couldn't turn it around - a victory over some obscure islands in the South Atlantic notwithstanding.

Tony Blair actually has. From being the laughing stock of Europe Britain is now one of the most sdmired and envied countries in the world. Most Britains don't see this because they have so little experience of the alternative.

Only China, India, and Ireland have pulled ahead of the competition faster. Even the great USof A is looking pretty anaemic fter 7 years of Bush misrule. Only Iraq remains as a serious strategic error - and even here the US must shoulder most of he blame. You never had it so god!

Frank Schnittger, Wicklow, Ireland

The glaring point about your assessment to someone of my age is that it is an account of allocation and distribution. There is no mention of any problems as to where the money was going to come from - production, exports, gold reserves and so forth. The income problem has disappeared, and this, as you have confirmed by failing to mention it, has had nothing to do with Tony Blair. That always was the real problem, so any assessment of Tony Blair’s time in office needs to be qualified by this huge advantage.

Henry Percy, London, UK

Blair is finally, indisputably and thankfully gone....sadly five years too late for the hundreds of thousands who paid the price for his brand of 'crusading' politics.

We shouldn't be judging his term of office, we should be watching him being judged in The Hague.

He has left one enduring footnote in history and he should be held to account for it..... Iraq.

Dave from Edinburgh <

dave, Edinburgh, Scotland

"Slam-dunk," Paul from London, IS an American colloquialism. It derives from basketball in which a player jumps with the ball at the goal -- and rises high enough to forcefully drive the ball down through the hoop and net.

We're sorry that escaped into the UK. Its this darn information age; things just travel faster than we'd like, cultures end up leaking into each other.

We'll be glad to take it back. In the meantime, please remove the word "cheeky" from America. I heard it show up at a Starbucks the other day, right out of the mouth of a California teenager.

James P, Sacramento, California

Mary Ann is giving way too much credit to Blair and his Government. If some of us are better off for the last ten years, it is down to our own hard work, often in the face of a Government which has made it harder for people to thrive.

As for being more tolerant, we now live in a country in which people get fined for putting out their rubbish on the wrong day or accidentally leaving personal letters within the pages of their recycled magazines. In England live music has been stifled by new licensing restrictions requiring small venues, pubs & clubs etc, to apply in advance for permission to let solo performers play in the bar; elsewhere impromptu music is part of the craic, but in England it's an offence. People are routinely filmed in an Orwellian manner, out on the streets or while driving.

Maybe Mary Ann needed to spend time touring this country instead of Central America; she might have found it more foreign than expected.

Austin, London,

Being able to answer no, yes, no, n/a, n/a, n/a, is irrelevant; treatment on the NHS is a postcode lottery and depends not just on NICE but on each RHA and PCT and whether or not they will fund the drugs to save your life. But, what about rising violent crime involving guns and knives; what about the pathetic basic state pension where the link with earnings has not been restored meaning pensioners are at least £37 a week worse off; what about the failure to build more social housing so that those who cannot afford ridiculously-priced housing can at least put a roof over their heads; what about a total lack of control over unfettered immigration placing enormous strains on public services; what about the absolute farce of the child tax credit system wide open to abuse; what about the sleaze and greed despite the promise of ‘whiter than white’; and, yes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are very relevant. I give Blair 4 out of 10 and 'could have done very much better'.

Kenneth Armitage, Suffolk, England

Compared to say the dishonesty and sleaze of the administration before it (No. no it's not 5 million unemployed, some of them are disabled. Honestly! Privatisation of utilities and a place on the board? Yes, please.)
Please, if I hear another accusation of spin! especially from the newsapers.
The newspapers invented the art of spin. They still use it all the time. Who can blame a political party that was kept out of power by a cabal of right-wing newspapers spinning the massive unemployment figures under the last tory administration into a temporary abhorrence, for getting one back.

KingKerouac, London,

To Eric from Harrogate,
Yes, worse than Thatcher. She may have been at times bossy, obdurate,harsh even but certainly she ranks with Churchill as a remarkable leader in a time of crisis (you do not seem to be aware of the 3-day week, the winter of discontents and other niceties some of us had to endure in the 70s) and with Atlee as a social reformer (Atlee created the welfare state when it was badly needed after the War, she reformed and dismantled the dead wood when the system had grown inefficient). Blair may get just a pass rate in the positive things and especially for ending well what Major started in Northern Ireland. However, he deserves contempt for his deceitful way of governing, for all the spin, waste and sleaze that his administration has inflicted upon us. And above us, for letting us down and failing to deliver that "dawn" he promised to us in 1997.

Victor, Chelmsford, Essex

At last PM Bambi Blair and his wife Bambi QC are off - thank God. He deserves an Oscar for his 10 years of acting in front of the cameras. I hope he enjoyes his huge pension and the huge income he will recieve from further acting in front of the masses both in the USA and elsewhere. Will he give any thought to those pensioners he robbed of their pensions and who now have to survive far beyond 65 working in Tesco's and Sainsbury's. Shame on you Bambi and that fellow who off loaded Britains Gold - the future PM and another Scot, Brown.

Neville Paddy, Truro,

Can somebody please tell me what 'slam dunk' means? It appears to be insidiously creeping into articles - I believe it is an import from the USA. Perhaps one we could do without.

paul, london,

First off has the Blair reign been the only one to 'erode the public's trust in the political process'? No is the simple answer, it is the same for every political era, thee will always be a whiff of corruption aabout politics and some people will always find something to moan about.

Secondly, those who say the NI peace process was already underway are correct, yet they neglect to see just how far and how much hard work it has taken to get us from the starting line to the finishing line.

Thirdly, i belive Iraq in time will become a positive legacy. Those who believe it would have been morally superior to sit back and allow Sadam Hussain to remain in power, after killing hundreds of thousands of people, starting multiple wars and attempting to get weapons of mass destruction make me laugh. I dont find anything morally superior in sitting back and allowing such attrocities to take place or continue, wherever in the world it is.

J W Randall, Edinburgh,

A depressingly biased article. I can't be bothered picking off your list one-by-one (other posters have made some good points anyway), but Blair has done much, much more damage to the country than any PM since (at least) Eden. It frightens me that some still can't see it.

JJW, London,

Blair's biggest fault is that he can't say no to anyone rich and powerful - Bush, Berlusconi, Murdoch...

alan, edinburgh, UK

Six and a half out of a hundred(and six of that is for Northern Ireland) would have been a shrewder estimate. Iraq, Iraq, Iraq is his legacy and a mountain of Iraqi corpses his monument.

Tony Craig, Edinburgh, U.K.

I know that the Iraq war is a disaster but do you really think that the US would have changed policy had TB not been supportive. The US was willing to act alone and would have done so regardlass of TB. Can't we be generous and say that without TB the situation in Iraq would have been even worse than it is - hard to imagine I know but it's probably the truth.

jason white, paris,

Mary ,Mary which planet are you living on 200000 more
immigrants this last few months ,2hours to attend 999 call ladies having babies in hospital hallways 600 jobs lost in
york last week ,thousands of jobs being exported to china
every month and oh I forget to mention the war .get a grip
we the British people are not stupid and thanks to the
Internet we now have another voice so things will change.

george william taylor, hull, uk

Has anyone warned Africa?

John Chuckman, Toronto, Canada

Six and a half out of ten?

Perhaps that's because you and yours weren't on the receiving end of his 'achievements' in Iraq.

As to Blair's 'I did what I thought was right.'

Indeed, so did Hitler.

John Chuckman, Toronto, Canada

Tony Blair was full of promise in 1997 - he got voted in (by me as well) as a complete change to 18 years of Tory misrule and looking after the already wealthy. We've now had 28 years of Tory misrule; Tony Blair can kindly be described as an enlightened Tory, who might have done this country good if he hadnt been so enamoured of the neocon philosophy of the US. It is his following of George W Bush that has been his (and our) undoing. I think Mary Ann Sieghart has been too generous to him. He has been an instrument in the Northern Ireland peace process, but lets not forget John Major (another enlightened but not always effective Tory) and the late Mo Mowlam, along with the efforts of John Hume and David Trimble.

I feel that he blew a glorious chance to become a great Prime Minister, and feel disappointed to think that he has cemented the 'look after number one', business-driven philosophy into a given for this country while chattering on about 'community values'.

Bob, Gloucester UK,

In response to Victor, it's possible to live in reasonable comfort as a pensioner (I'm one) if you take full advantage of the concessions available, I've no complaints about the NHS, and my grandchildren's state primary school is fine. I didn't vote for Blair but I'm sure he's been sincere in wanting to do his best for Britain, and that history will judge him more favourably than the present-day cynics.

But of course his government, like all of them, has had some glaring failures, one being its failure to get to grips with the transport problem. Little has been done to unscramble the mess the Tories made of rail privatisation or their abandonment of passengers to the whims of the deregulated bus companies. And it's been left to Ken Livingstone to start getting to grips with the torrent of cars flooding on to our streets.

Barry, Wallington, UK

Mary-Ann S also seems to be ignoring the 'elephant in the living room', namely immigrartion. I believe we now have 2 or 3 million more people in the UK since NuLab were elected in '97. Overpopulation is now a serious issue for the UK as is social cohesion.
Still, I suppose they're a good source of cheap tradespeople and nannies for the metropolitan middle classes.
I'll give him 5/10 tops!

paul, sheffield, uk

If you corrupt the whole body politic you deserve Zero out of Ten ! I'll wager that Ms Sieghart has no truck with much of what the state throws at us - the NHS and Education for example - St Pauls' Girls' more like ?

John Major was ghastly ( and I am a Tory) but he handed over a benign economic situation which Blair has frittered away. Most of Europe has had a benign economic decade -leadership is when you have to handle real storms as Margaret Thatcher did. Blair has not reformed any aspect of the publlc sector - but he has destroyed private pensions, created a bloated welfare state and a dependency culture for the underclass. Basically in the UK you can do OK if you choose not to work. That is an insult to those of us who do.

I despise the BNP as much as Galloway's Respect Party. However whole swaithes of England have been swamped by cultures which do not want to integrate and which in many cases loathe us. Educational and cultural apartheid will be Blair's legacy for me.

Mike, Leatherhead, England

"Slam dunk tangible achievements" Such as peace in Northern Ireland! Amazing - you managed to invent one. Pity, but not surprising, that you were unable to find another to include More red rose tinted observations! What if one compared the improvement in living standards during the much maligned Thatcher years. If the same standards of statistical improvisation were applied to this period, the New Labour machinations over the past ten years pale into insignificance. Just because we are told we are better off now does not mean that we are. My council tax bill, my pension pot, my annual tax charges my weekly shopping costs etc etc all tell me a very different story.
The farce of morally bankrupt Blair's much heralded departure is indeed cause for celebration, but by us - not him. Let us hope that his government follows soon after.

W R Tinch, Kinross, UK

I answered no, yes, no, n/a, n/a, n/a, but it is irrelevant. Treatment on the NHS is a postcode lottery and depends not just on NICE approving drugs but whether or not a PCT will fund the drugs to save your life. But, what about increasing violent street crime involving guns and knives; what about the pathetic state pension and the failure to restore the link between pension and earnings meaning pensioners are at least £37 a week worse off; what about the failure to build more social housing so that those who cannot afford ridiculously-priced homes can at least put a roof over their heads; what about a total lack of control over unfettered immigration placing enormous strains on public services; what about the absolute farce of the child tax credit system wide open to abuse; what about the sleaze and greed, despite the promise of ‘white than white’; and, yes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are very relevant. I give Blair 4 out of 10 and a ‘could have done very much better'.

Kenneth Armitage, Suffolk, England

Blair and Labour in general have done nothing concrete for this country. I would say the only thing to come out of their term in power is giving interest rate control to the BOE.

Otherwise Labour have just made the population sick and tired of politics by their over use on spin, manipulation and down right PC idiocy.

The main political topics today revolve around Iraq and Global warming. what a load of pants

simon, London, UK

Just to pick up on one point, the Northern Ireland peace process was well underway 10 years ago, and a settlement was entirely imaginable. Mary Ann Sieghart may choose to trash John Major on other grounds (her recollection of the feel of the age borders on the surreal), but to rewrite history on this point is unforgiveable. I might also add that 10 years ago the major players in Northern Ireland were politicians rather than ideologues and paramilitaries: that malign transformation must also be laid at Tony Blair's door.

antifrank, London, UK

We shall remember Blair with the promise he brought when we voted him into office in 1997 and 2001 and total betrayal for lying and taking us into illegal wars that have killed millions. Any credit in our UK economy, although not his doing, pales into insignificance when you realise mankind in general is far worst off because of him and his neocon masters in Washington.

Moshe Aarons, Watford,

UK has 3 of the top ten universities? Yeah, oxford and cambridge were nothing without Blair. N.I.? Major started the ball rolling. Blair is not the only one that could have finished it. Strikes me that alot of his 'successes' could have been achieved by somebody else. Whereas most of his failures have his unique fingerprints all over them. 4/10 for me. Probably shouldnt have tried so hard.

Chris , London,

Six and a half is a very fair mark for Blair!
I would have gone to seven and a half if it wasn't for the way he has demoralised the Civil Service.
I would have given him five and a half if it wasn't for his amzing patience and steadfastness in getting Northern Ireland on track.
Mary Ann Seighart has it right yet again!

John Collins, Lewes, East Sussex

As Chou En Lai said to Kissinger when asked whether he viewed the Franch revolution a successful 'it's too soon to know'. But my guess is that if the Iraqi war is seen as the opening clash of civilisations, as Samuel Huntigdon expounds, possibly leading to an expanded Middle east conflict, then Blair will warrant a big fat zero, if not a visit to to the ICC in the Hague.

William Thomson, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

As I've tried to post before but they won't print it, our lovely Mary Ann lives in the world of South Kensington or a similar off-planet dream. Do you use the NHS Mary ? Do your kids (if any) go to a local school ? Do your parents live on a state pension? - give us us some real answers do.

Victor Cowen , Malaga, Spain

Nice try Mary! But you make the mistake of giving equal weight to the several factors you adduce in reaching your 1 -10 tally.
To have been led into a series of wars - in more than one of which we and allies have been soundly defeated - to have spun and frankly lied through his and his administration's teeth would, in my judgement, make your 6/10 more like 6/100!
In many of your other "factors" world events outside British control and influence - particularly on economic matters - have played much more of a part than prime ministerial decision making

Terry Carlton, Chichester, UK

I have lived in the UK for only two years of the last ten (2003/04) but my enduring memory, and why he doesn't deserve 4 never mind 6, is the utter disrespect shown to an electorate by two characters more interested in squabbling over who would be King than offering the basic functions of government. UK policymaking has been in disgraceful limbo since about 2002.

Where the writer's assessement of Blair (and Brown) is also wrong is to accept that successful economies and big, intrusive, monopolistic & corrupt governments go hand-in-hand. The don't. That's why the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

mark mcfarland, dubai, uae

The minimum wage may have raised earnings for the lowest paid but how many employers have used this bare minimum to reduce wages? I saw it happen in France in the 80's. Minimum wage becomes The National Wage and the employers shrug their shoulders is if it is out of their control.

Tom Sykes, huddersfield, uk

the only thing i can think of is taxing my car on line. thats it.

mitch, wolverhampton, england

"better than Major, Callaghan, Eden, Douglas-Home, Heath and Wilson"

This is not any great achievement. The list just reminds us how Britain has been led through decline by second and third rate men for most of the last century.

Simon Allen, Melbourne, Australia

Worse than Thatcher? WORSE THAN THATCHER? AAAARRRRGGGGHHH! SPLUTTER!!!!!!

eric, harrogate, uk

If you think the minimum wage is decent, try living on it

N Cook, Lichfield,

Crime is down, but violence is up? You mean the increase in murders and muggings is balanced by a decrease in the number of overdue library books and unpaid parking fines?
As for peace in Northern Ireland, for how long? The solution to the problems of that place require social and cultural changes of the kind that take decades, if not centuries. Let's wait and see.

John Vincent, Christchurch, New Zealand

So it's terrible that young people can't afford their first home, but it's OK to cripple them with huge debts for a University education? That's almost as insulting as the notion that you NEED a degree to get anywhere, while people with only A-Levels get a three year head start in their careers and £9,000 less debt...

Alexander, Winchester,