Tony Blair's Legacy - A PostGlobal Comment

Wrote a comment on PostGlobal. It's on the main page for now, which is pretty cool, I suppose:

I was living in London when Blair became Prime Minister. I remember the May Day celebrations that year. Finally, we all thought, finally we have one of us in charge. He was a man of the people, talking about labor rights, and about prosperity for all, and about education, education, education--meaning a reform of the public school system to ensure England would be again a world-leader. This was not to be achieved through colonialism and violent control over other countries' resources, but by looking after England's own resources: the future generation of scientists and thinkers, brought up by the public school system.

Then he put his son in a private school, and his moment was gone. He was no longer a man of the people, but one of the "Them" young people hated so much and overwhelmingly voted off power. He smiled his way into power, courting us all with the image of reform, but in the end we didn't matter at all.

His son went to a private school and England's children went to Iraq. That will be Blair's legacy. He rose up to power due to hatred of corrupt government only to redefine corruption. He gave us hope that our children were special, and then he sent them to die.