I like that American left are miserable

[Pat Mustard]

I left the Labor party when they made  a bloke I considered a thug and a moron our leader. I was right; he helped Labor snatch defeat from the jaws of Victory.

You're right, if Blair hadn't turned the party into a milquetoast version of the Tories, or decided that being a war criminal and genocidaire was not an admirable thing to be, Labour would have been in power for a generation or more.

By 1997 the tories were politically, and capitalism ideologically, bankrupt. They had run the country into the ground and destroyed British industry and commerce in the favour of foreign finance, all the while pissing Scottish oil revenues into the wind. If, as he promised before the 1997, Blair had instituted a social democratic (and actual Labour) programme of government; instead of deepening and accelerating privitisation (he effectively privatised the NHS and education systems, two things Thatcher was afraid to do for fear of losing her head), plus becoming more slavishly entwined with US adventurism, Labour would have been in pretty much permanent power for a generation.

Instead, the only reason he won in 2001 or 2005 was because the tories were still in civil war mode, and had nobody even half way competent to stand against Blair.