The Budget 2010 - tell me now Darling....

The best headline was supplied by the Sun as always. "Darling just screwed more people than JT, Ashley, Mark Owen and Tiger Woods put together". No doubts as to the certainty of their alliance with Cameron's Tories, the Murdoch Press is now engaging in a final onslaught against the incumbent government to try and finish it off. Finish it off it they must in a way.

New Labour has been a huge disappointment and meaning to commit some thoughts of mine to paper as to their legacy and the success of their policies. So here it is a rundown of all New Labour's triumphs and failures.

-Health

Here is where Blair a number of correct decisions. The NHS was falling to pieces under John Major after almost two decades were nothing was spent and not one new hospital was opened during their tenure. Blair spent a great deal to correct the neglect of the two previous Administrations. However, he kept the "internal competition" model, despite pledging to scrap it in 1997 and his "foundation hospital" reform has not really worked either. Watching a party political broadcast from their first term New Labour committed to "not running the NHS like a supermarket". Well, they retained the Tory Management model and expanded it - there have been nominal improvements but really this is were structural developments have not been beneficial and have been very much "consumer based" instead of "patient based". Altogether better than average would be the verdict on health care, but not by much.

-Education

"Education, education, education" hollowed Tony Blair at the 1997 Labour Conference. His record here is exactly that; an empty soundbite to dress up a real lack in substantive solutions. After reversing the most ridiculous and stupid policy of abolishing grammar schools New Labour then embarked on another "Third Way" project of solving bad schooling through more market-based solutions with private academies instead of focusing on projecting good schools and improving and expanding the curriculum and the training of teachers. Now the standards to gain an A at GCSE Maths have become laughable. New Labour did not improve the skills, they improved the statistics. This is really were the accusations of Blair's policy engine being thin on the ground really ring true; his achievements on education were minimal and really just accelerated the dumbing-down of Britain. And this is even before anyone can address the Pandora's Box of tuition fees. Not even Thatcher introduced them and now the talk is of £20,000 a year fees for some vague promise of "sustaining our first class Universities". If anything, New Labour really did not care too much about meritocracy or social justice - that being aptly portrayed by their education policies - nice sounding ideas, with little real bite.

-Foreign Policy

Probably one of the largest moral failings of any British Government - Tory or Labour since WW2 was carried out by the entire New Labour cabinet (Robin Cook excluded). The weak and pathetic submission to Blair's romance with possibly the worst US President in several generations was abhorrent, disappointing and so morally despicable. Iraq will still go down as a colossal and completely avoidable blunder that should never be washed off Blair or Brown's slate. How the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith just fell over and basically gave the green light for an illegal war will be revisited one day hopefully - because it remains one of the most grave excesses of executive overreach. Whatever nice policies Blair pursued elsewhere really just pale in comparison to this.

Northern Ireland happened to fall into place under his Premiership and the majority of the hard work and tussle had already been negotiated under John Major. Blair squandered so much time and effort chasing the approval of a President who will, like him, be remembered for his wanton and whimsical decision to submit to Bush's strange neo-conservative vision for the Middle-East.

-Economy and Transport

Another huge disappointment. Inequality, the inexorable rise of finance as a wealth creator, a blatant attempt to ignore the long-term implications of their policies and a complete exclusion of any progressive ideal. No real investments or encouragements to solve Britain's problems with green energy, waste disposal, energy efficiency, rail travel, alternative fuels. All New Labour did was expand on the Tory market-based model and tinker with it slightly in the fear of appearing "anti-business". Now we have oodles and oodles of Tescos, Starbucks, Costas, Neros, McDonalds providing low-skilled jobs, an antiquated transport system that will be gridlocked in 20 years, rising CO2 levels, an ecology that is creaking badly, a waste problem and an energy policy that makes no sense.

New Labour never committed to a progressive vision for Britain as regards to Transport and Energy because they never were progressive visionaries. All it was was a conservative economic model with little regulation sprinkled with small PR tidbits. The minimum wage is of some consolation, probably the only truly left-wing policy plank New Labour ever pushed for. Tragic in a sense to think of the Labour Party being more pro-business than the Tories - but its the truth.

My summary for these last 13 years is that they were a wasted opportunity for real, substantive change that could have ushered in a genuine realignment in UK society and made it a more liberal, kinder and progressive nation. However, New Labour got bogged down in cheap, PR-related exercises and never had any real interest in adopting a new approach to inequality or social injustices.

The worst thing? They get another term.