权权的BLOG

无论在英国还是在全欧洲，托尼"布莱尔(Tony Blair)无疑是他这一代最杰出的政治家。他连续三次赢得大选的纪录足以载入史册。思维敏捷、直觉敏锐、魅力超群、性格坚韧，他的天赋不可思议。

过去10年来，他和戈登"布朗(Gordon Brown)在经济方面的工作，几乎让工党(Labour)成为天然的英国执政党。布莱尔改革卫生和教育等公共服务的尝试令人失望，但并没有完全失败。一个在社会议题上宽容的政府，维护了同性恋、母亲和职场女性的权益，但不那么自由主义地侵犯公民自由权，并退却到保密作风。布莱尔应该为北爱尔兰实现和平与权力共享而受到表彰。但在伊拉克问题上的错误判断和不幸遭遇，将永远玷污他本应更好的政绩。

10年前，伴随着《明天更美好》(Things can only get better)的歌声，工党开始上台执政。很多时候，他们做到了这一点。在布莱尔的领导下，英国经历了连续10年的经济增长，实现了低通胀和低失业率的并存。这种稳定的繁荣，在很大程度上要归功于身为财政大臣的布朗——以及他的前任、保守党人肯尼斯"克拉克(Kenneth Clarke)。然而，这不应抹杀新工党(New Labour)拥抱全球化、并保持经济和国家对贸易、投资和移民开放的信念。人们开始激烈反对金融城奖金和高管薪酬，证明布莱尔政府没能大幅改善社会公平。但是，由于增加了公共开支，实施了最低薪金等措施，撒切尔(Thatcher)时代遗留的不平等状况并没有加剧。

虽然布莱尔和布朗做事大胆，比如，他们促成英国央行(Bank of England)在货币政策上的独立性，但由于他们专注于再次赢得大选，因此，他们花了太长时间去摆脱自身的反对党习气。他们严重低估了公共部门改革的艰巨性。

他们向英国“国民健康服务体系”(National Health Service)和教育系统投入大量资金，仿佛光靠金钱就能引发并形成变革。正如其它一些政策一样，布莱尔在这项政策上的洞见是对的，但在执行方面却是一团糟。布莱尔主义认为，福利和公共服务体系的设计缺陷，强化了社会不平等，阻碍了弱势群体的进步与发展。这种观点基本上是正确的。事实上，布莱尔主义的核心就是：寻找现代化的方式，实现社会民主党派传统的社会公平目标。但是，在国民健康服务中引入选择，却遭遇了失败，因为布莱尔政府采用的是相互矛盾的做法，提出中央化的目标，却实行分散化的竞争。

出现这种脱节的部分原因在于，布莱尔直觉敏锐的另一方面是，他并非一个考虑全面、注重细节的人。更加凸现这一特点的是他的政府管理风格：行为做事像个总统，不太正式，很少使用部长级官员、下院议员或高级文官，而更依赖由观点相仿的专门顾问组成的小圈子。正如有关伊拉克战争情报问题的巴特勒(Butler)报告所生动评说的那样，这种轻文件、重闲聊的政府将亲信之外的人都排除在外，缩小了“集思广益的集体政治判断起作用的空间”。

当然，伊拉克战争是一个灾难性的决策错误。除了打垮政府体系、让社会解体以外，入侵和占领伊拉克的做法还创造了一个恐怖主义孵化器，让伊拉克远比塔利班时期的阿富汗更加危险，在全球滋生了圣战极权主义，而且还使得伊朗成为中东地区的主要大国。对于什叶派伊朗的势力提升，西方国家和逊尼派阿拉伯国家的恐慌造就了一个外交真空，让布莱尔和乔治"布什(George W. Bush)吹嘘的该地区“自由议程”（强硬对待恐怖主义、强硬打击恐怖主义的根源）沦为了全线退却。

布莱尔让英国听从于有史以来最无能的美国政府，这一迄今依然令人困惑的决定导致英国疏远了欧盟。这位表面上赞同欧盟的领导人，却放弃了英国在欧洲并通过欧洲强化其影响力的机会。布莱尔1999年在芝加哥演讲中雄辩阐述、并在塞拉利昂、科索沃和阿富汗体面实践的自由干涉主义理论，也因为伊拉克战争而遭遇沉重打击。

在公众心目中，一个曾经极易与公众情感联系起来的人（1997年戴安娜王妃去世时的感伤、2005年伦敦爆炸事件后的坚强），最后怎么会与善变、炒作和肮脏勾当联系得如此紧密呢？这将永远是一个悖论。对于上述三种形象，他的诚挚表白无法提供有力的辩护。但本周发生的事情应该会提醒我们，无论布莱尔的政治遗产是多么黯淡，北爱尔兰将永远像一颗珍贵的宝石一样闪闪发光。

Tony Blair has unquestionably been the most remarkable politician of his generation, in the UK and across Europe. His hat-trick of election victories is historic. His gifts, as a quick and intuitive politician of charm and tenacity, are formidable.

His and Gordon Brown's stewardship of the economy over the past decade has very nearly established Labour as the natural party of government. His attempts to reform public services such as health and education have not so much failed as disappointed. A socially tolerant government defended the rights of gays, mothers and women in the workplace, yet illiberally attacked civil liberties and retreated into secrecy. Mr Blair deserves accolades for achieving peace and power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Yet the misjudgment and misadventure in Iraq will forever soil a record that could have been so much better.

That dawn a decade ago broke to the anthem of “Things can only get better”. Quite often, they did. Under Mr Blair, Britain has enjoyed 10 years of unbroken economic growth, with low inflation and low unemployment. This stable prosperity owes much to Mr Brown as chancellor (and to his Conservative predecessor, Kenneth Clarke). But that should not overshadow the conviction with which New Labour has embraced globalisation and kept the economy and the country open to trade, investment and immigrants. The Blair government has not managed to create a noticeably fairer society, as the beginnings of a backlash against the bonus and executive pay bonanza in the City attest. But, as a result of increased public spending and measures such as the minimum wage, there has been no increase in the inequality opened up by the Thatcher decade.

While Mr Blair and Mr Brown moved boldly to, for example, make the Bank of England independent, they took too long to shake off the habits of opposition as they concentrated on winning re-election. They badly underestimated the task of public services reform.

They have poured money into the National Health Service and schools, as though infusions of cash alone could trigger and shape change. In this as in some other policies, Mr Blair's insight was right but the execution was a mess. The Blairite view that design flaws in the provision of welfare and public service entrench inequality and hold back the disadvantaged is basically valid. It is, indeed, the core of Blairism: the search for modern means towards social democracy's traditional ends of social justice. But choice in the NHS, for example, is crushed by the conflicting approach of decentralising competition while imposing central targets.

Such disconnects arise partly because the flipside of Mr Blair's intuitive grasp is that he is not a details man who thinks things through. That trait is exacerbated by his style of government, presidential yet informal, with little use for ministers, MPs or mandarins, preferring an inner circle of like-minded special advisers. As the Butler report on the Iraq war intelligence tellingly observed, this document-lite, sofa government reduces “the scope for informed collective political judgment” by leaving all but close aides out of the loop.

Certainly, Iraq was a catastrophic error of judgment. As well as breaking a state and dissolving a society, the invasion and occupation have created an incubator of terrorism far more dangerous than the Afghanistan of the Taliban, proliferated jihadi totalitarianism around the globe, and made the Islamic Republic of Iran the dominant power in the Middle East. Western and Sunni Arab panic at Shia Iran's advance has created a diplomatic vacuum and flung Mr Blair's and George W. Bush's vaunted “freedom agenda” in the region (tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism) into headlong retreat.

Mr Blair's still perplexing decision to subordinate the UK to this most incompetent of US administrations distanced Britain from the European Union. This ostensibly pro-European leader abandoned the opportunity to enhance Britain's influence in and through Europe. Iraq has also done great damage to the doctrine of liberal interventionism Mr Blair eloquently set out in his 1999 speech in Chicago, and honourably defended in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

It will always be a paradox how a man who could so effortlessly connect with the public mood – sentimental after the death of Princess Diana in 1997, defiant after the London bombings in 2005 – could by the end become so associated in the public mind with shiftiness, spin and sleaze, against which, his professions of sincerity offer no defence. Yet as this week should remind us, however tarnished the Blair legacy, Northern Ireland will always shine out as a precious gem.