Cometh the hour...

...cometh the lying, Stalinist, deluded control freak, with the big clunking fist.

Actually, in a way I feel almost bereft seeing Blair leave. He has, after all, been in charge for ten years. The election he won in 1997 was the first I really paid any attention to as a politically-interested young person/precocious brat, and I can barely remember anyone else leading the Labour Party. I suppose the feeling is something analogous to hearing about the death of a much-detested neighbour or relative: someone who has been a major presence in one's life, but whom one absolutely cannot stand.

No, it might feel somewhat odd thinking that Blair is no longer infesting 10 Downing Street, but I for one certainly won't miss him. In my opinion, for his total failures on immigration, the EU, crime, and education, he has some claim to be the worst Prime Minister this country has ever experienced. Certainly, I can think of no other PM in history who has done so much to sell the native population of this country down the river, and to destroy the very fabric of our society and our culture, as Blair has, through mass immigration and multiculturalism. But if any readers can think of a PM worse than Blair, then they are welcome to put their suggestions in the comments box.

Having said that, I really don't expect Brown to be any better, and should Cameron come to power at the next election, I can envisage that he might well set a new record in terms of Prime Ministerial incompetence. The problem we have today is not so much with Blair as an individual, but with a political class that has become so bound up in itself and its own petty obsessions, and so detached from the reality facing this country, that whoever it spews up as its chosen leader will almost inevitably be disastrous. Forgive me, therefore, if, while delighting in the passing from power of the dreadful man himself, I don't get overly excited about the dawn of the post-Blair era.

Postscript: As a mildly interesting point of trivia, it should be noted that, with the ascension of Brown to the position of First Lord of the Treasury, we will have our first PM since Neville Chamberlain (another contender for worst PM ever) who went to university at an institution other than Oxford. Will this signify a sea-change in the way our society is run? No.