New Labour's past is back to haunt Ed's uncertain Labour

Tony Blair (centre-left), Ed Miliband (centre-right) with their wives at the Emirates Stadium, London

 It has only been five years since Tony Blair resigned as British Prime Minister but over the last weeks, we have seen him return to the public eye. Back in June, he was invited to the Leveson Inquiry and defended his role in politics' relationship with the press. While doing this, he tried to deflect his responsibilities to The Sun newspaper's political switch from Conservative to Labour, months before the centre-left's election victory in 1997 to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who owns that particular paper by saying he did not convince the publication to alter their views. Murdoch said previous that he felt Blair was the right man to lead Britain over then Conservative Prime Minister John Major. This case of course, is still to be resolved but I feel Lord Justice Leveson will have a clearer perception of how politicians and newspaper executives flirted with each other to get the best publicity from even before 1997.

Never mind Leveson afterwards, Tony Blair ensured his appearance in the public eye wasn't temporary. He has recently been attending several talks and made a series of speeches to various audiences around the world. All of a sudden, he is a wanted man (apart from those who despise him) and isn't he milking it? He has returned to the scene and is giving people advice to people and people are listening to him. He must think he's back to 1994 again, where he was first loved by the public when appointed Labour leader. His charm is back to haunt us and it appears he is doing it without the assistance of former press secretary and buddy, Alastair Campbell. Well, until one event...

Tony Blair's comeback has become so successful, his former colleague and current Labour leader Ed Miliband has offered the Scotland-born politician a place to his former employers. It has been his intention to return to politics as he has recently expressed his passion for getting Labour back to power. He was quoted to saying, "It's an honour to be here to support our party, whose values and principles I have always believed in and always will, and to support Ed, support his leadership, support his drive to make our party win."

In hindsight, Blair wants to help Miliband's bid to become next Prime Minister by the next election, which is likely to take place in 2015. If this is to occur, Labour would have just three years to alter some of their current policy plans and perhaps attempt to convince Scotland to opt out of their independence bid in addition to having a significant influence on the future of Europe. Miliband has been quoted by the BBC that he has a long way to go before he can be considered as PM but adds to the corporation's political editor Nick Robinson that Labour has an opportunity to show they are worthy of getting to power again. One way of trying to do this was the decision to bring back Blair, who would advise Miliband on some of the policies he is set to pitch.

Miliband has probably made a wise decision to receive help from Blair. He's been there, done that and led the country for ten years winning three general elections in the process. However, it can be argued that Miliband has made a catastrophic mistake in appointing Blair.

Labour, according to some polls suggests the Party are over ten percent ahead of the Conservatives. Despite this, Miliband knows that this comprehensive gap is down to people regretting ever voting for the Tories or Liberal Democrats in 2010, and not down to his leadership skills which people still prefer his popular, charming older brother David. Why jeopardise this lead by bringing back someone who led this country to the worst recession since the 1990s?

Tony Blair, during his decade in charge has made some decent decisions. We thank him for introducing the national minimum wage and we are also grateful that Northern Ireland is a more bearable place to live and visit in comparison to previous decades. However, other decisions he made were scandalous and unforgivable.

In 1997, months after being announced Prime Minister he introduced Higher Education tuition fees for the first time. Today, this policy has spiralled out of control seeing the forthcoming year, prospective students will have to pay up to £9,000 a year to study a subject which they would hope will increase their chances of getting "better employment". Instead, students face around £40,000 worth in debt as they rely on loans and grants to live through "the best three/four years of your life". Certainly, it wasn't Blair that increased the fees to £9,000 but his introduction to such animosity has influenced current Prime Minister David Cameron to hike them leading to the student riots in autumn 2010, damaging the reputation of the future and current generation.

Furthermore in 2001, the unfortunate 9/11 occurred with casualties including 68 British citizens meaning Blair and partner in crime and former US President, George W. Bush, decided to try and punish the culprits - in this case, The Taliban, led then by Osama bin Laden - by orchestrating a move to send American and British troops (other countries brought their troops too) to their extremist base in Afghanistan and therefore defeat them and protect the people in the country. Little did they realise that today, their "mission" is still happening and more British troops have died at war than the amount of Brits killed in New York on September 11. It's a sorry matter which has cost the UK trillions of pounds in the last eleven years and although bin Laden is dead, the people in Afghanistan have had little improvements to their lifestyle. The media in the UK like to think Afghanistan has improved but they do not want to show us the bigger picture.

Image from "mymarilyn.blogspot.co.uk"

Another country Blair and Bush caused disruption and spending trillions while doing so was Iraq. In 2002, there were fears the Middle Eastern country, led at the time by Saddam Hussein, were in possession of WMD (Weapons of Mass Distruction). Both UK and US governments were convinced Iraq owned such material, creating potential damage to many nations worldwide, despite no evidence to prove this. Nonetheless, in September 2002, The Sun newspaper in particular created moral panic suggesting Iraq were to attack UK "in 45 minutes" (pictured right) - a move praised by its owner Murdoch, who supported Britain's intervention to a country that hadn't done anything wrong.

Nevertheless, the Iraq war happened in March 2003 with innocent residents there dead leaving UK's reputation diminished due to the incompetence by Blair and Bush. Bearing in mind, Blair was one of the people who believed the Millennium Bug would have "grinded Britain to a halt" in 2000. Of course, that didn't happen.

The reason why I have explained Blair's misjudgements is so that it can alarm signals to Ed Miliband that the reason why Cameron is struggling as PM is because he has no idea how to clean Blair's mess. Gordon Brown, who was Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010 failed to do so too but giving that the damage had already been done, he could do little about fixing the economy.

It certainly hasn't helped that Cameron has an identical mind to Margaret Thatcher who caused the intervention at the Falkland Islands in 1982 while leading Britain to a recession in the early 1990s. Despite this, Cameron did not receive advice from The Iron Lady so why does Ed Miliband need Blair's feedback? I hope Miliband realises that he has made a mistake to bring Blair back. I'm sure that Blair is a good person out of politics but in, he has made a mess of Britain's reputation. Remember, he is still Middle East peace envoy for the conflict between Israel and Palestine and one feels the both countries have benefited little to his appointment.