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Comment by verbify | Hacker News Reader

Do you forget what a shambles Tony Blair was? Led us into a pointless war that cost 100,000s of lives. As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war.

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Not really. The UK is bombing Syria at his behest. The joke is that a year or two before that, he tried, and failed, to get the UK to drop bombs on the other side of the war.

s/the other/another/

There aren't two sides in that war.

Blair is probably the reason many Labour heartlands voted for out, he opened the doors to mass migration without thinking about the implications for those who might be displaced by it (or rather feel they were displaced by it)

> opened the doors to mass migration without thinking about the implications for those who might be displaced by it (or rather feel they were displaced by it)

just... wow

Please elaborate, as in the Northeast this is exactly what happened. Do you agree or disagree, or are you just saying "wow" as youngtaff has opened your eyes to how many members of the tradition labour vote outside London view Europe?

Who, exactly, has been displaced by mass migration in the Northeast?

Historically labour voting workers have been displaced from their jobs by low skilled immigrants. Don't just take my words for it:

https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/brexit-wins-an-illusion-di...

"Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they’d had enough.

[...]

Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain. "

Were you think physically displaced, rather than "taking over the role of" displaced?

> As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war.

'Military interventions' during Cameron: Libya (2011) , Syria and Iraq are the first to come to mind. The first being politically motivated rather than on humanitarian grounds.

David Cameron wanted to bomb Syria, but didn't because of massive public opposition and the commons vote.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

I agree that Blair was a war-monger.

> As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war

If this is all we're holding politicians to then it's a really sorry state.

The man has doomed a generation and removed the easiest way for that generation to leave the country and prosper elsewhere.

Semantically speaking, in the case of that war Blair was just following America, not leading anybody (his country happened to be attached to him so it followed America too), so because he wasn't actually a leader at all he couldn't have been the best/worst one.

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