Blair as a Presidential style Leader.

With law and order, Blair’s shadow Home Secretary, sought to end the perception of Labour as 'Soft on Crime'. He it was who introduced right-wing steel into the party's message, summed up by his slogan 'Tough on Crime - tough on the causes of crime'. With employment Blair when shadowing this portfolio, he succeeded in ending his party's commitment to 'full employment' in 1990, when the document Looking to the Future talked instead of the 'highest possible levels of skilled and rewarding employment'. In education Blair sent his son Euan to the Oratory School, a grant maintained school of the type Labour policy opposed.

In defence, Blair has consistently identified core ideas ever since he was an undergraduate at Oxford. He was already a natural anti-establishment undergraduate, attracted to leftish politics but cautious and certainly no extremist.

Blair did adapt the dominant political and economic philosophy of the day - but it has to be appreciated that: four successive elections had been lost by Labour and as leader he had to redirect his party into a position from where it could realistically challenge for office; there is little point otherwise in being a political party. A wealth of evidence showed that Labour's weakness was related to: its perceived closeness to trade union sectional interests; its high 'tax and spend' policies; its predilection for government interference in the economy, especially the discredited policy of nationalisation; and its identification with 'losers' and regulation rather than 'winners' and opportunity.

The shrinkage of the working class meant labour's natural voter base was disappearing following its heyday in the post-war years. In order to get into power Blair just had to appeal to middle-class voters too; Middle England values on law and order, low taxation and so forth therefore had to be addressed and incorporated into Labour thinking. Blair's son did actually go to a state school - albeit with overtones of selection in its admissions policy - and not a private one like the children of so many Conservative politicians.

Blair and Gordon Brown, in an act of arbitrary power, soon after the May election gave independence to the Bank of England even though it wasn't a manifesto pledge.. Blair has imposed a tough disciplinary regime on his 419 MP's;

Blair announced without any consultation that Prime Minister's question time would be reduced from two fifteen-minute sessions per week to one of thirty minutes on Wednesdays, suggesting he wished to insulate himself from parliamentary criticism. He has ruthlessly centralised power, bringing in Mandelson, his trusted lackey, and later Cunningham to coordinate policy as well as Derry Irvine in a less defined way. While eschewing the lure of a Prime Minister's department, he has greatly strengthened the Cabinet Office to institutionalise the dominance of Number 10 in the machinery of government.

In defence of this, the decision regarding the Bank of England's independence was taken quickly but in the interests of the economy, which has often been subject to financial speculation after Labour victories: Brown and Blair's decision was widely supported in the City and the financial press. Changes to Prime Ministers question time have been urged for years as the whole exercise had become like a kindergarten. Blair's confident style enables more questions in thirty minutes than used to be allowed in two fifteen-minute sessions. Blair has been keener on answering questions than eng from essaybank.co.uk aging in party rhetoric and abuse.

Centralising power in a diffuse system like Britain's is no bad thing and placing tried and trusted people in charge are similarly sound political sense. A Prime Minister's department has been there in embryo for many years and it makes sense to make arrangements more explicit and formal in the form of a reformed Cabinet Office.

'He has diminished the importance of Cabinet': Blair has exploited his massive election victory either to push through his own demands to the exclusion of proper cabinet discussion, or to bypass such discussion via smaller decision-making groups. For example, the decision to exclude Formula One motor racing from the ban on tobacco advertising was taken after a small meeting with Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's chief organiser, plus a few officials. Making it worse was the fact that the junior minister, Tessa Jowell, and her boss Frank Dobson, also opposed this exclusion. Former permanent secretary Alan Bailey wrote that the episode 'shows the need to involve the relevant ministers in decision making and to get back to proper Cabinet government which has been in decline for the last two decades'.

And finally, 'Blair is too Presidential': Blair has allegedly reduced the power and role of the cabinet and already won the dubious accolade of 'presidential' in the minds of some commentators. Blair has often expressed his admiration for Thatcher, the most presidential Prime Minister this century. As time goes by, say critics, buttressed by his huge majority, he will get worse as the corruption of power progresses. He has assumed the trappings of power by flying Concorde to Denver, flying-in a hairdresser to the USA for his wife, Cherie, staying in a millionaire's villa in Italy and making champagne his regular tipple.

Blair is a strong leader with a clear vision and will naturally advance his views forcibly; his cabinet colleagues would expect nothing else but are no shrinking violets themselves. Admiration of Thatcher does not imply imitation; he is not as vulnerable as she was to enjoying power for power's sake; he is unlikely, for instance, to use the royal 'we' as she famously did.

Blair meets the parliamentary committee of the party every Wednesday afternoon in a meeting chaired by Clive Soley and grievances are discussed and if possible rectified. Besides, every Prime Minister in modern times has been awfully pressed for time and this is no evidence necessarily of presidential remoteness.

Some have said that Gordon Brown is the strongest member of the cabinet and that the party would crumble without him. This does not seem very presidential as Blair is not seen as the sole leader. But nether the less, there are two sides to each story. And it is one's own opinion on whether Blair is a presidential Prime Minister or not.