The ten most influential people of the decade
Thursday, 24, Dec 2009 08:00
Who by their achievements and accomplishments, good or evil, had the most influence upon our world in the last ten years?
By Matthew Champion.
Click here to read the second most influential person of the last decade.
1 Tony Blair
UK prime minister, Middle East peace envoy
Since leaving office in 2007 Tony Blair has often been described as a destiny politician, in a similar vein to his spiritual predecessor, Margaret Thatcher. In his ten years in Downing St he did more than any post-war prime minister to assert that destiny.
The domestic achievements - longest-serving Labour PM, only person to lead Labour to three consecutive general election victories - pale in significance to what he achieved on a world stage. Intervention in Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia were warnings of how far Blair would be willing to go to remake the world in his vision.
His opportunity came after the September 11th attacks, when Britain became the US' staunchest ally in the war on terror and supported the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Many people have painted Blair as a puppet of George Bush during this time; others that he was no different than any other post-war UK prime minister in aligning his foreign policies to that of Washington. What distinguishes Blair from his predecessors was the extent to which he influenced the special relationship.
Ahead of his appearance at the Iraq inquiry next year he has admitted that he would have supported an invasion to supplant Saddam Hussein even if he had no weapons of mass destruction - he saw it as his duty to remove the Iraqi president from power, and if the Americans are able to help him to achieve that end then all the better for it. Blair could not have ousted Saddam without US troops, but then Bush would not have gone to war without the guise of a coalition of the willing to support him. Blair's unfailing support provided that mandate and the rest is history.
Since leaving Downing St Blair has not taken a step back from the world stage either, surprisingly being named as the envoy for the Middle East quartet and unsuccessfully lobbying to become the first-ever president of the European Commission. There might not be a big enough job in the world left for him, but when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president who was the first dignitary he hosted at the White House?
The outgoing decade was Blair's, but don't rule him out from having a large say in the next.
The ten most influential people of the decade
1 Tony Blair
2 Osama Bin Laden
3 Jimmy Wales
4 Dick Cheney
5 Sergey Brin and Larry Page
6 Rupert Murdoch
7 Alan Greenspan
8 David Beckham
9 Mark Zuckerberg
10 Barack Obama