Tony Blair's government hurt the working class. It continued the privatisation of utilities
Ownership of utilities is irrelevant provided legislation is intact to prevent rent-seeking.
it continued the right to buy and didn't expand the building of social housing.
Social housing is bad policy. It doesn't solve the issues facing the users and it heavily drives down the housing prices of those nearby.
It continued the deregulation of the markets
Generally good policy. Less regulated markets increase investment, which increases productivity, which increases wages. Obviously some regulation should exist, but most currently existing regulation is unnecessary and counterproductive.
it introduced student fees
Good policy. The UK and Australia have the two best tuition systems in the world by rate of return publicly and privately. Both of them have small income-based repayment plans.
Free tuition is regressive, a large transferal of wealth from the poor to the middle class:
http://www.docs.hss.ed.ac.uk/educati..._ESRCF_WP3.pdf
and doesn't solve the issue facing underprivileged households looking to enter university, which isn't credit constraints but improper K-12 preparation (yes I'm aware this is from the US. It's still usable for the UK):
https://research.collegeboard.org/si...erformance.pdf
it increased the working classes dependence on debt to support increasing rents, utility prices
Not really.
Wages in the UK aren't stagnant.
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf
It reduced the power of the unions
The government introduced more flexible workplace negotiations to increase worker productivity. These aren't bad, and they didn't attack the unions like Thatcher did. The single driver of aggregate wealth in a country is the productivity of its workers, not what its unions can barter for.
and started a war in Iraq where I have to assume a higher proportion of working class were affected.
Yea this was dumb.
*Tony Blair had a simplistic view of people and believed if you provided them money to purchase "opportunity" everyone would succeed through greedy self-interest.
That's kind of why capitalism works.
Blair Labour helped the working class, and the aspirational class, and the middle class. He built a broad coalition driving everybody upwards. The hard left wont ever build a coalition capable of providing a credible opposition, let alone winning governance in its own right. It needs to compromise its ideological wants for the realities of the electoral system and governance, and if it wont do that then it will be irrelevant, and incapable of putting any of its wishes into action.
Blairs' focus on education and health was monumental, he doubled spending in both of these areas. These are the most important areas for anybody seeking to better themselves and for the long-term wealth of a country, and his dedication to education funding enabled many working class members of society to drive upwards.