Tony Blair – an agent for the wrong sort of change

Was Tony Blair the key trailblazer of Britain’s future path, pulling the country irrevocably away from the past? It’s not a question I would linger on except for one intriguing astro-pointer.

  When he was first elected in 1997 and handed the prime ministerial remit by the Queen on 2 May around 11am, there was a Taurus Sun square a 7th house Uranus which is a double dose of divisiveness and status-quo upending. And his natal reforming, rebellious Uranus falls in the UK’s 10th house of direction.

  What is more interesting is that tr Saturn was in 1997 exactly conjunct the UK’s 7th house Aries North Node which was also conjunct Solar Arc Uranus sitting at the same degree.

   That UK North Node does seem hyper-sensitive and was one of the driving factors in Brexit. Tr Uranus square tr Pluto were both in hard aspect to it in 2015 when David Cameron was rebuffed by the EU leading on to the 2016 Referendum.

  Tony Blair was a Remainer but the astrology might point to a possibility that the damaging changes he made, especially in allowing large scale immigration from both non-EU and EU countries without thought of the consequences, unwittingly paved the way for the rupture with Europe.

His relationship chart with the UK deflects his deep unpopularity with a hostile Mars Pluto sitting square both the composite Mercury and Uranus, and points to a destructive outcome to the connection.  His control-freak Pluto was conjunct the UK 11th house Saturn (=legislature) which fits with his changes to the House of Lords.

  This is all fairly abstruse and more a question for the astrologers.

  A 7th house Aries North Node which the UK has, is a contradiction. An Aries North Node needs to build inner strength to be independent and develop leadership qualities. Whereas falling in the 7th it needs to be less self-sufficient, more adaptable, cooperative and able to compromise in relationships with neighbours. The conundrum is how to be a strong individual and capable of relating as well.

  Tr Saturn will come round every 29 years to conjunct the UK NN but 1997 was the first time that the Solar Arc Uranus was conjunct which does suggest a significant shift. Uranus is a trickster planet and the result is not always positive as it upends old structures and doesn’t always replace them with better but leaves chaos in its wake. It can shake stagnant situations into growth but needs other factors to give stability on the far side.

  The North Node is a point of spiritual development and tricky to pin down but often encapsulates the meaning of the rest of the chart so can be extraordinarily useful to understand.

Comments more than welcome.

45 thoughts on “Tony Blair – an agent for the wrong sort of change

  1. It looks like the Garter ceremony is June 13th at Windsor. If so, Mars and particularly Chiron at 15 Aries on his natal Venus. 11th natal house.

  2. The Who – that celebrated English rock band, that is – said it best in their classic 1971 single “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, the theme song of the popular TV series Miami CSI.
    ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’.
    ‘The parting on the left is now the parting on the right’.

    Writing as someone who is ashamed to admit was fooled back in ’97 by all the bull and ballyhoo, ‘cool Britannia’ , ‘things can only get better’ etc etc.

    How I wish I voted for poor old bland grey John Major!

  3. Off topic but tangentially relevant, I hope.
    “A 7th house Aries North Node which the UK has, is a contradiction. An Aries North Node needs to build inner strength to be independent and develop leadership qualities. Whereas falling in the 7th it needs to be less self-sufficient, more adaptable, cooperative and able to compromise in relationships with neighbours. The conundrum is how to be a strong individual and capable of relating as well.”
    This makes me hopeful that the the UK will one day return to the EU. This precisely describes how the UK was in the EU, both a leader and a rebel. Not really a team player but still greatly respected for its pragmatism. Seeking evidence of its exceptional role through ‘special deals’, even now! The current government’s determination to stamp out EU legislation which the UK introduced (e.g. in the area of human rights) in the EU is just such an example of how the UK’s relationship with both its neighbours and its own citizens is so antagonistic (and is unlikely to change until the lesson of leadership through cooperation is learned). Explains a lot for me, irrespective of the ongoing class wars fueled by the Blair government’s partisanship.

    • Relating to Marjorie’s comment.

      The flipside of 7th Aries NN is a SN Libra in 1st. I’d see that as someone who when asked to give their opinion, hedges around, gets everybody else’s and say “I agree, let’s do that”.

      And when you come down to it, much of the resentment towards the EU was that the UK got politically pushed into things it didn’t want. The obvious exception to this was keeping the pound instead of taking on the Euro and despite how massive that is, it doesn’t seem to have been harmful to how trading went.

      Maybe if the politicians put their foot down earlier and stopped trying to maintain the harmony of the relationship, perhaps it would all have worked out better.

      (I am saying this from a theoretical astrological point rather than a genuine understanding of how the EU/Britain worked).

      • It seems that the UK Government were/have been/are trying for many years to realize the Aries NN. Within the EU context but they were not having it but UK won on keeping the Pound (as did a couple of other countries)? Anyway, hence the flawed UK Referendum and we now know it was, so maybe questions should have been framed differently? However, it does come down to the eventualities of the Leave vote now hurting many who relied on sales/trade with the EU and beyond? My business that got most of its sales from EU and wider is now is literally non exist since Brexit terms/implementation hit (not to mention Covid). Have to start again literally.

      • My slight impression of the UK in the EU is they were much more meticulous about obeying diktats whereas the French in particular but other countries as well if they didn’t agree with a policy would say nope. They’d go their own way and if necessary pay the fine.

      • I also think the Libra South Node fits in with the U.K.’s sense of ‘fair play’ and sticking with the rules. This tendency of ours hasn’t always served us well when other nations find creative ways to bypass rules which don’t benefit them.

        • Yup – fair play is also a Libra SN quality.

          Think the UK’s Cap Sun / Taurus mars square Saturn Leo probably hold it back from creative bypasses. An evolved Aries NN would also just dive in and take the consequences of rule breaking!

  4. Thanks for this Marjorie, I don’t have a lot of time left this week unfortunately, but a few thoughts..

    I remember early on that the introduction of university tuition fees was felt as a betrayal to the working class and social mobility. I heard comments such us “They want to keep us as a prole class so we keep voting for them and don’t go all bourgeois and vote Tory”. It was felt that no investment was made in vocational skills training as an alternative; the resulting lack of skills led to the promulgation of the message:”We have a skills shortage and need to import these skills for the good of the economy, so immigration is necessary”. Truly, by 1997 we had a service based industry that had just come out of recession and needed cheap labour to prop it up.

    Meanwhile, young working class people were increasing demonised in the media as “chavs” and the government introduced signal-laden, populist measure of the “ASBO”. The working class was split from this point, with one half being “better” (ones that had sold their council houses and moved away) and encouraged to look down on the “chavs” (ones still on the estates and more likely to be in poverty. One half was boosted and the other half was left behind. I think this division is key to what followed.

    The nodal axis is interesting (and it happens to be exactly opposite mine!). Competition against the “other”, the need for an “other” to define oneself – is it easy to channel the electorate this way to reach a goal? Reaching the Good Friday agreement, then the Iraq war in the next term – success making them think they can overreach and apply their “genius” in other lands.

    • The lack of investment in vocational training is a tragedy and the fault of successive governments. I come from an academic family and know how pointless a university degree often is – indeed look at politicians at the top, a lathering of Oxford and Cambridge and not a practical brain amongst them. Engineers, technicians, builders, plumbers – a great deal more productive – and a way of giving the less academic pride in their abilities.
      As Billy Connolly once remarked ‘who the f*** ever needed calculus after they left school?’

      • It is a tragedy and not just for the young, but there is a need throughout the working life for people to retrain, often due to globalisation or changes in technology rapidly altering the either the demand or skills needed. Although a good quality education early on makes these later changes easier and higher education is also known to have a preventative effect in cognitive decline and dementia. Dementia rates are growing rapidly as people live longer and may have a far greater cost than higher education.

        Policies rarely keep up with our understanding of the world; we become fixed on anchor points and adjust very little from them. People believe this to be moderate, even if they are shown empirical evidence that a total rethink of a system is justified, they will think it best to stick closely to their anchor point “middle”. This may also be the Libra SN; the desire to calibrate and “balance” everything to the middle may be pragmatic in the short term, but sometimes holds us back in the longer term.

    • Yes, Tara, the demonisation of the working classes is an important point I think. I wonder if it reflects the path of Neptune in some way, since Neptune is often associated with ‘trends’ and so on in our society? We’ve been living through a kind of lengthy Neptune return. And Neptune can represent the underdog or the disposessed.

      During the 19th century, Neptune was in Aquarius 1834-1848, Pisces 1847-1862, then Aries 1861-1875 during the years of exponential growth for industry. The cities grew fast as a result, and were full of people (both foreign migrants and those from the countryside) working in all the new industries. The Victorians then took to classifying class in minute detail – from upper to lower middle class, and upper (or ‘respectable’) working class, to the impoverished and desperate ‘people of the abyss’, living hand to mouth in the slums. The fascination with this extended to coach tours of the worst areas in the East End of London, so that better off people could view abject poverty as if it were a tourist attraction, sometimes as an after-dinner entertainment. Popular fiction of this long era also reflected the idea of the “other”, and included the so-called white slave trade, opium dens (Dickens), and fictional foreign villains from the Chinese, Italian and Jewish immigrant communities.

      Of course other planetary patterns are involved, but some of the themes do clearly align with Neptune’s rulerships I think.

      • Not forgetting George Peabody and his ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’, a notion which still plagues us to this day.

        When the ‘ripper’ murders took place during the latter part of 1888, the popular press were insistent that they could only have been carried out by a foreigner and suspicion was directed at the many Russian Jews who inhabited the East End at the time. Such appalling crimes, it was assumed couldn’t possibly be carried out by an Englishman!

        • Yes, the Russian Jews had a hard time fitting in I know. The resident Jewish population were not too pleased on the whole. Some of that phenomenon must be ruled by Neptune – both immigration, refugees, and religious clashes? All the ‘waves’ (Neptune?) of migrants from various locations changed things, little by little, just as they always have for centuries.

          Strangely, one of the Ripper’s victims lived in a Peabody flat for quite some time……I can’t recall which one now, but she and her family must have been thought ‘deserving’ at one point. Peabody’s Nodes are 8 Leo/Aquarius – close to, and the reverse of, Tony Blair’s….

          • Without wanting to derail the thread, I wondered if you’ve read ‘The Five’ by Hallie Rubenhold Jane? I’m currently listening to the podcast version of the book and very interesting it is too.

          • Yes VF it’s such an excellent book. I’ve studied this period quite widely, and it is so necessary to give the women of the period a voice, and a presence. Well,in all phases of history really! and in tune with some of the points about the Blair years, the working classes in general of every era.

  5. Look at Neptune … it’s stuck at 29Cap57 !!!

    It turned retro on the Election Day (1-May). It was headed out of Capricorn into the brave new Aqua era then it stopped, turned retro and never got there. The lead-up to the election would have been all the promise and excitement which Uranus, already in Aqua, brought but then got blocked by the Neptune retrograde. The progressions and solar arcs of Neptune are all stuck in the anaretic degree.

    Timing the chart a little earlier and Neptune’s on the descendant highlighting the rose-coloured specs of the relationship TB had with the UK public. In the 6th house, it’s very poorly placed. The moon (representing the people) in Pisces ruled by the Neptune.

  6. I read something only last week ( cannot think where it was now) that said Blair wanted to open up to mass migration as it was believed by Labour that the people coming in would all be more sympathetic to voting Labour rather than Tory or Lib Dem and this would secure their long-term future in power.

    • Yes.

      That was the hidden agenda deliberately concealed from the British electorate – absolutely no manifesto declared it whatsoever. Did Labour even campaign on this issue back in the John Major days?

      Hidden deceit, debauchery and contempt in high places – all very Plutonian. Coupled with the racial angle, which in the UK’s case strongly resonates with Pluto, which is prominent whenever a nasty ‘inner city riot’ breaks out.

      I am fairly convinced that Pluto with all its dark power and malignancy – think of Hades – was the planetary emblem of New Labour.

      It simply *must* feature in one of the key, critical New Labour charts.

      • Really interesting what you say, Jonathan, about Pluto. I would also add Saturn to that mix. Although I am not a very knowledgeable astrologer, in my own life I have seen Saturn represent GUILT, among other things and looking at the 1997 Saturn transit UK 7th H North Node, seems to me that the UK was experiencing or becoming more aware of guilt in regards to its empire-building past and its relationship to other nations (Commonwealth, etc). I believe that TB formed his agenda around exploiting the nation’s guilt and continues to do so (he’s not the only one). BTW, I say this as a Black Briton whose family is from Jamaica.

      • The other thing that was, very very carefully, concealed before the election. Which was cooked up by both Blair and Brown acting together; was the theft, no other word is strong enough, of millions of pounds from the people who had private pensions.

        • Also you had the totally ridiculous – leaving the taxpayers of the future with *enormous* liabilities so called “Private Finance Initiative” or PFI, which was used to a massive extent by Brown and Blair.
          Where do you think all the funds for the new hospitals and schools they bragged about so much came from?

    • You are probably referencing the ‘Andrew Neather’ article, in which Neather, an otherwise undistinguished party apparatchik inadvertently spilled the beans on the New Labour immigration agenda in a rather smug, patronising, supercilious piece.

  7. Gamal’s comment about 1066 relating to England, not Britain, is quite right – I simply use 1066 for the whole UK nowadays because it often seems to work. Anyway, I was prompted to look at the date for the Acts of Union, 1st May 1707. That’s the union with Scotland, Tony Blair’s birthplace.

    This planetary line-up is also interesting when considering TB as an agent of change. Pluto in the Acts of Union line-up (20 Leo) is conjunct Jupiter (21 Leo) trine Neptune 21 Aries. Power and grandeur writ large I’d say! Tony B’s Pluto is 20 Leo, and his Neptune 21 Libra (conjunct Saturn 22 Libra), fitting right into this trine.

    Tony B’s Mars at 3 Gemini is conjunct the AoU Saturn at 3 Gemini, interesting and combative combo for legislation I think. His natal Uranus in Cancer is conjunct the AoU Mars, while the First Government chart shows Uranus in Aquarius opposing the 1707 Uranus at 9 Leo – a moment of reassesment or change and disruption? The Acts of Union Nodes are 26 Aries, conjunct Tony Blair’s natal Mercury – interesting re communications and, again, all the energetic spin of New Labour’s new approach to media, and the public. There are more connections between 1707 and these charts Marjorie has posted here, too, which underlines the idea of an agent of change. Cometh the hour, cometh the man as they say – but as for the results, that’s probably another matter entirely!

  8. Astrologically, I’ve always seen TB with his Aqua moon as one of those zeitgeist figures at a time when both Uranus and Neptune were moving into Aquarius.

    When I look back, it seems a culturally bland period to me. The celebrations of the Millennium barely memorable, the music and films of the time – are good when they come on – yet I’m not sure I’d never put any of it down as my favourite or seek it out. The Aquarius polish to everything is often so superficial. Dreading the Pluto in Aquarius period in case Robbie Williams becomes popular again …

    • 1997 was the first general election I was old enough to vote in. It was a great time to be young, just enough technology, not too much

      If I was to choose one track that screams the Uranus going into Aquarius energy of that period, it’s probably

  9. Thank you for that Marjorie.

    One must also take into account Blair’s much touted ‘Devolution’ agenda – the most significant effect of which was the complete destruction of Labour Party hegemony in Scotland and its replacement by the SNP. Such a political sea change happens once a century, and this egregious example is, surely, the biggest political backfiring of a policy agenda in modern British political history.
    Related to this is that a large part of Labours bedrock working class salt-of-the-earth electorate have abandoned the party – probably for good. Witness the recent Hartlepool by election.

    The dilemma for Labour is that they can only possibly take power by accommodating the SNP, and the price of that is, inevitably, Scottish, independence, thus defeating the object in the first place!

    Be that as it may, the most significant legacy of Blair will, most certainly, be the ethnic demographic revolution in the UK population which he (deliberately) wrought. By this century’s end, Britain will be non majority ethnically British.

    Such a transformation is historically unprecedented. It is for that main reason that I believe the May 1997 ‘New Labour’ chart will prove to be *the* key chart of the UK going forward, and should be the first to be consulted.

    • Devolution need not have been disaster for Labour if they had heeded what people in Scotland were saying
      Their absolute opposition to every SNP policy ( it even has a name – the Bain principle ) secured their destruction.
      That and advising their supporters to vote Tory resulting in Theresa May’s 13 Scottish MPs in 2017 was another self inflicted wound

  10. Really interesting, thanks Marjorie. With respect to privatisation, ‘New Labour’ and selling off the family silver – ie capitalism that Thatcher started in earnest – I wonder what was going on with the UK’s North Node when Thatcher came to power back in 1979?

  11. It wasn’t just the Iraq debacle, the crunch factor on the road to Brexit was arguably New Labour’s sloppy, slap-happy not -thought-through immigration policies, initially from non-EU countries and after enlargement in 2004 from the EU despite the fact that other countries like Germany maintained visa controls.
    ‘Tony Blair’s belief in the benefits of globalisation turned Britain into a ‘migration state’.
    “One of the largest mass population movements since the second world war brought more than two million immigrants into the United Kingdom – and in turn radically transformed the terrain of British politics. “
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/mar/24/how-immigration-came-to-haunt-labour-inside-story

    • Interesting article and re Jonathan’s comment regarding the 1997 chart – I’ve long felt that the original Labour Party chart doesn’t really gel with the Labour Party post Blair. New Labour’s mass immigration policy of course had the most impact on the more traditional Working Class areas of the country which was one reason for the Working Class’s abandonment of the Labour Party. I recall that even previous generations of immigrants, the British Asian communities in the North, Midlands and elsewhere in the UK, as well as the traditional Working Class were concerned about the outcomes of such policies on housing, education and services and these communities very much bore the brunt of those policies. At the time, New Labour was simply not prepared to acknowledge or even listen to them.

      • Blair offered the Labout Party a Faustian pact. He promised them an opportunity of an extended period in power in return for its soul. Needless to say like all Mephistophelean devils the deal came with all sorts of hidden catches not least being that Blair had absolutely no intention of addressing any of the structural damage to the British economy that occurred in the Thatcher years. Nor was he really interested in paying more than lip service to issues of poverty and social justice. As a conseqence social mobility in the UK actually declined in the New Labour years. Worse his promises that devolution and high immigration would permanently keep the Tories out of government in Westminster was a delusion. It turned out that many Scots preferred the SNP to New Labour and lots of immigrants were more than happy to vote Tory once they had acquired some property. The Labour Party has been struggling to recover ever since from this toxic legacy.

        • Blair trading socialism for Thatcherism.

          His prophet was not Keir Hardie, but Margaret Thatcher.

          The point is that the UK already had one Conservative Party – the honest Conservative Party – so why vote for the fake, wannabe one?

  12. This is so interesting. I agree that the Blair years did pave the way for much that’s followed.
    I noticed some curious things in the 1066 chart as well – 1066 has a North Node in Virgo (22), conjunct Saturn at 16 Virgo. The Mars for the Blair First Government is conjunct that 1066 Saturn. The 1066 Mars is 8 Aquarius, which is conjunct the 8 Aquarius Uranus for the Blair FG. So that would seem to describe a shake up too.
    The usual ascendant for 1066 is 22 Aries. Tony Blair’s natal Saturn (22) and Neptune (21) in Libra then fall right on the descendant – perhaps describing an enduring alliance that wasn’t quite what it appeared to be? Also hints at the ‘glamour’ and endless spin and PR of that era.

    At the moment, transiting Neptune has already been conjunct the Pisces South Node for Britain 1066, in the 12th house of hidden opponents and self undoing. It is now conjunct the Chiron there – which may be a bit esoteric, or may describe the effects of the pandemic, and the effects of Brexit legislation and ongoing negotiations.

  13. Marjorie, did Blair’s joining the U.S. in the Iraq War help pull the UK away from Europe?

    Would you consider looking at Blair’s horoscope in relation to the U.S. to see if there is a major connection?

    Thank you so much for all your fascinating work!

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