Tony Blair has made his most forceful intervention in British politics since stepping down as prime minister nearly two decades ago. In a new essay, the former Labour leader pleads with the party to rise above the smallness of the current leadership debate and return to a winning formula.
Blair's Critique of Labour Leadership
Blair tactfully disagreed with Gordon Brown, less tactfully with Ed Miliband, and contemptuously with Jeremy Corbyn. He contributed to the debate on leaving the EU, earning respect but not shifting opinion. He tried to help Keir Starmer with pointed policy advice on net zero, digital ID, and foreign affairs. Now, he has gone full blast against a Labour Party preparing to dump the prime minister and replace him with something worse.
The essay is a measured cry of despair against the party he once led, and against a political system he once dominated. Some may dismiss it as Blair's Sunset Boulevard moment—'It's the politics that got small!'—but there is a greatness and ambition still burning that may inspire a new generation recognizing a lack of leadership among current politicians.
Blair and Starmer do not get on, and contact between them has dwindled to nearly nothing over the past year. The essay offers Starmer cursory credit for winning the 2024 election by presenting Labour as an 'acceptable' default option to a Conservative government the country felt had behaved unacceptably. However, it blames the prime minister for governing from an essentially traditional Labour 'soft left' position, parked firmly in the party's comfort zone. Parking in a comfort zone is one of the worst crimes in Blair's book of traffic offences, and it is bound to lead to defeat.
Leadership Crisis and the 'Exam Question'
Awareness of impending electoral disaster, even if three years away, has produced the current leadership crisis. Blair says the 'exam question' is: 'How do we win a second full term of government?' He points out that, unfortunately, 'the one answer that seems ruled out is learning from the only time in the party's 120-year history when it has ever done so.' He lists many wrong ways to try to answer the question, including 'a personality contest', 'transparency', 'honesty', 'conspiracy theories about the hidden power of elites', 'better communications', and 'charisma'. According to Blair, the right way is 'efficacy'; the 'ability to get big things done'; to have 'leaders who are not problem-managers but problem-solvers'.
The essay is written in an even tone, with good turns of phrase and even a joke—no focus group would ever approve of foreign aid, he says, 'except perhaps one that was made up of bishops'. But the overall effect is one of raging at the dying of the light.
Blair's Views on Leadership Candidates
Blair is rude about both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, saying their leadership debate 'has an extraordinarily retro 20th-century feel to it'. Surprisingly, he is unimpressed by Streeting wanting to rejoin the EU. 'This is not a strategy,' he declares. As often, he puts his finger on something that didn't seem quite right. 'Rejoin' seems like a backwards move, even a reactionary one, trying to recapture a past golden age.
He argues that Britain should want a 'structured relationship' with Europe, which can only be negotiated from a position of economic strength. He argues that the EU has adopted an approach to technology that is defensive and anti-growth; Britain should adopt the opposite approach and then seek to persuade the EU. That, he says, has been Labour's mistake in government: to suppress growth instead of promoting it. To give business 'headwinds, not tailwinds'.
A 10-Point 'Wind of Change' Plan
Blair offers a 10-point 'wind of change' plan to raise productivity and cut taxes and public spending. Of course, he is right—or, at least, far more right than anyone else in British politics today, although a rise in VAT instead of Rachel Reeves's national insurance increase might not have been a good idea. But who is going to make this plan work, if Starmer has failed and the two named candidates to succeed him are not up to the mark? Perhaps he is timing his intervention, in the lull in the Labour leadership frenzy, in the hope that someone else will emerge from the ranks to seize the moment with the boldness of the young Blair.
