In his latest column for our weekly newsletter, PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood delves into Tony Blair's lengthy essay on what Labour needs to do to develop a coherent plan for government and to win a second term in office.
Just when you think the competition on the right-of-centre of politics cannot get much more crowded, it seems there’s a serious new player in town.
I’m not referring to Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. It now seems that in addition to the Conservatives, Reform and Restore, we need to add the Tony Blair Institute as a fellow traveller on our side of the political ledger.
I’m only half-joking.
If you pick the key headlines from Blair’s lengthy essay, you could be forgiven for thinking you were reading a press release from Nigel Farage.
It’s worth reading Sir Tony’s treatise in full. He rails against re-entry into the European Union (particularly on the grounds that the EU seems hellbent on regulating new technologies to death), argues that net zero targets need to be shelved in the interest of securing cheap and abundant energy, insists we should do “whatever it takes” to stop the tidal wave of illegal migration and laments the failure to pursue economic growth as Labour retreats into its left-wing comfort zone. Taxes and state spending both need to fall – especially the ludicrous amount we are burning through on welfare. He also suggests that we should have been more supportive of the Trump administration over Iran.
Most readers with their right-wing checklist to hand will have shouted “bingo” by now.
Blair is quick to remind us that he is the only Labour leader in history to have served two full terms in office - and won a third General Election - and leaves us in little doubt that he does not expect either Keir Starmer or his immediate successor to join this exclusive club.
He writes in the rather grand and aloof manner common to former Prime Ministers. Despite being clearly exasperated with the pitiful performance of the current government, he seeks to insist that the underlying issue is not personality or “comms”. He even inserts a couple of clauses praising Starmer (for winning in 2024 and expunging Corbynism) and Rachel Reeves (although it’s unclear for what, exactly).
But before we welcome Tony Blair as a late convert to the cause of popular conservatism, it is worth noting where his analysis falls down. He may have provided an appealing critique of which things are going wrong. However, his prescriptions are woefully lacking.
Blair thinks Labour needs to pivot to what he calls the “radical centre”. This amorphous no-man’s land of politics is supposedly a zone in which serious people look at a problem and calmly and logically derive a solution with which to fix it. It seems you are asked to do so with no ideological prior position and simply elevate pragmatism to some sort of guiding principle.
You can take the man out of the technocracy, but you can’t take the technocracy out of the man.
Ultimately, this is what makes Blair’s essay vacuous to the point of being essentially useless.
His recipe for success amounts to little more than suggesting that political leaders need a vision for the direction they wish to take the country and some sort of strategy for getting there. In other words, he thinks the litany of policy failures blighting Britain is a consequence of problems with personnel. Because Labour’s analysis in the run-up to 2024 amounted to little more than “we must kick out the Tories”, the government finds itself rudderless when it comes to trying to fix Britain.
Its new message amounts to no more than a cry from the heart that Farage must be stopped from entering Downing Street. The government lacks ballast - or even a compass - and is buffeted by events on a daily basis.
Blair’s criticism of the current leading lights has merit. But he fails to see the bigger picture. Senior government figures may well lack a strategy or the gumption or courage to pursue a plan if one magically landed in their lap.
That said, even if we had a Prime Minister with the wisdom of Solomon and the strength of Samson, I doubt any progress would be made if they stuck to Blair’s script. At root, the problem is systems-based, not personnel-based.
The house that Blair built is one in which power was stripped from politicians and transferred to quangos, bureaucrats and judges. This coterie of enlightened experts is what Blair really means by the “radical centre” – people of supposed intellect and insight who find technical solutions to universally agreed problems.
The architect is now looking at his building and sees it in a sorry state. But he thinks the root problem is the feckless behaviour of the landlord and tenants. The truth is that the structure itself is unsound and the owner and occupants can do little to remedy that fact given the house was built on quicksand.
At one fleeting point in Blair’s essay, I thought the penny might have dropped. When he said that we must do “whatever it takes” to tackle the immigration issue, I hoped he would move on to enunciate whatever the “whatever” actually consisted of (limiting judicial discretion, leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act?). Instead, he just leaves the reader hanging – as if he half-realised where this train of thought would logically lead him and decided against pursuing it.
I’ll give Tony Blair a high score (perhaps as high as 9/10) for identifying the symptoms. But he gets a zero for understanding the cause.
Keep the flag of freedom flying!