By Graham Hryce
This week, as Labour’s destructive leadership contest intensified, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair staged a remarkable intervention in which he single-handedly sought to save the party from political oblivion.
Blair’s dramatic intrusion into Labour politics took the form of a 5,600 word essay – in which he denounced Keir Starmer, criticised leadership contenders Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting, and, more importantly, set out a radical political manifesto that he believes the Labour Party must adopt if it wishes to remain a viable force in UK politics.
The fact that Blair felt the need to act in this unprecedented manner – since resigning as Prime Minister in 2007 he has rarely intervened in UK politics – is, in itself, indicative of the severity of the existential crisis that has recently engulfed the Labour Party.
In his essay, Blair accuses the party of having lacked a credible policy programme for decades – and he is especially critical of the Labour left, referring pointedly to “the infinite capacity of the Labour Party for self-delusion”.
Blair rightly claims that Starmer has “no coherent plan for the country” and describes Burnham as a good junior minister when he served in Blair’s own cabinet – faint praise indeed – but is brutally dismissive of his Corbynite economic agenda. Blair is also critical of Streeting for lacking policy coherence and for wanting to re-join the European Union. These criticisms are perfectly valid, and Blair is correct to refuse to endorse any of the talentless contenders for the Labour leadership.
But Blair has a more fundamental and telling criticism to make of Labour – namely that, unless the Party moves beyond political squabbling about changing leaders, and adopts a radically new coherent policy agenda, Labour is doomed to extinction. According to Blair “if you can’t agree on your policy direction, then there is no point in changing your leader”. This criticism is also valid.
Blair, who has never suffered from false modesty, then proceeds to set out his personal agenda for Labour’s political salvation – which he grandiosely terms his “ten-point plan”.
It appears that Blair, who believes that God has guided his political maneuverings in the past, has this week cast himself in the role of Labour’s saviour – with his ten-point plan apparently being a secular version of the Ten Commandments that will lead Labour into the promised land where electoral success awaits it.
Blair’s plan is a remarkable political manifesto for a former Labour Prime Minister to have drafted – although it is fully in keeping with Blair’s own globalist prejudices and elitist world-view. Blair describes his plan as a “radical centrist” political agenda, and he urges Labour to:
• completely embrace AI and facilitate its implementation by doing all it can to assist Big Tech corporations;
• promote cheaper energy by abandoning net zero and the green energy agenda, and fully exploit Britain’s coal and gas reserves;
• engage in a fundamental restructure of the welfare system by cutting pensions and incapacity and mental health benefits;
• reduce corporate taxes;
• reduce the minimum wage, wind back workers’ rights legislation, and National Insurance contributions by employers;
• spend less money on the NHS;
• take drastic action – “whatever it takes” – to put an end to illegal migration;
• abandon plans to re-join the European Union – on the grounds that Britain would do so from a position of weakness, and, more to the point, that the EU is opposed to advancing the interests of AI and Big Tech; and
• commit to fully supporting America’s foreign policy agenda.
Blair’s programme, in essence, seeks to re-establish Britain as a sovereign nation state, with a revived economy based upon the free market and radical technological innovation – free from the constraints of the welfare state, net zero ideology, as well as EU and international agreements and obligations – and cravenly committed to support America’s foreign wars.
This, of course, is a deeply conservative agenda – not a centrist one – as the ultra right-wing former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has gleefully pointed out this week. He has described Blair’s ten-point plan as a “manifesto for the right”, urged Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to adopt it immediately, and praised Blair for revealing himself to be nothing less than “an authoritarian Tory”.
Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have, with some justification, responded to Blair’s dramatic plan to ideologically transform Labour by accusing him of “overlooking how inequality is shaping modern politics”; “misunderstanding the root causes of populism’; and advocating a delusional, elitist agenda based upon mere “technological optimism”.
Interestingly, neither Burnham or Streeting responded to Blair’s conservative policy programme by enunciating a coherent counter programme of their own.
There is, of course, no possibility of Labour adopting Blair’s conservative ten-point plan – or, indeed, any viable political agenda that may result in them staying in power for long. The current Labour leadership is so inept and divided that it is incapable of formulating or agreeing upon any coherent, let alone credible agenda – hence both Burnham and Streeting’s wishy-washy and vague recent policy pronouncements.
In any event, Blair’s plan would only result in electoral disaster for Labour – because it would drive working class Labour voters in the northern “red wall” seats into the waiting arms of Reform, and cause more progressive Labour voters in the south-east to flee to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats in droves.
That Blair should have put forward a conservative elitist political manifesto should come as no surprise. Rees-Mogg, like Blair a politician of religious conviction, sees Blair as “the one sinner who has repented”. That, however, is to misunderstand Blair – who has not repented of anything.
It must be remembered that Blair – unlike Gordon Brown – never had any genuine connection with the Labour Party of the 1980s, or, more importantly, the trade union movement.
Blair created the modern Labour Party in the 1990s – together with Peter Mandelson, now sadly of blessed, if fading memory – and he was always a determined opponent of the left wing of the Party.
Indeed, one motive for his intervention this week may have been to destroy Andy Burnham’s chances of becoming Prime Minister. Burnham once sat in Blair’s cabinet – at that time wearing Armani suits – and it is difficult for even a political Pope to forgive an apostate, especially one who, decades later, adopts the heresy of Corbynism.
Blair was always an avid supporter of globalisation – embracing all of its elitist irrational ideologies, including catastrophic climate change – and throughout his ten years as Prime Minister he advanced the economic interests of the then emerging global elites.
Blair has always been something of a pragmatist, and his recent about-face on net zero simply reflects the fact that the green energy titans have recently been displaced in the West by the Tech Giants as the rulers of the new technologically based global economy.
Politically, the tech titans are all authoritarians – witness the totalitarian screeds of Peter Thiel, the mentor of J D Vance, and Elon Musk’s support initially for Reform, and more lately (Nigel Farage does not appreciate being dictated to) for the even more right-wing Restore Party. This probably explains, at least in part, Blair’s recent shift to the political right.
It may also be relevant that Blair’s think tank, the modestly named “Tony Blair Institute”, receives substantial funding from the powerful Big Tech corporations.
On one issue, however, Blair has remained absolutely consistent – his unwavering support for America’s wars of foreign aggression. From Kosovo to Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza Blair has always been an enthusiastic war-monger, and ultra loyal supporter of whoever happens to reside in the White House at any given time, no matter what political party has elected that esteemed personage to that high office.
In this week’s essay, Blair took time out to pointedly condemn Starmer for failing to provide support for Trump and Netanyahu’s ill-advised and failed war with Iran – incidentally, one of the very few principled decisions ever taken by that now unfortunate lame-duck Prime Minister. What then has been the effect of Blair’s extraordinary political intervention this week?
I suspect not much – other than to intensify the existing divisions and chaos within the terminally moribund Labour Party.
Prior to this week the Labour Party had thrown up one unimpressive “saviour” – Andy Burnham – and now it apparently has two rescuers determined to save it from political oblivion.
But any credible political party with a viable future has no need of even one “saviour” – and only a party in its political death throes could create two such misguided and politically redundant redeemers as Burnham and Tony Blair. Vale and goodbye the UK Labour party!
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