There is something quite peculiar about the political moment we are living through. The most coherent, detailed and intellectually serious centre-right policy document published in Britain this week was written by Tony Blair.
In a scathing 5,700-word essay, the former Labour prime minister took aim at the current government with a directness rarely seen from a living ex-premier about their own side. Labour has an “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion,” he wrote. The government is “governing from an essentially traditional Labour ‘soft left’ position, parked firmly in the party’s comfort zone.” The current leadership debate has “an extraordinarily retro 20th-century feel to it.” And that all of this was self-inflicted.
But what I came away thinking was that his programme sounded less like a Labour corrective and more like a Conservative one – the kind that could have come from Kemi Badenoch’s camp.
Cheaper energy instead of net-zero targets. A harder line on welfare. Business taxes corrected. NHS transformation through technology. A hard line on illegal immigration. Private-sector partnership as the engine of growth.
Then there are the things that are privately spoken about within the Tories: planning reform described as an “abomination” that requires much more than what the government has done; the triple lock described as “unaffordable”.
Rachel Wolf, who co-authored the 2019 Conservative manifesto and has written for this site, put it plainly: it is “a very good right wing manifesto, and one which the public could significantly support.” She added that “there is absolutely political space for a coherent vision that sets out policies and trade-offs first” – which, she noted pointedly, Blair “for some reason is calling radical centrism.”
There are, of course, divergences. But for a former Labour prime minister and a current Conservative opposition leader, the crossover is striking enough to warrant attention.
Blair could perhaps sense it himself where on BBC Radio 4 it seemed as if he almost went to say “I don’t really care if it is Labour or the Tories”, but he retreated sensing the headlines – instead leaving it as “I don’t really care whether it is left or right in a traditional sense”.
He would likely resist the framing but it makes sense, and also somewhat proves Wolf’s point about it being of the right. When you strip away the labels and simply ask what the correct answers are, you end up with a programme that looks – on most of the biggest issues – rather conservative.
His essay identifies this political vacancy: the Radical Centre, defined as the space where leaders are willing to set out policies and trade-offs honestly, make the argument convincingly and trust the public to follow. He is essentially saying that space is empty. You could just as easily call it common sense Conservatism – and say that Badenoch is making an attempt at it now..
The immediate political consequence of Blair’s intervention is simpler and more uncomfortable for Labour: a former leader, the only other one to win a parliamentary majority in the last fifty years, has published what amounts to a critique of almost everything his party has done in government, and reads like something the opposition might have written.
But there are still lessons for the Conservative Party here. Much of what he is saying, the Conservative Party too has been saying or exploring. It hasn’t cut through – not yet in Westminster, and even less with the public. So what has to give?
The argument exists. What is missing is the positive narrative to carry it – the confidence to own it not just as opposition critique but as governing vision, and to be genuinely optimistic about what a serious, reforming conservatism could build.
That is felt acutely by some of Badenoch’s MPs. The desire not to be a whining opposition that could never try to imitate a protest party convincingly, but one that offers a hopeful narrative of how it could transform people’s lives.
There is a feeling that while Kemi is in an unusually stable position for a Conservative Party leader of recent years, she should use this moment to be genuinely radical with her agenda and vision. Blair has, inadvertently, sketched part of what that might look like.
The task now is to own it much more fluently and convincingly.