As interventions go it was a pretty mighty one.
One person described it as a ‘Molotov cocktail.’ *
Tony Blair, figure head of ‘New Labour’, Prime Minister for a decade, winner of landslides three times, dropping what they youngsters call ‘truth bombs’ on his own party.
Of course his own party have never quite forgiven him for dropping real bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan over twenty years ago but it’s clearly not the only thing they disagree with him about.
In a world where the public often bemoan the demise of solid democratic discourse, the seeming primacy of the soundbite and the slogan it’s been odd to see the battle of the five ‘essays’ unfold.
Tali Fraser, already missed by me, as she heads to the Spectator soon, admirably laid out what Blair’s ‘essay’ offered and framed it as very much what Kemi Badenoch’s under new management Tories have been saying, though sadly not being heard quite as much.
There are two challenges that arise from Blair’s – though he’d hate the reference – ‘what is to be done?’ wordsmithery, and as much as Labour was his focus it was a challenge to our politics as a whole.
First a simple law that frankly should be a statement of the obvious, but: you simply cannot credibly enter a general election with no plan for what you want to do when you win.
Yes, I know Kemi Badenoch says she has a plan, and I do believe she has, but it’s still under construction and in development, as one is repeatedly told though I’ve not seen much of it yet, is Reform’s. Labour – and the evidence comes from their own lips about the premiership of Sir Keir Starmer – have been making up the plan as they’ve gone along. Starmer’s essay seems to suggest people are frustrated they aren’t get enough, faster enough of – more of the same!
Someone suggested on this site that “people have ‘had it in for’ the PM ‘from the get-go’. That’s a tired canard in itself, the only thing Keir Starmer laid down before he was Prime Minister was the architecture for his own failure in the job.
Blair highlights, with the chutzpah of not recognising his own part in the state our State is in, that this is a moment where all of us, every single one regardless of rosette, needs to remove any shred of rose tinted glasses and see the reality of our world, not what we wish it was.
Kemi claims that’s just what she’s doing in her open reply to “Tony (if I may)”:
“It is your education reforms that Bridget Phillipson is unravelling. Your restraints on trade unions have been dismantled by Angela Rayner. Your Clause IV moment was discarded this month as Keir Starmer nationalised British Steel.
Those vying to replace him will be no better.
Wes Streeting congratulates himself for reducing NHS waiting lists (he simply deleted names off the list). Andy Burnham’s reply proves your point better than I ever could. Faced with your warning that Labour needs growth, cheaper energy and welfare restraint, his answer is more state control, more public spending and another attack on markets and enterprise.”
I’d make one edit – old habits and all that.
Britain needs growth, cheaper energy, solid defence and welfare restraint.
I once described this, to me, startlingly obvious challenge, as dividing politicians today into those that ‘get it’, those that ‘don’t get it’ and those that get it’ but want to pretend it isn’t true’.
There is a terrifying economic illiteracy on the left right now, that really refuses to look cold, nasty facts in the face. And yes, the Tories were doing the same punting of these long term structural challenges into the long grass for far far too long. The excellent Dan Hannan made the case recently for how not to do that, and what has to be contemplated. Not everyone, not every Conservative will like it.
It’s no secret that in 2010 the Conservative pitch was basically ‘more like Blair than Brown but Tory’, in a bid to detoxify the brand. Oh, the irony that we are right slap bang in the middle of that detoxification process again, but as our great columnist Peter Franklin told me:
“Blair takes 5,700 words to make his point, but what it boils down to is this: as Prime Minister, he was playing on easy mode. 1997 was before 9/11. Before Afghanistan. Before Iraq. Before the global financial crash. Before two or three decades of mass migration, cratering productivity, runaway house prices, stagnant wages and the populist backlash. In short, before the legacy of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.”
That legacy offers a further challenge to all parties, one the Conservatives found harder and harder to navigate in government, Labour have foundered in the midst of being in government, and I remain convinced Reform will find every bit as challenging if they are the next government.
Blair left us all with a system where real political power rests in many places, much of them not Number 10 Downing Street. It often rests mainly in the Treasury rather other Whitehall Departments. It rests in courts, and in the pronouncements of arms-length bodies and some charities.
Re-wiring this state is not just a slogan or a strategy but a necessity. Government, of whatever colour and ilk cannot function now with the strait-jacket it is in. It means politicians taking real responsibility, that comes with huge risks to them, but the reward is the ability to actually do stuff rather than talk about doing stuff.
I read with interest Kemi’s prescription for who should be her MPs of tomorrow, the often quoted problem with Labour being their major lack of real world, private sector, business friendly – proper friendly not faux pre-election reassurance friendly – experience. Andrew Griffith would not forgive me if I didn’t recognise he’s been pointing this out for some time.
There is however a reason for this. The excellent opening of a new substack by Victoria Freeman (*) rather summed it up:
“Labour politicians are inclined to see the state as benevolent while viewing private enterprise as inherently suspect…If they can’t make links to the spectre of Thatcher, corporations or billionaires they aren’t really interested in examining this sense of powerlessness at all. But an awful lot is held by the state and contrary to Labour’s instincts isn’t always benevolent”
The situation right now is that, as Harry Cole of the Sun was suggesting this weekend, were Burnham to win in Makerfield, were he to ascend to the Prime Ministership then, as dare I say Nigel Farage predicted in late 2025, and Cole does now, we could be looking at him risking all for his own mandate and going for an election in 2027.
The renewal project of the Tories, on current timelines, and the insurgency of Reform trying to prove they are ready for government, with, frankly, mixed results, are not ready for that. Not ready at all. Don’t let’s kid ourselves about that.
The Samson act is a dangerous one to follow. Bringing down a temple that is evidently failing Britain but burying yourself in the process is a moot stratagem at best.