The Huffington Post
From left, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ahead of the Accession Council ceremony at St James's Palace, London, London, Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022 Tony Blair has warned Labour is “playing with fire over its future” following the latest efforts to oust Keir Starmer from office. The comments mark the first major intervention from the former Labour prime minister, who won three general elections and sat in No.10 for a decade, since the party’s landslide victory in 2024. The highly unusual warning comes after close to 100 Labour MPs publicly called for Starmer to resign in the wake of the party’s shocking defeat in the May elections in England, Wales and Scotland. Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary days later and is now expected to challenge Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham for the leadership title, if the latter wins next month’s Makerfield by-election. While the starting gun on any such contest is yet to be fired, there’s no doubt that Starmer’s future is hanging by a thread. In a new essay, Blair urged the party to rethink its strategy altogether and avoid drifting further left. He wrote: “The Labour Party is playing with fire; or, more accurately with its future, and that of the country.” He said that the party has “an almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” and needs to reassess its approach to policy. “Wes Streeting is a huge political talent and Andy Burnham was an outstanding member of my government,” Blair said.“But this leadership debate has an extraordinarily retro 20th-century feel to it.” While also taking aim at Starmer for only winning the public over on the basis of not being the Conservatives, he said Westminster must distance itself from the “politics” bubble. He said: “The world is turning on its axis and today’s politicians, living in a 24/7 pressure cooker, have barely time to recognise the turning let alone study it. “These changes need long-term strategic thinking which is alien to the way most modern democracies function.” Blair then called out the main reasons many Labour rebels want to depose Starmer, saying: “The government’s principal problem isn’t Keir’s personality. Or a failure to communicate ‘our achievements’. Or a need to assert more strongly Labour’s ‘values’. “It is because we don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world and are in the wrong political position from which we can devise one and win a second term.” He warned that the government is governing from Labour’s “comfort zone”, the soft-left. “Whether there is a leadership change or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t start with a policy debate,” he noted. “Trying to force the prime minister out before we know what policy direction we’re bringing in is not a serious way of conducting ourselves.” He called on the party to reconsider its approach to economic growth for both prosperity and social justice, to reconsider how to meet the challenges of AI and how the foreign policy works in a changing world order. Blair warned: “Governments which succeed don’t start with a personality contest. Or a political question – as in, how do we ‘save the country’ from Reform. “They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right.” The ex-prime minister urged Downing Street to support Donald Trump, too, even though the public have largely supported Starmer’s decision not to follow the US president into another war in the Middle East. He suggested cutting benefits and abandoning Net Zero to move with the times. The former Labour leader also took a jab at his one-time chancellor and successor, Gordon Brown, saying the party has “never fully recovered” from its move to the left in 2007 – when Blair left office. Brown is notably working as Starmer’s special envoy on global finance and cooperation. Blair tore into the prime minister’s indecision over its policy direction, and accused its economic approach of giving “headwinds not tailwinds to British business”. Blair proposed Labour become the “radical centre”, where he claims elections can still be won. “The centre is the place where policy comes first and politics second,” he said. Subscribe to Commons People , the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster. Related... Tony Blair Slams Keir Starmer For Not Backing Trump's War On Iran BBC Middle East Expert Explains Why Palestinians Don't Want Tony Blair Running Gaza Trump Casts Doubt On Whether Tony Blair Will Help Run Gaza After All
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