Testing Leadership Candidates and Future Direction

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Um I guess it's in the um it's in Westminster in the figurative sense because it is half term and recess and a lot of people are in maker fields so it,'s more in the realm of WhatsApps and social media and phone calls. I mean the Labour Party reaction has been mixed, but mostly quite negative . But probably the the the slightly the slightly provocative top line that I would say is that Tony Blair has achieved what he wanted, which was to jolt the Labour Party into having more of a conversation about ideas. He has just succeeded on that. And um , so I guess there are kind of two parts to the essay , and or like I think it's kind of worth thinking of them as two different par ts. The there's the kind of the diagnosis and then the prescription. So the Labour Party is going mad over the prescription. Um and maybe maybe just to summarize the essay quickly for people who haven't read all five thousand six hundred words from Tony Blair , he sort of argues that the world is turning on its axis, that there are two big changes that the whole world is undergoing at the moment, geopolitically and technologically, with AI, and that modern democracies are not very well equipped for doing strategic thinking that's necessary for reacting to those and and responding. And so he I mean he's sort of he's angry at everyone. He's incredibly critical of Keir Starmer , the Labour Party's approach to opposition since 2020, the lack of plan going into par . He he goes into some kind of considerable depth about how he sort of warned the Labour Party that when it was in opposition that if it didn't define itself it would find it would it would sort of def find that other people were defining it for it and that that's what happened and it sort of campaigned as new Labour, but it's ended up being old Labour or sort of just sort of governing from the party's comfort zone. Um and he kind of has a warning that the Labour Party is playing with fire. I think the the most for me the most interesting bit is him saying, I'm gonna find the exact quote, 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. And he said, you know, whether there's a leadership change or not is irrelevant if it doesn't start with a policy debate. And he talks about how governments that succeed don't start with a personality contest or just the question of how to how to defeat reform. They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right. I think that's the kind of the key challenge to the Labour Party. But then there's so that I guess that's the diagnosis. There's more on that. It's five thousand six hundred words. But that's the sort of the diagnosis he says you need to, you know, you need to think first about what the solutions are and then think about how you sell them. And for God's sake, please don't change prime minister without asking what that man's plan is. Um whoever that man or woman may be. Um and he has some more things on on West Streeting and Andy Burnham, which we'll come on to. But then the there's a lot of the SAR, the Tony Blair solutions , which I think are what has driven the Labour Party slightly mad over the twenty past twenty-four hours. Um basically I think because he I mean, to give a flavour of some of the reaction to Orsten Bell, who's a serving minister , former think tanker, said, you know, something along the lines of, you know, just mentioning AI doesn't make your does doesn't make your prognosis modern um and um I think that a lot of people have found his ideas sort of outdated stuck in the 1990s um and and I've then I think overwhelmingly people find it just very basically just very right wing. That um I mean maybe we could talk about that more in a second, but just that he he kind of he's very focused on AI, basically calls for the UK to deregulate around AI, massively deregulate around business, repair the relationship with business, govern from the centre ground, have a tough immigration polic y. And I think it's no surprise that a lot of right wing um a lot of you know Tories and right wing commentators are in complete agreement with his um his pl So yeah, that's that's a sort of vague summary. I can tell you, I can go go more into all of that in a second if you want. We're gonna take a quick break here, Albert, and we'll be back in a bit. Did the kids get home safe? Where is the dog? With Arlo's early warning system with emergency SOS, you'll always know. Arlo's AI doesn't just detect, it recognizes your dog on the sofa, your kids coming home, unfamiliar faces, and even fire . Get real-time alerts and connect to emergency services in seconds so you can act before damage is done. Alo . Home where you need us to be. Discover more at arlo.com. Chase is the digital bank that gives your savings a boost anytime , anywhere. Even when I'm on a work call. You bet. You could earn 4.5% AER variable, including a 2.25% AER fixed boost for 12 months. Right now with Chase, you could be boosting your wave Our dream holiday. Exactly. Search Chase Boosted Saver. 18 plus UK residents available to new Chase Current Account customers for their first 31 days, 4.41% gross. Interest pay monthly eligibility and terms apply. Let's dig into a few bits of it. But I I mean I think as a as a summary, that's the sense that it is it's now not just kind of right coded, um, but just right wing. It seems to be a kind of overwhelming response. Um because it seems it that seems to be the case. I mean he's critical of Ed Miliband over um the Britain's energy policy, so at net zero. He wants uh uh lots of uh cheap energy. He wants to prioritise cheap energy over uh clean energy. He wants I mean essentially he supports Shaban Mahmoud's immigr ation uh reforms. Uh he uh the bit that slightly threw me, I must admit, even though I've been in conversation with people around Tony Bear for a while, thinking about um his position on Europe, and let the lines in there essentially saying that we shouldn't try to go back into the European Union uh until we we try to do so from a position of strength. And the main reason that we shouldn't go back into Europe is because of their uh overly burdensome regulations on AI. Um it's it's quite a um quite a change of heart for you know for the man that was the the leading proponent of the second re ferendum to remain uh to stop Brexit in the first place. I I thought that was remarkable as well. Maybe we can get into that in in a in a second. Um but just this sense that he's this figure who in so many respects is saying what a lot of the conservative um right think . But also they hold him responsible in a sense for for the reasons Britain is failing. Like they have this sort of love-hate relationship with Tony Blair. He is the man that created the Blairite state, which is why in their view it is failing. But he's also the man that they kind of look up to as the intellectual leader of the you know centre right now. Yeah, I mean to just to summarise the the policy ideas that he suggests across this essay, he talks about removing obstacles to business growth, um cheaper energy and electrification, but as you say, basically ditching net zero. And he in in broadcast rounds yesterday was incredibly critical of Ed Millerband. Um welfare reform, um actual immigration and a drive on skills and training because of the need for AI adoption and education reform. And I mean one one Labour figure said said to me that it was a sort of like semi-competent centre right vision for what the Tory party should do to win back its voter coalition that it had under David Cameron. Um but that I think a lot of people privately just feel like Tony Blair has not much of a relationship to the Labour Party left. You know, there was a really interesting bit in his interview with Nick Robins on um on the Today programme yesterda y, where he he started to say I don't care and then and then he kind of he cut off and Nick Robinson prompted him to finish his sentence and he was like, Yeah, I was gonna say I don't care whether it's left or right. And um I think that that was quite revealing because you know, this person said to me that they feel like Blair has no relationship to the Labour Party left, that he's like a man who supported a particular football club as a child and has no relationship left to that club except for the fact that he's always supported them. And you know, I think a lot of people are are struck by the sort of the anger that comes through in the essay, like anger at Keir Starmer and the Labour Party in general, a sort of disdain for parts of the Labour Party, which I think some people would say has always slig htly been there in the way L like Tony Blair talks about the Labour Party in its comfort zone. That comes across really strongly. Then there are these side swipes that we're streeting, which we'll come on to, and uh and a bit of an attack on Andy Burnham as well. And, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, e including on the right of the party, say that they just pick up this sense that maybe that Blair seems frustrated that he isn't the former leader of a sort of a more centrist Macron Macronist party that he has the Labour Party that he has to give advice to, even though he has moved, you know, he now exist s in this sort of world of Davos and and wealth and tech titans and international diplomacy and you know he he sits on Trump on the executive board of Trump's Board of Peace on Gaza and they you know they were saying you know this that you know I think that it's it's still worth taking this essay seriously because it is it's laying down the gauntlet to the Labour Party to come up with better answers. But I don't think Labour is very impressed with the answers he's come up with and you know what another person said to me. It was like a collection of talking points that you would pick up at Dav os. And you know, having and genuinely like having worked at Bloomberg and, you know, I I think I recognise these preoccupations and these talking points as things that the centre-right and the business community and the sort of the international business world talks about a lot. But it doesn't it's it's less of a programme that's available to the Labour Party. You know, I think that a lot of people were just saying, you know, we would lose all of our voters if we tried to do this. All the ones who voted for us in 2024, or most of them, but this is not a viable plan for the Labour voter coalition. And and then as you say, um, there's also just the way AI looms over all of it that um I think some people find the the sort of even the interventional energy a little bit disingen uous because I think that the quiet part that he's not saying out loud is that it's not really about it's not really about cheap energy. It's really an analysis that the most important thing for a country to do in terms of its energy policy is to be able to par AI is like very energy intensive. And so you need everything. Like you need nuclear, you need carbon capture, you need more oil and gas, you need renewables, you need all of it. And they think that's really what he's saying. And given his preoccupation with AI, that makes quite a lot of sense, I think. Um so yeah, I think just really interesting how Blair has moved away from the Labour Party. Maybe not that surprising, but this feels like a big moment. I I think that sort of long divorce from the Labour Party is completely fascinating. And if there ever is to be a biography of Tony Blair, a second biography, John Rentel wrote uh bob biography quite early on in in Tony Blair's premiership. The kind of post premiership life of Tony Blair is utterly fascinating and like nothing we've ever seen from a British Prime Minister. It is extraordinarily successful and lucrative, we should say, from a sort of financial perspective. You know, he is a very rich man, um who operates an extraordinary enterprise, this Tony Blair Institute, employing hundreds of people around the world. And I I wrote a piece once where he he's in effect recreated a kind of Downing Street operation for himself where he's delivered a red box digitally every day. He signs it off. He hands it back in the morning to his staff who work on it. He flies around in private aeroplanes. Uh he once considered buying a private aeroplane but had to be I sort of warned that politically it might not be a very smart move to do. He he has created an extraordinary life. And I think we have to analyze that that part of his um career when we look at this kind of political intervention, because there are some uncomfortable bits about this. And it's always difficult with Blair to sort of uh if you want to start from a position of believing him that he's sincere about about his uh prescriptions. You also have to weigh up the fact that he is getting a lot of money from Oracle. Uh Oracle uh is uh the one of the leading tech companies. It is heavily invested in this uh in this uh in this world, in this the the the necessity to have massive amounts of energy uh to power AI, as you put it, Albert. Um, you have to you have to think. Tony Bear is getting all of this money from Larry Ellison, the one of the world's richest men, a really right wing Republic an oligarch, tech oligarch, who supports much of this. That doesn't mean Tony Blair doesn't believe in it himself. But I think Albert it is really important that we do analyze that, we look at it properly because there are plenty of people who think in a sense Larry Ellison has bought the Tony Blair Institute that he is paying this money to have one of the world's most influential people making the case that Larry Ellison and Oracle want. Um so we have to weigh that up uh into into our sort of understanding where we're thinking about this uh this essay. It doesn't delegitimize it as a as a as an argument . Um but I think it's it's something that concerns people who are even in this space. You know, I was talking to somebody last week who said, you know, look, Tony Blair is operating now in a stratosphere of wealth and connection, which nobody in the British uh state is operating it. Almost, you know, not even the Prime Minister. You know, he is operating at a level where he is heavily connected into the Middle East, into um Saudi Arabia and Israel, heavily connected into Silicon Valley, and heavily connected into the White House with Donald Trump. I mean this is this is operating at at a level that we haven't seen before really in British politics. And in in a sense then I I have this feeling as you had, Alva, when reading it, that sense that he is he is still saying the same things that he was saying in the late nineteen nineties and early 2000s about the radical centre, about the problem in British politics being that the sensible people aren't radical and the radical people aren't sensible. You know, I I've heard that line from him, from his, you know, from his own mouth, from ten years ago, I think, or twenty years ago. You know, he's been saying the same things. And so it feels stuck in a sense. It feels like it's just playerism from the two thousands, you know, talking about uh international development being a head to be a tool for soft British power in the world. You know, which doesn't sound very moral when I read it. You know, he's basically saying we should we should spend this money not because it helps people, it saves lives, but because it it connects Britain into these places and it gives us some kind of power. That made me feel a bit uncomfortable reading it. I'm sure it made some people feel uncomfortable in the Labour Party read uh reading it. But at the same time, he does have this obsession with the future, always this obsession that if you can see the future, that you know, it used to be a kind of globalized world it couldn't stop. Now it's AI that can't be stopped. Almost like it's apolitical. It's just a a kind of a thing like weather that you can't control. It just washes over you and you just have to s accept it if you're a sensible person like him. And that's the end of it. That's the end of the discussion. Politics doesn't really intrude on it, just as politics didn't intrude on globalisation. I think he used, in fact, he used that metaphor about globalisation, that it couldn't be stopped. Well in fact, we are seeing globalization become deeply political and deeply sort of entrenched into these uh competing blocks um led by his friend in the i in the White House. So I I I think there are it's such a fascinating essay, but I think you have to get into as you put it, you know, that sense that he's operating in a different level and he's pulled away from the Labour Party. Actually, so one final thing, actually. In this period when he uh since he launched the TBI, yeah, he effectively decided that the Labour Party could not be saved and needed to be put out of its misery. That was his private conviction. Some of those closest to him disagreed with him, but that was his conviction and he thought that a centrist party Now he has been proved wrong so far on that. Of course it may still happen, but it is an interesting point. I think he lost face faith with the Labour Party and its ability to survive about ten years ago and he hasn't really let that go . We're going to take a quick break now. Remember, you can listen to the new statesman podcast ad-free by downloading the new statesman app. It's available on iOS and Android. Links are in the show notes. On this week's episode of The Exchange, our long-form interviews podcast, we speak to Guy Standing about how big finance has corrupted our education system. Subscribe to the New Statesman today and get your first six weeks for only six pounds. At only six pounds you've got to go and do it. Go to newstatesman.com forward slash six weeks to subscribe today. We'll be back after this . Did the kids get home safe? Where is the dog? 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I think we have established the ways in which Blair is not just this sort of I mean, there are all these cliches around a sort of global elite or the international business community or Davos people or whatever. But if if that applies to anyone, it does apply to to him now. I think w so I think we've sort of established the way in which he's coming at this as a former Labour Prime Minister, but now a kind of someone who's not so much a creature of the Labour Party anymore who's not even necessarily offering a center left vision who says himself he doesn't really care about whether things are left or right, he just wants them to work. But I think what's interesting is that this is still an essay for the Labour Party, a challenge to the Labour Party. And he is he sort of set off all these ripples and different people now have to respond to him. I mean, I mean, you can tell actually you don't need to say, oh, from speaking to people close to him, you can just tell from the public interventions and the tone of it that Tony Blair has been sort of jolted into re-engaging with the Labour Party in British politics basically because he is so outraged and incensed by Andy Burnham's campaign launch video from M akerfield, you know, underneath that um Oasis soundtrack, he basically attacked Blair by talk by saying, you know, just casually saying, you know, um after 40 years of neoliber alism the country's in a worse state, we need to get on a different track. And you know that includes the Blair government. And I think that for all that Blair might be a very different creature today, he still very much wants to defend his legacy and and actually just to ask what on earth that means which I think is a very valid challenge and you know, because as he said on the Today programme, does that mean that Andy Brennan wants to go back to the beginning of the Thatcher era or he wants to get back to the nineteen seventies? But actually it was just just a video of his campaign launched. But there wasn't so much of a vision for the future. It was just sort of it was looking at the past and saying what has gone wrong. And I think that I've heard from Byrne Matli es in in recent days an attempt to reframe that slightly that it is a vision for the future because you're saying that you need a fundamentally different economic settlement to pull us off that path. That's the vision into the future. And it will be more public ownership. It will, you know, sort of more radical redistribution of wealth, you know, soft left economics. But I think it was a kind of fair a fair challenge. So it means that there's a little bit of a war of words going on between Andy Burnham and um Blair, which we'll come on to in a second, but he also, I think quite interestingly, um, took some side swipes at West Streeting. Streeting who's seen as being who's normally seen as a Blairite and who has spent at least the past year emphasizing the ways in which he isn't, um, or that he sort of you know, that he those close to him talk about the elements of Blair that he respects, but the ways in which he's a bit more Brynite or just a bit different. Um, Blair , he has a really kind of caustic way of summarising the whole leadership debate where he says we have a fight between a modernizing, he puts that in inverted commas, uh, a mod ernising wing of the Labour Party appearing to advocate rejoining the EU, and now equalising capital gains and income tax, something rejected by successive governments for good reason, and the alternative, which thinks the answer is moving even further left on taxes, spending welfare. Um and then and he calls that a sort of a rehash of the far left critique about nothing good coming out of the last forty years of neoliberalism, which presumably includes the last Labour government. So basically, in one sentence, he demolishes West Streeting and Annie Burnham or tries to demolish them. And um I think he doesn't really, I mean, by putting it in quote marks, he he sort of pours cold water on the idea that West Streeting is a moderniser . He at length, for no apparent reason , goes on about how what a bad idea he thinks it is to simply attempt to rejoin the EU and you talked about why and about you know, partly it's because of what what Blair sees as sort of onerous tech regul ation. Um and also he he makes the case that the UK needs to rejoin when it's in a position of economic strength. But I think you could argue that that that was a an unnecessary intervention taking down one of the key pillars, the key policy pillars of this person who's a big admirer of you and a kind of key acolyte. And he also just, you know, took a side swipe at you know, equalizing capital gains and income tax, something rejected by successive governments for good reas on, again, sort of attacking West Streeting's tax plans. And like Tony Blair knows that to fight a labor leadership contest West Streeting will be making offers on tax and spend that are favourable to the Labour Party. And he's he maybe didn't need to intervene attacking streeting like that, but he's just clearly had enough. Um and Strasing has hit back saying I mean, he he wrote a piece in The Guardian saying fundamentally he gets it wrong on on economic insecurity and inequality and that basically Blair has put forward a kind of valuel ess perspective. You know, that basically it's not underpinned by anything to do with the Labour Party or any of the things that Labour believes. It's like a kind of soulless look at Britain's problems without thinking about the people in Britain and what they need. And then th there's some some also sort of side swipes on foreign policy, um, sort of talking about how Iraq is a good example of what happens when judgment is replaced with loyalty to US hegemony. So there's like a complete break there um between streeting and Blair, uh, which is probably not unhelpful for where streeting, but it just shows that really no one in the Labour Party feels like Blair is speaking for them anymore? Yeah, I mean I I I thought the the Europe stuff was remarkable. Also the the sense that um look we are junior partners who uh uh in in the American relationship we have to accept that and we have to stick with the American relationship because the West still is what um is i i is the most important thing um in is in in in foreign relation terms. It it it is a remarkable um as you say, so sideswipe, that that leaves you thinking , is that really modernizing? Is that the future? I I I'm often struck by the sense that if Tony Blair were his younger self today, would he be advocating this prospect us to the Labour Party to secure the premiership? You know, to s to secure the Labour leadership. Tony Blair had to make concessions with the Labour Party to win the Labour leadership in nineteen ninety-four. If you go back and look at that um manifesto in nineteen ninety-seven, there is quite a lot of reckoning for the Labour members to get behind. And in fact I think it's being one of the problems of this Labour government that it doesn't have both that sense of kind of purpose that Blair is talking about, the sort of long term vision, but it also doesn't have this sense of like an exciting thing for the left. You know, this kind of combination that Blair in early Blair was so powerful, the sense that the left could get behind his project even if they were skeptical, because they got a lot from it. They got the minimum wage, they got constitutional reform, they got you know peace in Northern Ireland, they got a lot of stuff early on. They got this kind of very, very pro-European sort of evangelical pro-Europeanism as well. And then they had to stun up some of the things that they were uh less comfortable with. And today's blair, it almost looks like you don't get any of the stuff that you that you care about. You know, the sense of a a fairer taxation system or higher wages for, you know, f f uh for those at uh f for those at the bottom or any of that stuff. You just have to lump the stuff that you're uncomfortable with. And as you say that kind of sense of a valueless future where you just have to lump the fact that we are uh we have to do America's bidding uh and that we uh we can't join rejoin Europe because actually they're you know they're they're they're in the the wrong tech place. Uh it it's obviously something that no prospective labor uh leader could go into could win an election on. I I think it probably is helpful slightly for West Streeting that he hit he gets that bit of distance, but it's sh it's got to be the most helpful for Andrew Burnham, I think. That you know this, man that the Labour Party really hasn't forgiven for the final few years of his premiership, in particular for Iraq, but hasn't really forgiven him for the way that they see that he has behaved after uh uh leaving office. You know, and that sense that actually if there's one person who speaks for Labour's soul at the moment, it is Blair's long term rival Gordon Brown. And I think that sense that Andy Burnham, when he spoke to me w he said that he was um his one of his heroes was Gordon Brown. I thought that was quite a telling moment because he is you know he is saying to the Labour Party that that's where his heart lies with Gordon Brown. He said to me that Gordon had texted him after his siege at Hillsborough and said to him that he was proud of him. And Brown sort of sorry, Burnham was retelling this story. And I just thought it was so revealing about the fact that that's where the Labour membership is now. And to be associated with Blair and Mandelson and that wing of the party is really political death. Uh and so for for Burnham, the response is easy now, isn't it? It just it's essentially you have to go out and h hold your ground and and and and effectively enter this war of words with Tony Bear, which is what he's done. Oh, so I actually think I disagree on whether this is more helpful for Burnham or Wes treating. And I think it's it's again this question of whether we're more interested in the diagnosis or the prescription, because I think you know