Sir Tony Blair has launched a broadside against Sir Keir Starmer and his jostling leadership rivals by saying Labour has “no coherent plan” and that Britain risks becoming “marooned on an island of irrelevance”.
In a major intervention into the Labour leadership debate, the former prime minister took aim at some of the ideas Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have floated as they prepare to challenge Starmer, saying it was not “serious” for the party to try to change leader before knowing its policy direction.
However, he also criticised Starmer himself, accusing the Prime Minister of coming to power without a “worked out, coherent plan for the country” and attacking a slew of government policies, from banning oil and gas drilling to hiking employers’ national insurance contributions.
Shorts
In an essay for his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, billed as his first major political intervention since Labour came to power, Blair warns that “the Labour Party is playing with fire, or, more accurately, with its future, and that of the country.”
