What a pointless and dispiriting intervention. What a sad move by the most talented politician of his generation.
Tony Blair seized the political agenda today with a claim for the future of centrist politics. But he did not sound like Emmanuel Macron or Anthony Giddens. More than anyone, he sounded like Jeremy Corbyn: a man out of time. A relic of the old world with no relevance to the new.
He still remembered how to command the agenda. He released his 5,700-word essay to lobby journalists on Tuesday under embargo, then published it just in time for the print deadline and the News at 10, ensuring maximum publicity. He followed up with the morning radio news programmes.
Peppered throughout the piece were those tell-tale bits of Blair eloquence, like his warning that Britain is on a “long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of nations”. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s good effortless political communication of the sort we rarely see anymore. Other leaders would frame a whole election campaign around slogans Blair issues as an aside.
At the heart of his piece there was a truth. The current Labour Government lacks the basic ideas to give it meaning. Good governments, he said, “start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right”. He is absolutely correct. They do and Labour does not have it, nor even really seem that interested in it.
