What Tony Blair gets wrong

Taking time out from hanging with Bono and advising Central Asian dictators on how best to spin repression and executions, His Blairness has condescended to return to British politics to tell us things. And there are two things on his mind: Brexit and the election result. To save you the trouble, I’ve read his essay so you don’t have to.

Boiling his argument down to its constituent parts, the first is the usual Brexit is bad and is a massive distraction from more pressing problems. Well, there’s no disagreement here. Brexit is bad, and one cannot deny that third country status outside of the single market and the customs union is going to cause major problems. That said, we shouldn’t just accept this situation. It’s the job of political leaders to act as educators and set forth a number of Brexit options, which could include an invitation for the EU to reform as a price of keeping our membership. According to some unspecified chats he’s had with the movers and the shakers, they want us to stay and are even willing to compromise on free movement. Continue reading

The Latest Return of Tony Blair

Tony BlairIt’s been a few months, so we were due another return of Tony Blair. And so we had today’s intervention in the Brexit debate, fulfilling his earlier promise that he was going to get more active in British politics again. Naturally, and it couldn’t have escaped His Blairness’s notice even as he moves among the higher planes, is that there are a couple of by-elections on. In Copeland, the big issues are the local NHS and Sellafield. In Stoke-on-Trent, lying Paul Nuttall, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, are trying to make it about Brexit.  Continue reading

The Return of Tony Blair

Tony BlairYou can’t keep a good man down. Or, depending on preferences, a bad stench always lingers. Yes, Saint Tony has pre-announced a possible comeback. Caught between the rock of ruinous Toryism and the hardplace “ultra-leftism” of the Labour Party, His Blairness has identified a yawning gap where the centre ground should be.

We’ve been here many times before, including quite recently. The problem with any notion of the centre ground is it does not have a meaningful existence in the same way political values and the forces attached to them do. Blair had little time for such old hat, he took what we call in political science a spatial approach to politics. Find out where most people are on an issue, and try to be closer to that position than your opponents: that is the route to electoral success. The problem is the electorate tend to be all over the place. They might be left leaning on some things, such as the need for more housing, and are appalled at the tax dodging antics of the filthy wealthy. And right on others, like getting tough on crime and cutting immigration to nothing. The problem is one Theresa May has triangulated that territory quite successfully, if the latest abysmal poll is anything to go by. Continue reading

Why Blair is the guy whose face is on the placard

Tony-Blair-war-criminal-posterRichard Nixon famously told a press conference that he was ‘not a crook’. And in the sense that the late US president was never found guilty of anything whatsoever, the statement is factually incontestable.

Likewise, Tony Blair is not a war criminal, even though contention to the contrary is a longstanding commonplace among anti-war campaigners, repeated endlessly on social media to this day. Continue reading

Tony – Labour’s future is not in your past

Tony Blair Jeremy Corbyn Which one is DangerousTony, Tony, Tony, Tony. When I was a Trot I had it drilled into me that you don’t necessarily speak for yourself. You always have to think about how your conduct and the positions you’re arguing might reflect on your comrades. This sense of political self-responsibility, I think, is something of a virtue and my many, many blogs (I hope) abide by this rule. When finger tips touch the keyboard, there is a sense of trying to say something that others might find helpful. Political argument, after all, is about arguing with purpose. With that in mind, what were you trying to achieve with your recent comments? Continue reading