What Labour should say about Blair

Tony Blair won three general elections—but his ghost could lose the party the next one. A survey this week found that voters regard Blair as the best Labour leader of recent times. Past YouGov research has found the same.

Within the party, however, the very word “Blair” has become toxic. For this reason, none of the candidates for Labour’s leadership or deputy leadership dare say that they wish to emulate the only person in the party’s history to lead the party to three successive victories, including two landslides.

As I am not standing for leader, deputy leader or any other position in Labour or any other party, let me say what they should but can’t. Labour should distinguish between Blair mark 1 and Blair mark 2. Blair 1 was the man who completed Labour’s journey to electability; Blair 2 was the man who led Britain into the Iraq war and, later, offended many people by his behaviour after leaving office.

Rightly or wrongly, Blair 2 casts such a long shadow over the Labour Party that nobody seeking party members’ approval dare praise him at all. This means that the party seems unlikely to learn the bitter lessons of two bad defeats—which is to abandon the losing formula of 2010 and 2015 and revive the winning formula of 1997 and 2001.

Here, then, is my non-advice to this summer’s candidates. Don’t say it now if you seriously want to win this September—but say it loudly and repeatedly after that if you want Labour to stand a chance of winning in 2020:

“Under Tony Blair, Labour achieved amazing things: the minimum wage, Sure Start, civil partnerships, the Human Rights Act, and end to lengthy NHS waiting lists, devolution, new rights for workers, the Good Friday Agreement, working tax credits, less child poverty, smaller class sizes and a sustained rise in general living standards."

“These things did not happen by accident. They flowed from a determination to reconcile social justice with economic efficiency. Whatever label one applies—New Labour, centrist, practical—Blair 1 did as much as, and arguably more than, any previous Labour government to attack poverty, improve public services and create a healthier, more tolerant political culture."

“However, we must be clear that this strategy included elements that some on the Left don’t like: a flexible labour market, reform of public services, free trade and a strong preference for the provision of the great majority of goods and services by a healthy, competitive private sector rather state-owned industries. To this we should add tuition fees. Controversial as they are, they signal something important and positive: a way of accessing extra money for public services without raising taxes beyond the point that voters will bear. If progressive politics are to flourish in the 21st century, we shall need to find more, equally innovative, ways to raise money for health, education and retirement.”

I should be astonished if any of this summer’s candidates said anything like that. But, at some point, the next, or some future, Labour leader will have to exorcise the ghost of Blair 2 and embrace the fundamental approach of Blair 1 if the party is to be a serious contender for power.