Tony Blair has made another of his rare interventions in politics.
Reported by The Guardian their story notes he wants to back Trump on Iran, scrap net zero and cut benefits.
There is nothing even slightly social democratic about it. Blair’s political journey has led him a long way from the left.
However context is all.
When first elected Blair’s perspective was for Labour to become the natural party of Government. In other words to replace the Tories. The idea, which didn’t happen, was to link up with the LibDems. Blair’s view repeated since was that a union focused Labour Party had done its time. His ideal was the Liberal progressivism of the late nineteenth century.
The matter was not straightforward. There was discussion that there were things Thatcher had done such as Council House sales and privatisations that could have been Labour policies. These ideas came from Peter Mandelson…
The context almost thirty years on is that global politics, with a few exceptions, is on the right. If Labour is to become the natural party of Government, its the political territory of the Tory Party more than the LibDems it needs to occupy. This could be one reading of Blair’s intervention.
One thing that has been added since 1997 Blair, is the idea that military intervention can somehow provide a fix where political negotiations cant or just take too long. It didn’t start with Iraq in 2003 but Blair is currently a member of Trump’s Board of Peace that has so far done nothing positive to sort the genocide in Gaza (and never will).
In historical context as a former Labour leader, Blair makes Ramsay MacDonald look, hardly good, but perhaps slightly less bad. He at least when joining the National Government in 1931 was clear that he was breaking definitively with the ideals, such as they were, of Labour.
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