London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Jun 20, 2025

The people have spoken: Labour should cut its ties with Tony Blair

The people have spoken: Labour should cut its ties with Tony Blair

As prime minister he made a virtue of alienating his grassroots. This unleashed the political forces that consumed him, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones
Sir Tony Blair is a striking case study of how elite opinion and popular common sense collide. In media and political circles, Blair is a respected statesman: when he speaks, agree or not, you listen. His passionate detractors are essentially treated as cranks suffering from an acute case of Blair Derangement Syndrome: an unholy alliance of rightwingers enraged by three consecutive Tory defeats and leftwingers still bitterly resentful about their exile during the New Labour era.

Yet among the electorate, sympathy for Blair belongs to the fringe. According to a new YouGov survey, just 14% approve of his knighthood – fewer than believe the moon landings were faked – and only 3% strongly so, while 63% disapprove, 41% strongly so. A decisive 56% of Labour voters disapprove, two and a half times more than approve. Meanwhile, almost a million people have signed a petition demanding the knighthood be rescinded.

How Blair went from a prime minister with a 93% approval rating in 1997 to one of Britain’s most loathed public figures – including among his own political tribe – offers invaluable lessons for Labour’s future. There has been no shortage of attempts to rehabilitate him. His frequent public utterances are accompanied by deferential, soft-soap interviews, and Keir Starmer is surrounded by aides (including close associates of Peter Mandelson) who regard recovering Blair’s reputation as a political and moral imperative.

The most obvious lesson is, of course, is: don’t launch a bloody war of aggression in conjunction with a hard-right US administration. Blair’s former defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, this week claimed he was asked to burn a memo from the attorney general questioning the Iraq war’s legality; for many of us, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s conclusion that it was illegal was already sufficient. Merely mentioning the Iraq war often sets off a cascade of eyerolls, of oh-so-bored retorts of “Move on!” and “Still going on about that, are we?”. Such sentiments, alas, are firmly placed in the long, tawdry tradition of the west’s contempt for brown and black victims of its foreign horrors: if hundreds of thousands of white westerners had so recently been slaughtered, their lives would not be so impatiently dismissed.

As protesters courageously battle Kazakhstan’s dictatorship, Blair’s later CV warrants more than a cursory glance. Nursultan Nazarbayev is one of many despots Blair’s foundations have taken millions from: more gruesomely, our former prime minister offered his regime PR advice after it massacred 15 civilian protesters. Now, most of the public are not aware of the finer details of Blair’s association with various tyrannies – including receiving millions from the Saudi regime, which he shielded from a corruption inquiry when he was in No 10. What has cut through is a sense that Blair genuflects before wealth and power while lacking any apparent moral compass.

But it’s a mistake to conclude that Blair’s toxicity relies entirely on foreign horrors. Margaret Thatcher is adored by her own tribe because she transformed Britain in accordance with its most radically held, and long-suppressed wishes. The Tories before her, she declared, had “merely pitched camp in the long march to the left” by accepting the postwar consensus of public ownership, the welfare state and public spending. Those she delighted in facing down – from the trade unions to the municipal left – were the bogeymen of her grassroots, rather than her own kind. Blair mirrored the Tory predecessors Thatcher scolded – “I always thought my job was to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them,” he said, on Thatcher’s death – and delighted in confronting elements of Labour’s own coalition. When he assailed the “forces of conservatism”, he included trade unions. While Thatcher’s zeal for privatisation went with the grain of her grassroots, Blair’s own passionate advocacy for expanding the role of the private sector in public services – not least in the NHS, Labour’s most treasured institution – did the opposite.

Blair’s reputational downfall cannot be understood without examining his record on immigration either. Under New Labour, immigration did rise sharply, yet without the government making a political argument for it. Meanwhile, a growing housing crisis, caused by the failure to build, and a squeeze on living standards that predated the 2007-8 financial crash – the income of the bottom half flatlined after 2004 while for the bottom third it actually fell – created ample fodder for those seeking to scapegoat migrants. Without Labour offering a counternarrative, or indeed viable solutions to these grievances, anti-migrant sentiment overwhelmed British politics, culminating in Brexit. This issue, too, toxified New Labour, and Blair with it.

And here’s the tragedy: Labour did have proud achievements in this period: from the minimum wage to tax credits, from gay rights to public investment (albeit undermined by creeping privatisation), from lifting millions of children and pensioners out of poverty to reducing homelessness. Yet this record was lethally undermined in three ways. First, Blair sought not to emphasise these wins, instead glorifying, say, public-sector reform (code for marketisation), which alienated his own side. Second, these transformative policies relied on an unsustainable financial bubble that inevitably popped. Third, Blair not only failed to defend his own government from the Tories’ post-crash deceit that Labour overspending caused economic calamity, he furthered it – castigating his party for failing on deficit reduction after 2005 and cautioning against blanket opposition to George Osborne’s slash-and-burn economics. That allowed the mainstreaming of the lie that the government Blair himself headed was unsustainably profligate.

Thatcher forged a new political consensus that she forced her opponents to accept; hence her proclamation that New Labour was her greatest achievement. Blairism did no such thing. Its greatest achievement, public investment, was not only swept away after defeat, it was positively demonised. Its other pillar – an inconsistent social liberalism, which included gay rights but which was undermined by often cartoonishly authoritarian home secretaries – has utterly crumbled.

So what lessons for Labour today? That relentlessly confronting the interests and values of your own tribe is both politically avoidable and ultimately self-defeating. That relegating progressive values isn’t the strategic genius it might seem to be. And that failing to address growing social and economic insecurities will unleash political forces that will consume you.

Blair’s own hubristic belief in his own political genius blinded him to these truths. It’s too late for him: it’s not too late for Labour.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
16 Billion Login Credentials Leaked in Unprecedented Cybersecurity Breach
Senate hearing on who was 'really running' Biden White House kicks off
Iranian Military Officers Reportedly Seek Contact with Reza Pahlavi, Signal Intent to Defect
FBI and Senate Investigate Allegations of Chinese Plot to Influence the 2020 Election in Biden’s Favor Using Fake U.S. Driver’s Licenses
Vietnam Emerges as Luxury Yacht Destination for Ultra‑Rich
Plans to Sell Dutch Embassy in Bangkok Face Local Opposition
China's Iranian Oil Imports Face Disruption Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions
Trump's $5 Million 'Trump Card' Visa Program Draws Nearly 70,000 Applicants
DGCA Finds No Major Safety Concerns in Air India's Boeing 787 Fleet
Airlines Reroute Flights Amid Expanding Middle East Conflict Zones
Elon Musk's xAI Seeks $9.3 Billion in Funding Amid AI Expansion
Trump Demands Iran's Unconditional Surrender Amid Escalating Conflict
Israeli Airstrike Targets Iranian State TV in Central Tehran
President Trump is leaving the G7 summit early and has ordered the National Security Council to the Situation Room
Taiwan Imposes Export Ban on Chips to Huawei and SMIC
Israel has just announced plans to strike Tehran again, and in response, Trump has urged people to evacuate
Netanyahu Signals Potential Regime Change in Iran
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
EU Proposes Ban on New Russian Gas Contracts
Analysts Warn Iran May Resort to Unconventional Warfare
Iranian Regime Faces Existential Threat Amid Conflict
Energy Infrastructure Becomes War Zone in Middle East
UK Home Secretary Apologizes Over Child Grooming Failures
Trump Organization Launches 5G Mobile Network and Golden Handset
Towcester Hosts 2025 English Greyhound Derby Amid Industry Scrutiny
Gary Oldman and David Beckham Knighted in King's Birthday Honours
Over 30,000 Lightning Strikes Recorded Across UK During Overnight Storms
Princess of Wales Returns to Public Duties at Trooping the Colour
Red Arrows Use Sustainable Fuel in Historic Trooping the Colour Flypast
Former Welsh First Minister Addresses Unionist Concerns Over Irish Language
Iran Signals Openness to Nuclear Negotiations Amid Ongoing Regional Tensions
France Bars Israeli Arms Companies from Paris Defense Expo
King Charles Leads Tribute to Air India Crash Victims at Trooping the Colour
Jack Pitchford Embarks on 200-Mile Walk to Support Stem Cell Charity
Surrey Hikers Take on Challenge of Climbing 11 Peaks in a Single Day
UK Deploys RAF Jets to Middle East Amid Israel-Iran Tensions
Two Skydivers Die in 'Tragic Accident' at Devon Airfield
Sainsbury's and Morrisons Accused of Displaying Prohibited Tobacco Ads
UK Launches National Inquiry into Grooming Gangs
Families Seek Closure After Air India Crash
Gold Emerges as Global Safe Haven Amid Uncertainty
Trump Reports $57 Million Earnings from Crypto Venture
Trump's Military Parade Sparks Concerns Over Authoritarianism
Nationwide 'No Kings' Protests Challenge Trump's Leadership
UK Deploys Jets to Middle East Amid Rising Tensions
Trump's Anti-War Stance Tested Amid Israel-Iran Conflict
Germany Holds First Veterans Celebration Since WWII
U.S. Health Secretary Dismisses CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee
Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman and Husband Killed in Targeted Attack; Senator John Hoffman and Wife Injured
Exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi Urges Overthrow of Khamenei Regime
×