Does Labour need a new Blair?

On the 27th of February, it will be the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Labour Party. A sobering thought is that Labour has been in power for only 32 of those 120 years. Of those 32 years, 10 of them were under Tony Blair.

Labour is currently having a leadership election where the legacy of the former Prime Minister (as in every Labour leadership election) is a point of debate. In most of the left-wing Facebook groups I’m in, Keir Starmer is being compared to Tony Blair; with this being presented as self-evidently positive or negative.

Due to the unusually high number of election victories (for Labour) that Blair notched up, people have said that Labour needs a new Blair. This is often a coded way of saying that Labour needs to move to accept a broader social consensus, instead of challenging one. This is what Blair did when he become Labour leader, putting to bed years of arguments over the virtues of free-markets. Today, those who admire Blair are reaching for a broad consensus that Labour can accept to win over large sways of the electorate.

Consensus? What Consensus?

Those who suggest doing this assume that there is a consensus to move to. Now is not the early 90s - at the ‘end of history’, there was agreement about the key political issues. Today politics is defined by big divisions, from Europe to identity politics, to economic stagnation. I really don't think there is a consensus for Labour to move to.

Blair accepted the neoliberal consensus so that Labour would be trusted on the economy. Although the Tories remained more trusted on the economy until Britain unceremoniously fell out of the ERM in 1992. My concern is that similar maneuver today is not about adopting an economic consensus, but a social one.

Labour is out of step with the a large chunk of the general public by not wanting to engage in a culture war against popular targets of dislike such as immigrants, Muslims, feminists and London. Labour is not interested in pandering to idea that these things are not British, are fundamentally suspect at best and are at worst working to destroy Britain. I'm glad that Labour is not willing to blow dog whistles or actual whistles about unfamiliar things that most people instinctively dislike. I'm glad that Labour seeks to challenge these popular prejudices. Most people don't want their prejudices challenged.

Before we go any further I want to be clear: this is not dig at people in the Northern and Midlands seats that Labour recently lost. Hostility to immigrants and a willingness to engage in a culture war against things that are seen as not British enough is prevalent across the country. I have encountered it from middle class Londoners, old people, young people, English people, Scots and Welsh people. This isn’t a problem of class, geography or education. It’s everywhere.

Brexit consensus, or lack therefore of

If Labour was willing to “meet people where they are” (as it is often referred to as) on hostility to other cultures and metropolitan values, it would also mean accepting the reality of Brexit. This is unlikely for a Labour membership that is about to elect Keir Starmer as leader. Blair himself has been vocally opposed to Brexit and has become something of a rallying figure for the people who are opposed to Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn's willingness to accept it. However, in a recent interview Blair said Remainers “have got to face up to one simple point: we lost” and that Labour needs a new position now that Brexit has happened. I wonder: how many of Blair's admirers will heed these words?

Even if Labour is willing to accept Brexit AND pander to popular prejudices to meet people where they are, will all this tackle the other major problem for Labour: being locked out of Scotland? I'm not sure how Labour can meet Scottish voters where they are. The Scottish Labour Party has almost destroyed itself through opposing Scottish Independence. Being neutral on the issue won't help and Labour will struggle to win power if Scotland does leave the union. Meeting people where they are has nothing useful to offer in Scotland.

Blair’s legacy

Blair was certainly very good at balancing competing political concerns to convince enough voters that he stood for what they wanted, which meant he had enormous electoral success. However, what he built hasn't lasted. Blair changed politics during his time in power, but politics today feels very unBlair. Boris Johnson, a conservative populist, is Prime Minister. He is very much the anti-Blair, and he won power by appealing to the people strongly opposed to two of the things Blair is most well-known for: supporting the EU and being accepting of immigration. The people who still believe in Blair’s vision may not have been voting for Corbyn, but they weren’t in Johnson's electoral. If anything they voted Lib Dem. Still Johnson has been very successful by finding millions of voters opposed to everything Blair represents.

Does the subsequent anti-Blair reaction to politics reflect the problem of meeting people where they are? People move, and not always in a helpful direction.

I wonder where Tony Blair thinks everything went wrong? Probably when Gordon Brown ousted him from power, or when the Labour Party decided it wasn't happy with what Blair had done. Does he wonder that if maybe he had constrained the banks a little more or intervened in the labour market more or controlled immigration more or not invaded Iraq or been more skeptical of unrestrained capitalism then the situation we are now could have been averted? Does Blair think he’s responsible for the current dire state of our politics. Probably not.

Even if Labour wanted a new Blair, none of the candidates standing to be Labour leader are a new Blair. I don't see any of them transcending left and right politics the way Blair did. Blair was, at the end of the day, a very skilled politician. He was able to do what he did because he played the game of politics very well, not because of the accommodations he made towards people's base conservativism. None of the candidates for Labour leader display a Blair level of skill at politics.

Agreeing with Blair

I'm going to end by doing something that I don't often do: agreeing with Tony Blair. In the above interview, Blair said that Labour needs to “learns the lessons of defeat.” This is true but I'm not sure that the lesson to be learned from Labour's defeat is that we need to meet voters where they are, wherever they are. This would involve a level of pandering to popular prejudices that I'm not comfortable with. Blair was especially good at meeting people where they were, but the fact that we now live in a very unBlaira era shows the limits and risks of this approach.

"Tony Blair" by StefdeVries is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0