Tony Blair has launched a scathing attack on Keir Starmer and his would-be successors, accusing them of abandoning the centre ground and risking Labour's future. In a 5,700-word essay published on Tuesday, the former prime minister warned that the party's 'almost infinite capacity for self-delusion' makes it likely to lose the next election.
Blair criticised Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting for ideas on tax and spending that he said had been rejected by serious governments. He described it as a 'perennial delusion' that the party should move left while losing seats to the right, calling it 'dangerous to do it in government'. The intervention is highly unusual for a past Labour leader and is expected to draw a furious response from across the party.
Blair argued for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon restrictions on oil and gas, and smooth relations with Donald Trump. He named Angela Rayner's employment rights bill and Ed Miliband's net zero drive as key mistakes, alongside the phasing out of oil and gas licences and Rachel Reeves' decision to raise the minimum wage and national insurance. All these policies, he wrote, gave 'headwinds, not tailwinds to British business'.
However, Blair also suggested it was a mistake for others in the party to seek to remove Starmer as prime minister, saying: 'The Labour party is playing with fire; or, more accurately with its future, and that of the country.' He added that trying to force the prime minister out before knowing the policy direction was not a serious way of conducting themselves.
A senior Labour source responded: 'Tony has evidently not been near a working-class Brit for decades but he's clearly been away with the tech bro fantasists. Reheated Blairism has absolutely no answers to our national decline since the vultures were let loose.'
