This is in the Guardian this morning:
Tony Blair has renewed his call for Labour leaders to have the courage to stand up to their party base, as Ed Miliband told his MPs that his party had to move on from New Labour and heed Blair's own advice to change.
And Blair's quoted as saying:
The very fierce left-right distinctions are really a 20th-century thing. In the 21st century most members of the public don't really think like that. They will think one way on one issue and another on another issue. It's a post-ideological age. If you have a budget deficit you have to fix it. If you have a very polarising political divide, the debate becomes very uncivil, and people find it a turn-off.
So let's unpack this for a moment.
First Blair is saying parties should ignore their memberships. So what he's really saying is leaders are unaccountable, and most especially to those who help bring them to office. I think it's fair to say that's scornful on democracy.
And second he's saying there's now no politics, just the managerialism of consensus within neoliberalism, all of which should revolve around agreement that there is only one way of doing things. Apart from being both wrong and anti-democratic (again) there is in this comment all the reason anyone needs to know precisely why Labour has to reject all that New Labour stood for if it is to have any credibility.
I'm not a Labour member. But if Blair and his cohort still hold sway I can see little reason for anyone to vote for them, bar their not being the Tories. And that's clearly all Blair aspires to.
The man really is a liability to British public life and a threat to all that is of value.
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Blair, that wonderful Torie
As a CLP secretary I endorse everything you say. It’s really up to individual members, with the help of groups like the LRC and CLPD, to try to enlighten the grassroots about what is going on. Most members, I’m sure, have no idea of the very real ‘enemy within’ which we now have.
Tony Blair is a central part of the lame attempt by a network of Blairite Guardian journalists – led by Pat Wintour (Political Editor) and Nick Watt (Senior Political Correspondent) – to destabilise Ed Miliband. Wintour & Watt’s strategy for doing this is to periodically pull out as many New Labour has-beens as they can, day after day, to deliver the message that Ed is “on the rocks” and Labour is moving in the wrong direction, blah blah… we know the drill. So in the last few days they’ve had Blair (twice), Blunkett, and John Reid saying that, and Milburn and Mandelson have also chipped in. The characteristic that all these politicians share is total irrelevance to the current political debate. Labour is at least 10 points clear on most polls… I think they’d be doing even better than that if they had a more effective critique of the ConDem govt and more actual policies, but even so, no-one is going to mount a putsch against Ed when Labour are 10 points in front. Wintour/Watt had more traction in early 2012, just after “In the Black Labour” and the Cameron EU “veto”, when Labour was behind in the polls and Ed DID look vulnerable… but that was before omnishambles and the “Budget for millionaires”, since when, Labour has moved into a much stronger position.
IMHO the Blairite journalists desperately ploughing the same furrow, year after year, with diminishing returns, are suffering from sour grapes. They still can’t accept that David Miliband lost the Labour leadership election. Will these guys ever be able to move on? Or will they still be calling for Tony Blair after Ed’s landslide victory for a second term in 2020?
All this does, of course, also have roots in the 2010 election and the Guardian’s support fr the LibDems
Wintour and Watts were part of that too
@Howard I see the New Labour wrinklies are still at it – staging “The Mummy Strikes Back” in the Telegraph!!!
See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/9999256/Ed-Miliband-accused-of-being-in-a-stupid-place-over-welfare.html
If this senior Labour MP thinks Ed Milliband has painted himself in a corner over his opposition to the Con-Dem’s welfare “deforms” (not reforms), I suspect he’ll go away and hide, and claim he never said anything of the sort, when the solid stuff begins to hit the fan when people find out just how much things like the cap, and the Bedroom Tax penalize them, pushing them into penury.
And now I hear Local Authorities are going to have to get rid of free school meals, to balance their books! This corrupt government really IS trying to re-introduce Victorian values, except they are those of early in her reign, and the Poor Law of 1834!
Indeed
There is, of course, a self-poisoning contradiction in Blair’s thinking, and it is this: he mocked and derided (and is clearly still mocking & deriding) what he, and certainly others, used to characterize as mere “theological” vapourings by people on the Left as to what was, and was not, Socialism – his views above on the Left/Right divide are clearly cut from the same cloth.
However, when it came to his religious beliefs, he thought it proper to “convert” (how I HATE that word for a process that is only a transfer of allegiance) from being an Anglo- to a Roman Catholic, when surely. To use his own criterion, such choices are mere “Left/Right” or “Catholic/Protestant” vapourings on a general, consesually agreed body of belief, so that he SHOULD have remained an Anglican.
If he says some things are TOO important to haver over, we Socialists (or any of us on the Left) would say the same about Social Democtrastic ideals – all right royally dumpd by “Tory” Blair. The man’s internal contradictions will lead him to cognitive dissonance, and possible mental disorder, the first indication of which is his failure to recognize that “Nu Labour” was already a toxic brand by 2004. Personally, I think Cameron would have won an outright majority in 2010, if Blair had PM.
It is about time that we had a damn good purge in the Labour Party. I have been a member over 50 years, and yearn for a good left wing party like Syriza or Die Linke, or Melanchon’s party. I had doubts about Blair when he was in the running for leader, but both my local MPs one on the left (Martin Redmond) and one on the self promotional wing of the party (Kevin Hughes) said he was OK and the only person to beat Major, so I and many others went along with it. Look where it led, I called him “Timid Tony” but on reflection I think “Tory Tony” would have been more accurate.
If you have a very polarising political divide, the debate becomes very uncivil, and people find it a turn-off.
This approach of let’s sweep all the disagreements under the carpet can only mean one thing – he’s Philip Bailhache’s long-lost brother!
It’s as though Thatcher was speaking from beyond the grave.
Blair? Bleah………
Where to start!! On this occasion Howard and Andrew have more than covered it. All I’d add is that this is a man who admired George Bush. Nuff said.
If you, Andrew and Howard agree I am confident we’re on the right track
The idea that we are in a post-ideological age is risible to say the least. What he means is the everyone is a wallet-liner now and there is no underpinning of any other values. His belief is the life cycle of: Birth-Grab What You Can-Death is the only interpretation left. I agree, though, that the left/right polarities are dead and we wait in vain for a resurrected new version of Old Labour -all that has gone and we need a new issues based approach without parties. More of us need to get vocal, give up our SKY subscriptions and take responsibility for the world around us. I think, and hope we will see the rise of more Independence politicians who will group and continually reform over pressing issues without the need for some bogus corporate identity and trumped up notions of party ‘unity’ which always turns out to be a lie when the memoirs come out.
His (brief) eulogy to Thatcher was clearly made with one eye on the day he himself shuffles off this mortal coil and history has its way.
The assertion that leadership is all about self-flagellation, coupled with his messiah complex just makes him seem increasingly delusional.
Its not about tacking left or to the centre, its about social justice and doing the right thing according to the evidence – accepting the governments deficit reduction plan (which he appears to support), whilst arguably good ‘politics’ (and i even disagree with that) makes absolutely no sense economically.
Its a cowardly position to take, morally and intellectually and its precisely why politicians in general are held in such contempt by the wider general public.
Blair says “if you have a deficit, you have to deal with it”.
I love the way this begs the question. He must be a bit daft if he does not realise that the way you deal with a deficit is deeply political, the choices go one way or the other, the poor pay in cuts, or the rich pay in taxes. In very tough times, it could even be monetised with Keynes printed money found in bottles in coalmines, or Milton Friedmans helicopter money, as recommended by Martin Wolf and Adair Turner.
Blair is just as Tunnel visioned as Thatcher, but he does get a large salary from a certain bank doesn’t he?
Ed Milliband seems to be having the same trouble with Blair as Attlee had with Harold Laski so a public and loud repeat of Attlee’s words to Laski might not come amiss – ‘A period of silence from you would be welcome’.