As the FT notes this morning:
Andy Burnham, who is poised to become the next UK prime minister, is considering giving David Miliband a senior position.
A former foreign secretary, David has been absent from Westminster since 2013 when he left to head the International Rescue Committee in New York.
They added:
David is an old friend of both Burnham and James Purnell, the next Downing Street chief of staff, having all first been elected as MPs in 2001.
They did, of course, add that David Miliband was the Miliband brother who lost in the Miliband v Miliband race to be leader of the Labour Party in 2010, but fratricide is not my concern this morning; the revival of Blairiam is. In that context, the revival of the power relationship between Burnham, Purnell and David Milliband is what matters.
All protégés of Blair and Mandelson share a lot in common politically.
And Miliband is almost inevitably, yet another Oxford PPE graduate (as is Purnell), sharing the same right-wing perception of neoliberal market supremacy as do almost all those of that ilk.
What would David Miliband's return, almost certainly as a cabinet minister sitting in the House of Lords, represent in that case? It would represent the creation of a Tony Blair tribute act government.
Blairism, along with the Thatcherite thinking that it so obviously embraced, should have died with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, to which it contributed much. It did not. The world in general, and this country in particular, has paid an enormous price for the perpetuation of this Friedman/Hayek-inspired form of political thinking that is anything but left-wing. It looks as if that cost is to continue. We will all pay the price, and we can ill afford it.
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Thank you and well said, Richard.
May I add that they are Zionists and neo-cons, supported the illegal invasion of Iraq, and will continue the cosying up to the US war machine, not just Trump.
One wonders if the band realises the world has changed and their targets hit back now. Further to hitting back, please see Steve Keen’s latest online.
Steve is on the money
Have you seen Steve Keen’s video from yesterday? Plenty of graphs showing how neoliberalism fuels asset prices, not growth, hung on the hook of UK prime ministers resigning:
https://youtu.be/TzvAtOOfhuo?si=Q_EJKC06GW_0Juo5
It is good
I bumped into a Labour mate (ex Town Council leader) on Saturday (while holding a fruitless Green councillor surgery) and in the course of conversation he asked what I thought of Burnham. I was fairly negative (same old, LFI, Neoliberal etc) and he surprised me by saying none of that got discussed any more, it was almost totally very local business. Since the Starmer bans on discussing various topics, hardly anybody raises a national or international issue, not surprising as the remaining constituency party and region are old Blairites.
Do we really know whether Burnham is poised to offer David Miliband a job? Or is that just FUD from the neoliberal press? If true it would be concerning but there are so many articles about what Burnham plans and what his policies will be they can’t all be true. I can’t help feeling that, since most of this comes from the right wing press they are getting their smears and attacks in early.
It may be the case that Burnham will be another neoliberal disaster. I don’t know. That’s the point. Few people really do. Personally, before I worry or denigrate him, I shall learn more about him, from what he himself actually says. And I shall watch what he does.
I hope he is not the neoliberal devil he is being painted as being. We shall see.
“All prodigies of Blair and Mandelson”? I think you probably meant protégées.
I did
Corrected
One can only keep this going for so long (late-thatcherism). Most UK serfs want change, Burnt-ham et al are functionally incapable of delivering this due to their formative years. Thus into what amounts to a political ideas vacuum moves the Greens on the one side and Deform etc on the other. Between them, the tories and LINO continue to destroy the UK. Both parties need to be eliminated (at the ballot box).
I realise this is probably not the most appropriate place to raise this particular point
However, after talking to friends last night about the problems of local authorities in this era of neo liberalism, it occurred to me that the logical next step is to privatise all the services that local authorities provide and do away with democratic rule altogether. This is of course in the name of efficiency.
Suffolk tried this. It did not end well.
This was meant to be sarcastic!!!
I cannot for the life of me see how efficient private provision of monopoly services can be the answer except as a means of rent extraction.
Agreed
Tony Blair’s current ties to American tech companies should scare us all.
Yes, it cannot be said often enough and loud enough.
“Blairism” is now an example of the American Zionist Oligarchy in its colonial form, penetrating politics globally via the funding of think tanks, politicians, and educational establishments.
Larry Ellison, chief financial backer of the Tony Blair Foundation, now owns Tony Blair.
For those who don’t know who Larry Ellison is, here is a taste of his politics from Wikipedia:
“In 2017, Ellison donated $16.6 million (equivalent to $21,800,000 in 2025) to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), saying, “Since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home”. This was the largest donation in the organization’s history.
In 2019, Ellison helped fund an archaeological excavation project in East Jerusalem that was criticized by Palestinians, Israeli peace activists, and some archaeologists. A $1 billion (equivalent to $1,300,000,000 in 2025) lawsuit was filed in 2019 against several Israel supporters, including Ellison, accusing them of conspiring to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Israeli-occupied territories, committing war crimes, and funding genocide.[82][83] The case was dismissed in February 2024.
Ellison lobbied Israeli mogul Arnon Milchan to drop his lawyer so that Benjamin Netanyahu could hire the lawyer for one of his corruption cases. In 2021, Ellison offered Netanyahu a board seat at Oracle. The same year, Netanyahu and his family vacationed on Lānaʻi, an island Ellison owns in Hawaii.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison