Relations between Blair and Starmer have been remote in recent months, according to a senior figure at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the ex-PM’s sprawling policy and strategy consultancy. Having given up having much influence on the Starmer operation, Blair now “wants to rise above right or left and talk about the center much more broadly — what are the ideas Britain needs to thrive? He wants politics to look upwards and outwards. And whoever wants to take that forward, that’s up to them,” this person said.
It’s hard to take the raw politics out of a Blairite clash with the Labour Party. The essay contains coded messages for Burnham, who is hoping to make his way back to Westminster via a forced June by-election. It also targets the ex-health secretary Streeting, who resigned after the disastrous local elections earlier this month in protest at the drift under Starmer.
“Andy has defined himself against 40 years of neoliberalism which also included the New Labour era. We would push back strongly on that,” the TBI senior figure added. “Even Wes has been critiquing the New Labour. We are trying to say: that’s not the best way to look outward to a changing world and what that means for the Labour Party today.”
Tony unzipped
The intervention was conceived long before the present leadership standoff. In the event, it has become a hot potato in the contest of ideas between the holdout camp, which supports Starmer’s attempt to hang onto office, and a suite of hopeful challengers who want a change at the helm.
Jack Straw, who served as home and foreign secretary in the Blair years, also interpreted the Blair manifesto statement as a tough intellectual critique of its current leadership offer — and defended his old boss against criticism that he has lurched rightwards in his political afterlife.
“I strongly support what Tony said,” Straw told POLITICO. “He kept his mouth zipped for the local elections, and most people know that this government made serious, unforced errors like failing to properly prepare for government. It is useful because it forces people to discuss the issue of what has gone wrong, and something has, pretty plainly. We have three years to turn this around. Talking as Andy [Burnham] does about 40 years on the wrong path is interesting. I don’t remember him saying that when we were in government together.”