Is the Labour party FINISHED? Blair’s "cold shower" for Starmer

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]We've had a barren 10 years when ideas have been suspected of being either frivolous or extreme in some way. I think it's good that someone who's far from frivolous or extreme is putting the onus on Labor in government. When Tony Blair speaks, you should listen.

[00:00:14]>> It would be wonderful if either Wes or Andy could become prime minister and beat Nigel Farage with no platform at all. That is not possible.

[00:00:21]>> There's always a suspicion that that he's a little bit light on the on the sense that what about the people who are left behind? he is acting as though Trump were a slightly populist and and slightly unusual version of the same American president and I don't think he is. So while we've been talking Andy Bernham has hit back.

[00:00:45]Hello and welcome to the forecast. It's probably not the intervention K star was hoping for or Andy Bham or West Streeting for that matter. So Tony Blair says changing the Labour leader is irrelevant if the party doesn't first work out a coherent plan for the country. And he suggests none of these men currently have one on tax and welfare, on net zero, on Brexit. In a 5 a half thousandword essay, the former prime minister lays out an excoriating critique of the current government and advocates a return to the radical center. But is that a contradiction in terms or just an old phrase that him and everyone from Roy Jenkins and beyond has been using for decades? To discuss this, I'm joined by Tony Blair's former chief speech writer and now editor of Prospect magazine, Phil Collins, the Labour MP for Glasgow Southwest, Zir Armmed, who resigned from government this month and is a vocal supporter of West Streeting.

[00:01:39]And Stuart Wood, who was an adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister, and Ed Milliband when he was Labour leader. He now sits in the House of Lords. Thank you all very much indeed for joining us. Um let's begin with where we might see you all agreeing a bit. I mean Phil is was this the intervention a lot of you have been you know hoping for that somebody would make in terms of like make an argument and have a plan. I I certainly think that's true but I don't think it necessarily counts as an original observation. I mean lots of people have pointed out that the Stalma government came to power without any great sense of purpose or plan. So that much is certainly true and I'm sure we would all agree with that. I think he's also right to say that a leadership election that doesn't get rooted in what people want to do would also be a mistake and there is a genuine risk of that. So to that extent I think that's a perfectly reasonable foundation. I think plenty of other people have said that before but obviously it has extra charge when a former prime minister and a former leader of the Labour party says it.

[00:02:37]Stuart Wood is there is there stuff to welcome here?

[00:02:39]>> Yeah, there's there's much much to welcome. I mean as usual with Tony Blair's intervention it's it's well thought through. It's incredibly substantial. So, it's wide ranging. It puts Britain's place in the world, not as a sort of add-on, but at the center of how we think about what a good strategy and what a good politics might be for the future. It invites Labor to re-imbrace ideas and even contests of ideas. All of those things are good. I think we've had a barren 10 years, not just in the Labour Party, but across politics, when ideas have been suspected of being either frivolous or extreme in some way. And I think it's good that someone who's far from frivolous or extreme is putting the onus on labor and government particular to go back into the ideas business. That is definitely to be welcomed. And a lot of his discussion of some individual ideas we might come on to later from Europe to welfare to China have you know incredibly meaty and very thoughtprovoking. So lots to welcome in that. It's the direction of travel of this prescription that I have a trouble with but we'll come on to that later.

[00:03:33]>> We will come on to that. Um, Zubir, I mean, did you like it instinctively?

[00:03:39]>> No, I I actually did like it instinctively because a when Tony Blair speaks, you you should listen. Um, and it was quite sobering and I think Nick Robinson said this morning on the Today program, it was like him giving us a cold shower, which probably is is overdue. Uh, and you know, in terms of the the theme of it largely was that policy is being retrofitted onto the politics. I can't I can't I can't disagree with that. And there were I think a general sense of advice I think even if you didn't agree with every single thing which I didn't inside the analysis of the five and a half thousand words that a bit of advice that says a contest of ideas is is really important and perhaps even more important than than personality. And then some researching themes around which I which I found interesting because I think the triple lock thing is more about intergenerational wealth and what we do there. net zero is really about perhaps is us losing our standing in the world and not being able to lead on climate change as once we did in fact under a certain prime minister Tony Blair who I remember making a very impactful speech about about climate change and then thirdly what what captured me actually was not only what was in the speech what was slightly missing uh and that was the sense of all of this turbulence around AI which I had to contend with as a as a health innovation minister was it's it's in an incubator and in a cultural medium of society and a social contract that as a labor party we need to step in towards not not remove ourselves from. So I think that was interesting when you didn't touch upon that because I wish he would have done.

[00:05:06]>> Okay. Well, that's sort of the group hug bit of the conversation over because when you get to the sort of the nitty-gritty Phil what what he's saying is that neither West Streeting nor Andy Burnham are anywhere near where they need to be. Yes, he is. He definitely is saying that. He's saying that it's vital that you have a policy platform because in government policy and politics are in fact one. It would be wonderful if either Wes or Andy could become prime minister and beat Nigel Farage with no platform at all. If that were possible, I'm completely up for it. But what Blair is saying is that that is not possible.

[00:05:40]If you arrive in government with no clear sense of where you're going, you will not beat the opponents. And that therefore this distinction between policy and politics is a false one. So the Labour Party, he's also then goes on to say, I think there's a lot of truth in this sadly, has not had a real clear sense of itself, I would say, since the financial crash. and he's making an internal Labour party argument that what they call the soft left and he Tony Blair thinks everybody in the Labour part is on the soft left has really got nothing to say self-d delusion he said the infinite capacity of the Labour party for self-d delusion I mean a pretty brutal um critique he's always thought that so to that extent this is a very familiar and characteristic piece of writing he's always thought these things and he thinks them still >> Stuart isn't that quite um distressing if you're Andy Bern right now or Ed Milliband who you're also close to who who is arguably the you know one of the intellectual engines behind Andy Bernham.

[00:06:37]>> I'm not sure it's distressing. I think actually the way I take it if I was one of those two people would be a challenge because you we're actually not in a leadership contest yet. whatever whatever people might think hasn't started yet. But it is exactly right to lay the gauntlet down to those people in the soft left to say don't just have um a list of grievances about where the world went wrong in the last 20 years and don't just have unreachable sort of platitudes about the kind of country you like. You've got to have an analysis.

[00:07:04]You've got to have a hard-headed set of things and tradeoffs and tough decisions you want to make, but also a realistic sense of the kind of Britain you want to build. I think that's a challenge that anyone from West Street into Andy Burnon to Richard Bergen should be embracing as as a sort of form of how you should think about this. So I think that's I think that's exactly the right thing. I don't think it's um I don't think it's distressing. I I think I think one of the things that's very odd about the intervention is that it is a strange mixture of very insightful about the ways in which the world is changing in particular on AI but also actually for a pro-Uropean he does a remarkably hard-headed thing about saying look the Brexit Brexit's changed things it's not just a matter of going back in Europe's got an economy problem he's quite tough with himself or the old Blair on some of these things he's changed on other things he is totally stubbornly the same as he was even though the world has changed in particularly is attachment to the White House right or wrong. It's extraordinarily passionately argued in this and I think I think completely misunderstands the way America is moving away from the attachment to Europe and international collective order of the past as well. He's also very much still rooted he seems to me in politics on a simple left right scale not saying simple pjoratively but you you move to the center to get to where people are.

[00:08:17]That's still the instinct you see in this essay. But we now are in multi-dimensional at least two-dimensional politics where cultural divides are as important as economic divides and we're multi-party systems.

[00:08:28]>> Stuart, I think Stuart in in actually in the essay I think he does mention that multi-dimensional nature of politics. I think that's been obscured by the use of the phrase the radical center which probably was an error and and makes it sound very 1979 Roy Jenkins Dimby lecture. Actually the analysis doesn't really quite bear that out. So because I agree with you that is a difference from one I think the most important thing in this whole essay is is this change of stance on Brexit. It's quite interesting. I think Tony Blair stopped being Blairite on Europe. Somebody once said to me who worked for Blair that Tony Blair was the person least likely to cry over spilled milk that you'd ever met in his life. And I think the Labour Party has been crying over spilled milk on Brexit for years now. And this essay signals the moment at which he has stopped. And that's the distinctive Blairite position at its best, which is to say in a cold way, this is where we are. This is what we need to do next.

[00:09:22]It's a very different position on Brexit. And I think that's the best thing in the essay.

[00:09:25]>> Yeah, there's a lot of rejoiners who wanted him to come out and say, this is the moment to recommit to a future back in the EU. Definitely not what he says.

[00:09:32]>> Zabir, I mean, West Street, your man of course did say what Tony Blair didn't say, which is that he wants to rejoin the European Union. I mean, are you you disappointed that you you know where's appears to not be Blair's man?

[00:09:48]>> So, I think you know what what Tony did there was was set exactly the right challenge to to to everyone. And actually, in the sense that we're not having a real leadership contest, having this weird kind of shadow leadership contest at the moment means that there is a drip drip of policy coming out both from Andy and from Wes at various points. And if you recall, I I recall straight after the the Brexit actually referendum because I used to listen to Tony Blair a lot then I still do a lot now him saying the words whenever the time comes for us to reenter and by the way he does he is not by any means closing the door and re-entry even in this essay for forever we should do so from a position of strength and not as a supplicant. So, so in that sense, I I I don't think the position of of Wes or even the most ardent burophile on the Labor Party is a million miles away from what Tony Blair is saying right now.

[00:10:38]Because, you know, I think anyone who absorbs a real politic of 2026 understands we can't flick a switch, make the past 10 years disappear, that Europe was somehow perfect, and we just land back in bed with our nearest and dearest. I think we do have to go through a a process of of transformation domestically and and get to that point at some point in the future for a position of strength not as a supplicant and as equal partners.

[00:11:03]>> But that's not what Westing said, is it?

[00:11:05]I mean, is isn't he effectively saying West Streeting, put the car before the horse and and you know, the the the goal of European re-entry delivers his economic growth uh which solves our problems without thinking actually you need to solve your problems first and then talk about re-entering Europe, which is what Blair's position seems to be.

[00:11:24]>> In fairness, what he said was one day, one day that that that is the pathway.

[00:11:28]And actually, you know, in terms of us having a a different relationship with Europe to the ones to the one that we inherited from the Tories two years ago is something that is fundamental to to our economic relationship because that was a toxic relationship in in every sense. Uh and and and I think no one who's who who does politics now or certainly no one of the experience of Tony Blair, the unprecedented experience of Tony Blair would would would deny that that that there needs to be a reset and and some kind of level of closer alignment not only for economic reasons, but now more more more and more so because of defense reasons. I take the point that he's making around America.

[00:12:04]You know, I I would never want to disagree with him vehementally about these issues because he's much more learned about that than most of us could ever be. But I think fundamentally there is a societal issue at the moment that has not been addressed in the essay around skepticism with politics about democracy and actually kind of you know um ironically the technology part that we need to embrace and sort out has also played a part and under kind of unwrapping the fabric of our society in that sense that means that you know there is a fracture I don't think an irreversible fracture between the in the transatlantic relationship whether it's for the long term and short term I think we you know time will tell but it it does mean we do have to be I think much more multilateral in terms of Europe and America in terms of our defense relationships. Now of course 10 years ago we were able to do both quite easily because the the relationship with America and ourselves was different and we were inside the European Union. Like I say I don't think you can flick a switch and turn off 10 years of you know very tumultuous history. But I think a new relationship with Europe is is is fundamental to our economic and our defense prospects as an as an island nation. And I think that's what Wes was saying. And and you know it's perfectly reasonable to have that aspiration to one day have have closer European alignment inside the European Union. I I think ultimately Tony Blair probably would want that too. He just doesn't want it for oppositional weakness which I agree with.

[00:13:26]>> Question. I think what lies underneath everything that we're all saying and which Zabir touched on there is the question of growth. That's where this essay starts. That's where the star government started in fact with a rhetoric of growth and has significantly failed to achieve that until the recent good news. And the question then arises what does Tony Blair propose as the engine of growth. And this is where he comes to technology and he's very interesting on technology. When Tony Blair was at his very very best he always sounded both excited about technology but also reassuring about technology. And that's exactly what Harold Wilson sounded like once upon a time is the great modernization story of the Labour Party. It's the new world, the new industrial revolution. It's going to be wonderful and don't worry about it. We we've got your back. He doesn't sound reassuring about technology anymore. He sounds extraordinarily excited, indeed excitable. And that then leads to the sorts of things that Zabir says rightly in my view are missing from the analysis. So I think he's got half the story, but it is absolutely plausible to say that this industrial revolution more than any other could be job destroying.

[00:14:33]It's perfectly plausible to worry about that. And I don't think there's anything in that analysis that offers reassurance.

[00:14:38]>> And he comes over very much on the tech bro side, doesn't he? I mean, isn't he basically saying, you know, let AI and technology run rip just the way he did in power over financial services before 2008? and you know and that we're not going to do anything about it and people suspect that's cuz he's been hanging out with the Turk tech bros too long.

[00:14:56]>> Again, he's always very clever to cover himself. There's a couple of lines in there that say there are there are risks attendant on this technology, too. But I I I agree the overall sense is is very much on the other side, but that is where we have to start the argument.

[00:15:08]He's quite right to say that any viable government will embrace and speak for the idea of the future of a new technology, but we can't do so without a serious consideration of the risk. Zir, >> I think I would just add to that. I think it's absolutely right. I think the the technological prospect now has never been as double-edged as it, you know, I think in the history of technological revolutions. I mean, I I see it in in in medicine in my health health innovation briefs. I mean, it you know, never has and that comes from a baseline of a lot of cynicism, by the way, in in the system in the NHS. You know, I can tell you as a practicing surgeon as well as a health minister, you know, technology has rarely made the lives of of people working in the NHS ever better. And at the moment, you know, everything is to everything they're told is is going to replace this, replace that, change this, disrupt that. I think Tony is right to say, you know, it is disruptive. We should embrace the disruption. But where I wish he he had developed the argument because I think he's very capable of doing that that doing it is to say what is a labor government's job in that disruption because it's not to disrupt even more because the tech the tech bros who I've hung out with a lot you know in my in my role are genuinely intellectually you know um you know some of the best people in the world but they're they're relatively one-dimensional because they aren't thinking about the societal impact so they're willing to disrupt and put the chess pieces up into the air which I think is perfectly right but as a labor our government, we have we have to care about, plan for and strategize how those pieces come back down to earth in a more equitable way. not only in a more productive way but also in a more equitable way that that in some ways the disruption needs to happen under the end in under the bonnet in White Hall and in you know in ministerial corridors so that there's a soft landing for the disruption on on the side that society sees it because it's already gone through a tumultuous you know process of disruption and uh you know over the last 20 years and that's why it's so you know reticent uh and so skeptical about the ability of democratic government to deliver so that that that I think there's so many different themes and challenges within that AI, you know, disruptive process and that and that how government handles it that is a portend for how government is viewed more widely and the credibility of a of a modern 20st social democratic government.

[00:17:20]>> Stuart, hasn't this session on AI exposed the difference between where Blair is compared to the modern Labor Party which wants to learn the lessons of the past to regulate capitalism and the free market economy whereas Blair seems to just want to let it run riots.

[00:17:35]I mean, yes, I think that's basically right. He he's doing with AI what he did with globalization in uh 20 years ago.

[00:17:41]It may have been Phil actually write this famous line from the 2005 conference speech when he said um there are some people who think we can question globalization. You might as well question whether I think autumn should follow summer. That was the line that no point in questioning it's happening. You just got to let it rip and get on with it and exploit the upside. That was essentially his his approach to globalization. That's his approach to AI. He's become a booster.

[00:18:03]As Phil said, there's no third way on AI in this. This is unrelenting. You know, AI is the future. Let's hook out hook our wagon to it. Now, wi with with Blair always there's always a suspicion that that he's a little bit light on the on the sense of what about the people who are left behind? Uh what about people who want more control of their lives rather than um letting business have greater leeway? with this intervention, those worries are magnified by a factor of 10 because he says very little about the idea of active government compensating for the consequences of AI ripping through our economy. And so this is this is weirdly I think a prime territory for Blair from 1997 to say look AI is extraordinary revolution that's going to change our world.

[00:18:48]However, there are real consequences for people that could be left behind, jobs that could be destroyed, communities that could be decimated, prospects, opportunities that could be undermined.

[00:18:57]That's where a practical progressive government needs to be. But instead, we've got the Blair, as you say, who's more the tech bro Blair today, who basically says AI is the future. Let's get with the program.

[00:19:07]>> I think there's there's some truth in that fatalism he has about technology without question. But let's just think what he's doing because it also says something very important about the Labor Party. There's a critique of the Labor Party in that too, which is in the Labour Party, it's hard to leave the house without falling into a seminar on active government. You don't need any lessons on active government. People in the Labour Party talk about that all the time. What Tony Blair is in effect saying is, "But the other side of it, which is the wealth generation, nobody in the Labor Party ever talks about that. It's not in their instincts. And actually, if we don't do that, if we don't have a plan for growth, then we've got nothing to distribute. So, what's your plan for growth then? If mine's fatalistic and and far too optimistic and and panglosian, what's yours?

[00:19:52]Because it doesn't look like you've got one. And if you haven't got one, then all of those questions about discontent, the cynicism about politics, the way people feel the world isn't working for them, they are not going to be addressed because we haven't got any bounty. And that is a really profound challenge to the Labour Party which just doesn't think that way until this man drops from the from the sky in the form of Tony Blair who's got no prior background in the Labour party and tells some home truths and that is a home truth. Stuart, what what about the list of things Blair says kind of Labour's got wrong since the election uh such as you know uh tax rises uh on national insurance rather than VAT.

[00:20:33]um and and particularly the the net zero uh costs which he says I mean he's kind of taken a conservative position basically which is scrap net zero it's cost cost too much uh and he's taken a sort of an imaginary position which is that if you start getting more oil and gas out of the North Sea it'll somehow bring prices down >> yeah well I think so as I remember in his essay the thing he's most annoyed about is the combination of everything at once on the economy So workers rights, tax rises, minimum wage increases at the same time as saying we are the growth government. He thinks that's incoherent and I think he's got put his finger on a real challenge that Labour has which it lost credibility saying growth wasn't the number one priority when it was trying to load all its manifesto commitments up into the first six to eight months. I think that was a real problem uh for its sort of credibility credibility with business on on the drill baby drill stuff and and the North Sui stuff. I mean my suspicion I'm just being a bit of a blarologist on this one is that he has become converted to the cause of uh exploiting North Sea as much as possible because of the energy demands of the AI industry that I think he thinks if we're going to be really credible or successful in the AI world. They're going to have to have massive increases in energy. So everything needs to be mined at once.

[00:21:52]Renewables drilling the North Sea gas oil the whole kaboodleoodle. The evidence, as we know, without go rehearsing it, the evidence that that new drilling in the oil in North Sea is actually going to make a difference in price is incredibly scanty. So, it must be a long-term supply of energy for a new industries and needing a huge supply. And again, I'm not trying to disparage that. If we are going to bet the farm on AI, we're going to have to have an energy solution uh to accompany that because AI's energy demands are absolutely extraordinary. So, he is that seems to be part of the package. It seems to me deregulation. The state essentially is an encourager of tech in particular but other business. The the government's job basically to to do a bit of infrastructure but mostly to deregulate uh and to encourage business be pro business um and then energy the the drilling and oil and gas alongside renewables as much as possible to to support all this. That seems to be the package that he's talking about. And as you say that's very familiar very familiar to a conservative back venture.

[00:22:51]Not not disparaging that. That's just where it's located in the political spectrum.

[00:22:54]>> Yeah. But do you think Labour should consider ditching all the net zero targets as he's said today because they cost too much? You know, take all those levies off bills and taxation, spend the money elsewhere, get growth going, create a few more jobs.

[00:23:09]>> No, because they don't think it would be the thing that gets growth going. I mean, they have taken some of the levies off already. Um, look, I think in the next two years, we're in a we're in a managing an incredibly difficult sort of at times crisis situation for our country. So what you need to do in the short term is different to what you need to do in the medium term. I would like to see a Labor party that puts a commitment to renewables and sustainable energy at the heart of what it stands for personally. But I accept there's a big debate about that. I don't think that drilling the oil of oil in the North Sea is going to be the make or break for whether we survive the cost of living crisis. I just don't think the evidence is there for that. I >> in part it is probably is a long-term thought about the requirement for energy. I think there's also a political instinct at play here. Um I mean Blair's political instincts are very acute and they still are and I think he probably a part of it is the sense that it's going to be difficult to win that argument.

[00:23:57]This is his cost of living section because what he's saying is that there is a tension between these two objectives, these two good things and we've got to choose the cost of living because it's more important. So I think that's where it's coming from. I think I'd rather agree with Stuart. The irony is one of the only places where the Labor government could be said to have a purpose and a project is in this arena and Tony Blair wants to stop it. Now, even if you're opposed to it and you think it's a bad idea, I think it's difficult to argue that there's nothing going on here. So, I think it comes from his desire to tell a story to people who are living in straightened circumstances that we're not spending money on all that stuff that you don't understand the purpose of. We're we're concentrating on your household bills. I think I agree with Stuart that the connection between those two things in policy terms is poor. So this is one of the contradictions in the essay which throughout tries to unite policy and politics but here they're separated and I so I think this that's a that's a mistake but he is at least forcing us into an interesting conversation about this about these tensions and that's one of the things that the government's been very poor at at having this argument. I mean Jess Phillips said that in her resignation letter very she said it very well. that was so frightened of having an argument that we don't make an argument and I think the the echoes of that are in this essay as well. Do do you think West Streeting and his wing of the party your wing of the party have questioned these things enough or just gone along with it because that's what you do now?

[00:25:26]>> Yeah, I don't think this is a wing of wing of the party issue especially the the net zero and the the the kind of climate change uh piece because it has to be evidence-based, right? This is one of the few areas of policy where genuinely you have to either follow the evidence or not and and the evidence is quite clear-cut like the planet is warming. We have some agency to stop it warming and like I say at there was a time where Tony Blair actually started putting train that argument at the tail end of his time in office as as prime minister. Thereafter of course you have to then decide how you transition in a way that's h sustainable command the confidence of your population but also fundamentally where the big politics the global politics then intersects because you know TB is right we you know on the on the grand scale of things are very you know small contributor to global emissions. What does that mean? Does it mean we just stop and just give up? Or actually does it mean maybe the Tony Blair of 2006 would have developed this further to say actually we to be much more internationalist and take some leadership positions here and maybe you know because we've fallen away from that completely. I mean someone like you know perversely someone like Tony Blair would be quite a good climate climate change uh envoy that could bring together the disperate you know parts of our globe around a consensus around renewable energy and dare I say it you know even nuclear. I I agree, you know, there there is no obvious connection between cost of living h and drill baby drill in in in in in the North Sea, but we do need power. We do need a lot more energy, especially if we're going to take some bets on on AI and other other types of technology. And I think one of the areas where we could go further faster is is is nuclear. And again, that was something Tony Blair was advocating in his time in office at a time when David Cameron was in his hugy phase and was objecting to it. So I I think we need to get back to some fundamentals around energy policy quite quickly. But I don't think it's a it's a direct collar between drill BB drill, get the bills down and deny what is sc basically scientific fact of of of global warming.

[00:27:17]>> Um Phil, I mean Stuart mentioned Tony Blair's welltrodden geopolitical framing. Was it a mistake for him to bring that up as well here and to basically return to his position of do whatever the Americans tell you to do because that's our most sensible alliance? Doesn't it just remind everybody of all the stuff that is the most controversial about Tony Blair?

[00:27:37]>> Well, it certainly does do that, but I think he would argue that it's not realistic to have an analysis of the country which is separate from our international role. So, I think he'd defend it on those grounds. I think it's reasonable to include that, but you might you might dispute the particular things he said.

[00:27:53]>> But do you think he's right to say we should have gone along with letting the Americans use British bases? I actually don't have a problem with that in particular, but I do think he's probably underestimating the breach with previous history that constituted by Donald Trump. So, one of the things in the essay that I didn't agree with was his is relatively sanguin about the Trump presidency's effect on international relations. I think he's wrong about that. I think Trump's um lack of respect for NATO is a very serious historic shift. And I think he is acting as though Trump were a slightly populist and and slightly unusual version of the same American president. And I don't think he is.

[00:28:32]>> Stuart would I mean isn't he effectively saying that for Britain to be relevant, you need the relationship with America to be back where it was when he was prime minister?

[00:28:42]>> I think he's saying a version of that.

[00:28:44]Um, I think what's extraordinary about his position on America is that there is no country whose politics more reflects internal volatility about rejecting the last 60 years than what's happened in the US. I mean, we're second maybe, but um, Trump Trump himself is not a blip. I suspect that Blair privately thinks that, you know, let's calm down, Trump will go and then we'll get back to some sort of relatively familiar relationship between America and the European continent. I just don't think that's true because it's the voters that are driving this. is not Trump as a megalomaniac, but the voters are driving this. They're driving a shift towards Asia. They're driving it a shift towards protectionism, which was something a previous version of Blair would have railed against, not this one. You don't hear much about trade and protectionism in this essay. But America has changed dramatically. It's changed its view of supporting European security, of its support for international institutions, which Britain has a place where we punch above our weight. All of those things are massive changes in the US. And whereas he's very alive to changes that are happening in the global economy and technology u and also inside the UK on this he just says look stick with the US I'm sure it'll be fine and we don't really have an option but to stick with them. At one point he apologizes for disagreeing with Mark Carney in a very respectful way but and Carney's speech I think has lots of flaws and lots of pluses to it but at least it sets out a coherent sense of Europe getting its security act together in the absence of any confidence America will play that traditional post-war role. That seems to be exactly where um Britain needs to think. Whether you're pro-Uropean or anti-European in other respects, that has to be where we are. I like that part of what Kistan has done. And I know a lot of conservative friends who who agree with that positioning. So I think he's got that very wrong. Um and I'd like to sort of sit him down and ask him why he's so sanguin about America, the American European relationship being essentially returnable to 1965.

[00:30:34]Zabir, do you feel disappointed that Blair didn't swing in behind your man? You know, I mean, you may not want to portray West Streeting as a Blair, right? But if Tony Blair was going to support anyone, you'd have wanted him to support West Streeting, wouldn't you?

[00:30:51]>> No. No, not at all. Because this isn't a moment, I think, for grandees of of the party to come forward and give their views as to the personality that should be the next leader of Labour Party and the Prime Minister. I I think largely what he's done is set out some challenges. He's injected that with, you know, points of controversy and and I think that is very a very reasonable place for someone of his status uh to be at the moment. Um because it allows us then to develop arguments, have the arguments tires kicked as well, which is something we've not really done, I I would say over the last last 10 years.

[00:31:24]And on the last point on on America, I'm afraid I do disagree with him because it is his argument is really a triumph of hope over expectation. hope that this is just an aberration and and not a new normal and and I must agree. I think this is more likely to be a new normal and that's why our our relationship geopolitical relationships must be much more multilateral than they have been over the last 100 years.

[00:31:44]>> Stuart, do you think his intervention has any effect on the Labour Party? Does anyone listen to him in the party anymore?

[00:31:50]>> Uh well, you'll get the traditional spread of reaction. You get people who who will say it's rubbish even though they had never read it. You'll get people who think that because it's Tony Blair, it must be right whether whatever he says. Uh I think the interesting in the middle of that I'd like to think there are people who maybe don't think of themselves as Blairites but take as Phil Collins said earlier the challenge seriously. Look, you may not agree with what I think is a very very deregulatory sort of thatcherite if you like economic supply side program about how to get the economy going. You may not agree with that. What's your alternative? I think that's exactly the right challenge and it's something the Labour Party with the possible exception of Wilson in the 60s has been terrible at historically coming up with a theory of how you grow not a theory a policy of policies that promote growth Britain's place in the world succeeding economically and economically at home rather than fixating just on redistribution that I think is a real challenge particularly this moment for whoever wants to be leader X and I think there should be a left soft left west treating version in answer to that and I think that is a key question in whatever comes next. And he's right to put that in the center of of the debate.

[00:32:56]>> Phil, I mean, in his interviews, Tony Blair almost almost sort of said he didn't really care whether it was the Labour Party or the Conservative Party that delivered a vision for the future.

[00:33:06]You know, he he left the Labour leadership saying he loves this party, he would be Labor till he dies. Do you think he is still in his heart of hearts, you know, wedded to the Labor Party or does he not care so much now? I don't know whether he cares. I suspect that's his recognition that the politics that we have today are fundamentally unlike the politics of when he left office. I mean, they absolutely have completely fragmented and shattered. So, I think it's him gesturing towards some new political formation. So I suspect it's uh he's not necessarily saying the Conservative Party was in a terrible state as it is anyway and is hardly likely to be the vehicle of some of these ideas but I think it's his recognition that the Labour Party is in some serious trouble because underneath all this apart from the very lots and lots of small things we disagree with in the essay there's one very big thing I I absolutely agree with which is that the Labor Party is intellectually in a serious amount of trouble. It's not just a political question. It's not a question of who leads it. And it is not Kia Starmmer's fault that the Labour Party came to government illprepared.

[00:34:17]It's much bigger than that. It's the the absence of a governing idea. It's the absence of a philosophical guide. And that's the big question which is raised by this essay. Perhaps not wholly answered by this essay, but then it's only five and a half thousand words.

[00:34:31]There's a lot more to come, but it's definitely raised. And that is the right question to ask. So, while we've been talking, Andy Bernham has hit back Blair um in a way saying Blair doesn't mention inequality once. If you don't get how that's driving politics now, if you're not rooting your analysis in the fact that people are unable to live and that things that were taken for granted are no longer affordable, then you are not understanding what's going on. Well, it's not quite true that Blair doesn't mention that because in the section on populism, he does. I mean Andy's quite right to say that is driving politics.

[00:35:04]Not not inequality of income actually but a vast inequality of wealth which leads to a sense that life opportunities are declining. I think that's the fundamental fact of domestic politics.

[00:35:15]So to that sense a fair enough rejoinder from Andy Bernham but I don't think actually if Blair and Burnham were to get together there'd be enormous amount of disagreement on that question. I think there's something else going on which is connected to inequality which is a pervasive sense that ordinary voters think that politicians and business elites are they're on another planet compared to where they are and whatever the wisdom the policy wisdom what Blair's intervention is I think his intervention then going to confirm that suspicion amongst people now that's not fair because he's not he's not doing it from a great height in order to stay in a great height aloof from everything but there there is nothing in his essay which addresses this fundamental disconnect between people and the sense that people in charge are trying to do things not for their interests. And I think that again, Phil's right, it's only a 5,000word essay. There's another 5,000 words perhaps about that connecting tissue between growing the economy and how you distribute it. But at the moment, there's nothing there.

[00:36:12]And that is a problem.

[00:36:13]>> Ze, do you also want Wes to come out and accuse Blair of being out of touch? I I don't put words in Wes's mouth and he's perfectly capable of saying what he thinks about it.

[00:36:24]>> Well, do you think he's out of touch? I >> I think I I think Andy is someone that's been on the ground for a long time now, you know, as as as a city mayor, he he feels probably the generational inequity of wealth probably quite acutely. um you know and in that sense he's perfectly entitled to his to his opinion and I have some sympathy with it because one of the questions that I think Tony was posing to us also is what is what is what is the role of wealth in the country right now when there's such an inequity across the generations because growth has to the growth agenda also has to answer that fundamental you know exam question um because if it doesn't we're not going to give confidence to the generation of my generation and the ones below me that have really suffered that inequity in many cases have done much more uh for society particularly the ones that live through COVID in terms of sacrificing their own life chances for the betterment of wider society and I think they do need a bit of payback.

[00:37:21]>> Zir Ahmed Stuart Wood Phil Collins thank you all very much. That's the forecast.

[00:37:26]Until next time, bye-bye.