Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Blair Weighs in on Labour Leadership
The Labour Party in the UK is undergoing a weeks' long leadership fight that so far has not yet really started. The PM has not been offically challenged, and the man many want to replace him is not even a member of the House of Commons yet. While the party goes through this angst, yester-century's man Sir Tony Blair (PM who left office almost 20 years ago) has weighed in with, perhaps, the most unwanted intervention to date. While rabbiting on about AI and other matters, he raised the point that maybe Labour should have a discussion on policy before deciding who best to lead. It is a brilliant idea that runs contrary to what the party wants. Right now, no one except Sir Tony wants a policy debate.
That Labour is even in trouble is ridiculous. Sir Keir Starmer led the party to a general election victory less than 2 years ago, a landslide that gave him a 174-seat majority in a chamber of 650. The party ought to be trying to figure out which seats it can afford to lose in the next election and still have a 50 seat cushion. Instead, it has lost its nerve over extremely bad local elections in May. A party with a spine would simply nod and note that the next general election is 3 years off.
This Labour government, though, has mile-wide support that runs about an inch deep. Sir Keir won his massive majority not because he is a charismatic leader with a vision for Britain (he is not) but because everyone was sick to death of the Tories and had been for a couple of years. In other words, the people voted against the Conservatives and not for the Labour candidates.
This has implications for governing because the support for the government is built upon sand rather than bedrock. When the government failed to fix everything in its first month, people began to grumble. They voted against the Labour government in last year's local elections and in this year's to express that dissatisfaction. With a 174-sear majority, the government should just have moved on.
Enter Sir Tony with his tuppence via a 5,700 word essay put out by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Politico stated:
In the essay, he urges Labour to avoid a drift to the left and instead to push for a "radical center" policy agenda if it is to hold on to power, including grappling with artificial intelligence policy, capping pension spending, and easing restrictions on oil and gas drilling.
"Trying to force the prime minister out before we know what policy direction we're bringing in, is not a serious way of conducting ourselves," he warned.
Naturally, Sir Tony got a reaction from the man not yet in Parliament, Andy Burnham. Mr. Burnham said Blair’s essay "doesn't mention inequality once."
Mr. Burnham went on, "If you don't get how that's driving politics now, if you are 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."
He criticized the last 40 years of British neoliberalism (of which Sir Tony is so proud). Mr. Burnham said, "the last 40 years has given us wide inequality -- that's what's responsible for the abandonment of the center. People don't think the center has delivered for them in terms of their lives, therefore they've gone further to the extremes."
Sir Tony means well, no doubt, but he is not going to convince a nation awash in populism to follow his advice. He is swimming against the tide on that. Sir Keir has enough trouble without Sir Tony kibitzing (a lovely Yiddish term) from the cheap seats. And his intervention is a direct challenge to Mr. Burnham and his supporters. A divided party is not what Labour supporters want.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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