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Posts Tagged ‘Tony Blair’

Remember how Clinton sealed the deal for Obama last year? Blair could do that for Miliband

17/06/2013, 08:00:16 AM

by Dan McCurry

I was once in a rock band for whom stardom beckoned. We were 16 years old and practiced in the music room at school, playing ‘60s music. The lead singer, John O’Dea, was a mod whose hobby was to beat up punks and skinheads. He was quite embarrassing. The reason he had something to prove was that back in ‘80s, the mods had a reputation for being soft.

One day John wrote some lyrics to a song called “Bollocks to a tramp”, and although we didn’t want to encourage him, the words were good so we added a guitar riff and it rocked.

Up the west end every Saturday,

The Mods, Punks and Skinheads all come out to play,

They really make me sick,

I could hit ‘em with a brick,

Say bollocks to a tramp,

Bollocks to a tramp,

Punks and Skins are tramps,

Say BOLLOCKSSSSSSSSS!!!

We got our first gig at a Mod all-dayer at the Ilford Palais. The crowd went crazy with 2,000 mods cheering at every line, and we were invited everywhere. Unfortunately the band fell at the first hurdle when the bass player got jealous and wanted to take over the vocals, so arranged for O’Dea to be kicked out. At the next gig, we opened with the bass player singing Bollocks to a tramp, and the audience sat all the way through, then clapped politely at the end of it. The magic was gone and the band soon split.

When Labour got rid of Tony Blair, I reflected on the sacking of John O’Dea. Even though I was politically closer to Gordon, I didn’t think it was a good idea to make the bass player into the Prime Minister when we had a star singer in Tony Blair.

Bill Clinton was another star. It’s questionable as to whether Obama would have won last year’s election without his help. Tony Blair could do the same thing for Ed Miliband, but Miliband wants to put space between Labour’s past and present.

Economic consensus has changed since the time of Clinton and Blair. We used to agree that aspiring to owning a house would lift people out of poverty. Even George W. Bush saw sub-prime mortgages as a way of ending poverty. The idea was that people instilled with aspiration lifted themselves up.

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The folly of defeatism

24/05/2013, 12:06:56 PM

by Alex Shattock

Whenever we talk about Labour’s chances of winning the next election, there is always an elephant in the room that nobody wants to speak about. We thought it would go away, sort itself out. It hasn’t. Frankly, we can’t ignore it anymore, because it’s beginning to hurt our chances of success in a very visible way.

The elephant is the vocal minority in the Labour party who don’t believe we can win with Ed Miliband as our leader. It’s time to talk about the problems their defeatism is causing, and why it is misguided.

The MPs in our diverse shadow cabinet have done an admirable job in maintaining party unity. Their success is not, however, reflected by everyone in the party. The vocal minority who don’t believe in Ed Miliband are making their presence known, whether it is an unnecessary intervention by a former leader, or a (not so) subtle swipe at a pressure group conference. Their murmurings are becoming louder, and the media is starting to hear.

Their main criticism is that Ed has a “charisma” problem: but we all saw Ed’s fantastic One Nation speech. He can give a great performance when it counts. I suspect their discomfort runs a little deeper than that. The charisma problem is really an ideological problem: “We’re not polling better because of the direction Ed is taking us”.

It sounds to me like the defeatists don’t believe a centre-left platform can ever win a UK election. Perhaps they don’t believe it ever should. “Labour just isn’t connecting with business”, someone told me last week. “I mean, look at Ed’s speech about predators… He isn’t showing businessmen he wants to help them make money.”

Well, good.

The Labour party wasn’t created to help businessmen make money. There is a place for business in Labour’s vision, of course there is: but our primary concern should be building a better society.

Labour politics is about businesses as employers, the poor as deserving, inequality as a problem. We should not sacrifice our beliefs on the easy altar of populism. We should make the case for our beliefs in the public domain.

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Poor Ed is stuck between two marauding elephants

29/04/2013, 07:31:39 AM

by Kevin Meagher

There’s an old African saying that when the elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. If that’s the case, these past couple of weeks have left Labour’s lawn fit for a spot of crown green bowling.

First to start a ruck by waving his proboscis about was Labour’s emeritus leader Tony Blair, chiding via the pages of the New Statesman, that Labour risks settling back “into its old territory of defending the status quo” and blowing the next election.

A couple of weeks of tit-for-tat followed before Len McLuskey, tusks a-gleaming, charged headlong at Tony’s hindquarters also telling the New Statesman this week that if Ed Miliband listens to Blairites in the party he is consigning himself to the “dustbin of history”.

Both hulking mammals have the same motivation; to bruise but not wound Ed Miliband and make it clear their respective herds are not to be taken for granted as we pass the 60% marker for this parliament. They are both concerned about the shape of Labour’s offer to the voters in 2015. McLuskey denounces any prospect of offering “austerity-lite”, claiming it will lead to certain election defeat. Blair, in stark contrast, warns that to “tack left on tax and spending” will lead to “strategic defeat”.

Yes, Labour’s got to be pragmatic in how it approaches the next election (Blair) but it’s got to win for a purpose too (McLuskey). This is the age-old conundrum for the democratic left. It’s one that pits those with a simplistic (and now outdated) assumption that the party can offer the bare minimum to core Labour voters because they have nowhere else to go, with those who are reluctant to countenance the bloody business of compromise at all. Despite the dust that has been kicked up these past couple of weeks, both sides are sketchy about details.

On spending, McLuskey urges Miliband to “create a radical alternative” to austerity in order to remain “the authentic voice of ordinary working people”. Does this mean no cuts? Some cuts? Cuts to bits of public spending we don’t like? (The trouble is that a private sector union like Unite has many members in defence industries and won’t want to see cuts here which other unions might happily countenance).

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Ed needs to be clearer about what one nation Labour is not

18/02/2013, 07:57:43 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“‘You know something? It’s really quite satisfying when you help people to fulfil their dreams like that.’ ‘Christ, you fucking fascist,’ Tim said.”

This exchange between Malcolm Glover, a 1980s building society manager, and his son, Tim, features in Philip Hensher’s sweeping The Northern Clemency and comes after Malcolm helps a couple buy their council house. The formalities of this sale conclude thus:

“‘Goodbye, Mr Glover,’ the husband said, shaking his hand, ‘and thank you.’ He let go and, turning, took his wife’s beloved hand, and together they walked down the stairs. Malcolm watched them go with pleasure.”

The positive content of new Labour sought to appeal to voters like the grateful couple: attentive to their aspirations and eager to serve them. Notwithstanding this positive content, new Labour was immediately vivid because it clear about what it was not: the old Labour, the no-compromise-with-the-electorate vehemence of Tim.

New Labour connected with aspirant voters by relentlessly showing itself to be different from a Labour party that would deem it “fascist” to sell a council house to its tenants. It was new Labour because it was not old Labour.

Of course, this old Labour was always a caricature. The Labour party of Clement Attlee, Barbara Castle and Neil Kinnock was never as indulgent and disconnected as Tim Glover. The right to buy, for one thing, was a Labour policy before it was a Tory policy.

The sense, however, that Tony Blair’s election as party leader marked a year zero was reinforced early in his leadership by painting the past as an old Labour wasteland. Blair was the change that the country needed because he had the strength to move his party beyond the likes of Tim Glover.

The longer Blair was leader the less well this crude and simplistic contrast served him. What had cast him in broad strokes as a new leader came to motivate suspicion about him in the party later in his premiership.

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Preview: Tony Blair’s speech on Europe

28/11/2012, 07:00:03 AM

by Jonathan Todd

While Andrew Rawnsley reports that Ed Miliband’s speech to the CBI on the EU “leant heavily against a referendum”, Peter Mandelson recently wrote in the Financial Times that a referendum is “inevitable”. Today Tony Blair will deliver a speech in which he will argue for Britain “to be at the heart of the EU”.

For decades Labour has been pro-EU, while being vague on the role of the EU in securing our goals. Imprecision is increasingly inadequate in a fast moving debate.

Is Miliband ducking a fight that Mandelson thinks is inevitable? Will Blair’s intervention encourage Miliband to be bolder? But what exactly does he mean by “the heart of the EU”? In the Euro and the EU banking union or just leaving the door open to British membership at some stage?

It has been clear from early in this parliament that Europe would be more central to it than throughout the Blair/Brown government. But many unanswered questions remain for Labour. As they do for the Conservatives.

Michael Fabricant, dashing vice chair of the Conservative party, has given Nigel Farage an enhanced platform, much as the leadership debates in the last election brought Nick Clegg to a wider audience, by floating the idea of an electoral pact between his party and their “brothers” in UKIP.

Being a more sensible politician than Fabricant, Farage is holding out for as much as possible. He was on the Daily Politics on Monday; fully twelve hours after Fabricant went public with his cunning plan. He wanted an apology from the prime minister for his comments on UKIP following the Rotherham fostering farrago – a strong showing from UKIP in the Rotherham by-election will help Farage and the fostering issue plays into his hands. He was also pushing Tory troublemakers in the direction of Michael Gove, the member of the cabinet seemingly most sanguine about the UK leaving the EU.

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Time to get off Tony Blair’s foreign policy bendy bus

01/10/2012, 05:00:35 PM

by Jonathan Todd

I’ve tried to watch West Wing but, pace Westminster, always found it too hackneyed to endure. It may be an equally unutterable thing to say, at least within the beltway, but Armando Iannucci’s the Thick of It is becoming tired and predictable.

While we may be too gushing in our praise for Malcolm Tucker et al, Iannucci’s Time Trumpet never got the recognition it deserved or – in a case, given that Iannucci is one of the writers of Alan Partridge, of life imitating art – a second series.

Time Trumpet is a spoof documentary that purports to look back on 2007 from 2031. Tony Blair features near the start of the first episode. Iannucci’s commentary says:

“And we look back at this madman and how he ended up 20 years later dementedly wandering round the bins of downtown Baghdad.”

A dishevelled chap, the Blair of 2027, then appears and mumbles to himself:

“Further down the bendy bus, have your money ready please.”

All of which may be offensive to Blair and his most ardent supporters. While I am a Blair fan – he is, after all, the longest serving Labour prime minister ever, responsible for a tremendous amount of positive change – I cannot stop myself finding Time Trumpet hilarious.

We shouldn’t take ourselves or our heroes too seriously. And nor should we think our heroes beyond reproach.

We should – more than five years after he ceased to be party leader – be capable of having a mature debate about Blair. In some senses, this debate has already been had. Hopi Sen is right that it is Gordon Brown’s time as leader, rather than Blair’s, that has been under scrutinised and debated within the party.

However, debate about Blair has often generated more heat than light. Calm consideration has been particularly lacking around one part of Blair’s legacy in particular, a part that the Labour Party continues to live in the shadows of, foreign policy.

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Archbishop Tutu is wrong, Tony Blair showed true moral leadership over Iraq

13/09/2012, 07:00:37 AM

by Peter Watt

There has been an awful lot of noise again recently about Iraq. This followed on from an article that Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Observer about his decision to publicly “spurn” Tony Blair by not appearing at an event that they were both due at in South Africa. Archbishop Tutu said:

“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.

Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth?”

This then spawned a wave of articles from clever and eminent people who explained exactly why international law made it clear that Tony Blair was guilty of war crimes and should be dragged to the Hague.

Others wrote articles saying why this was nonsense and that international law said no such thing.

I read many of these articles with interest and increasing disquiet; but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.

And then I realised what was bothering me. In all of this very clever argument and counter-argument there was one thing missing.

Those who wrote saying “Bliar” was a war criminal did so because they passionately felt that the war was wrong. They felt a sense of moral outrage that shone through their demands that international law is invoked.

Conversely, those arguing that international laws were not an issue tended to argue in purely legal terms. Their arguments somehow lacked the passion or moral outrage of Archbishop Tutu for instance in his Observer article.

The overall sense was that in deciding to commit British forces in the second Iraq war Tony Blair had unquestionably committed a grossly immoral act that might or might not be illegal.

And that was it, the thing that bothered me: the absence of the moral case for freeing Iraq.

I passionately believe that the decision made by Tony Blair was the right and moral response to the circumstances we faced. It must have been an incredibly difficult decision and one that took huge amounts of leadership – and I respect him hugely for it.

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Chilcot remains the test of Labour’s new unity

03/08/2012, 07:00:40 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The ripples in Labour’s millpond have stilled. An eerie, becalmed peace is left. Nothing succeeds like success and Ed Miliband has reached the summer recess with reason to feel quiet satisfaction. His frontbench team has become more effective, the government benches less so. His party is united, the coalition fractious and sclerotic.

The prime minister will have his work cut out ahead of the party conference season, repairing relations with his backbenchers, keeping the Lib Dems sweet and removing Boris Johnson’s tanks from his lawn as a seemingly smooth-running Olympics emboldens the London Mayor in his bid to one day replace Cameron.

Ed Miliband, in contrast, can kick back and plough through his summer reading list uninterrupted. Labour’s opinion poll lead remains, if not spectacular, then the next best thing: consistent. Miliband has developed themes around responsibility and fairness which continue to resonate. He has also been lucky in his opponents too. His ‘predators’ speech at last year’s Labour conference, much maligned at the time, is vindicated with every new detail that emerges from London’s square mile, with allegations of HSBC laundering drugs money the latest seamy instalment.

But Miliband has started to make his own luck too. Tales of chaotic organisation and accusations of gauche appearances in the media and at prime minister’s questions are no longer made. The Labour machine, replete with a new top team of senior directors, is beginning to purr once again. Candidates for November’s police commissioner elections – the next big electoral test – are already in place while the Conservatives struggle to fill the roles.

Meanwhile, prolonged recession is hardening the public mood against ministers’ hoary claim that they are “dealing with the mess Labour left”. Their excuses have rapidly declining purchase as the economy flatlines. The writing is on the wall when even the IMF starts inching away from George Osborne’s deficit-masochism.

Voters’ acceptance of belt-tightening was only ever going to be short-term. Each tale of corporate and banking excess tests the patience of a frustrated public which contrasts its own sacrifices with our mangy corporate elite’s lack of restraint.

The result? All the big problems in British politics are shovelled against David Cameron’s door this summer. A one-time (self-styled) ‘heir to Blair’ he lacks the older man’s panache and luck. This is painfully evident with Blair now returning to British public life in a series of carefully choreographed interviews and appearances.

His re-entry into Labour’s orbit has been especially tentative. His presence at the party’s gala sports dinner recently and the announcement that he will take on a role advising Ed Miliband on the Olympics’ legacy generated a frisson of controversy on Labour’s left, but it was largely synthetic. And predictable. Those who dislike Tony Blair will always now dislike him, whatever he says or does.

His new advisory role is free-form and, in reality, little more than an organising concept for either man. For Ed Miliband the value of a returning Blair is to show that the Labour tribe is reuniting, cynically, perhaps, given the growing sense that David Cameron seems set on emulating Ted Heath as a one-term Tory prime minister; but coming together nonetheless. Talent from across the party now supplicates itself to a leader many did not want but who all now realise is going to lead Labour into the 2015 general election, come what may.

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Progress are here to stay, get over it

16/07/2012, 01:32:14 PM

by Curtis McLellan

It’s been a strange few weeks to be a Progress member, a Unite member and a Labour party member. It is almost like me and my kind are persona non grata. Well, I am not ashamed. My kind are part of a long proud lineage of revisionist thought in the Labour party. My kind and our thought laid the philosophical foundations for an unprecedented 13 years of Labour government.

My kind bided our time whilst the other side had their 1983 manifesto, we fought against Trotskyist entryism, siding with the unions to remove that threat. We had internal victories and internal defeats, but there was one thing for certain: we were in perpetual opposition. And then, in 1996, many of my predecessors formed a think-tank to generate ideas for the fledgling New Labour project. A year later, well, the rest is history.

For all of you still pretending that it is simply an “organisational” spat, who still believe in the platitudes that we are a broad church, be under no illusion. This is an ideological attack on Progress and the philosophy of New Labour, cloak and dagger.

In all honesty, anyone on the centre should have seen it coming. We were in the ascendancy for too long, and now we are in decline. That is the cyclical nature of internal Labour party politics, and it is now time for revenge. They’ve got their party back. For those of you who disliked Luke Akehurst’s Niemoller analogy, look away now: prepare for a period of Stalin-like rewriting of history. Unite call the last Labour government “a bitter disappointment”.

Why? Was there too much employment? Too high a quality of life (certainly better than before and now)? Did the minimum wage grind their gears? Perhaps the low number of strikes annoyed them. Or maybe there were too many hospitals and schools built, or the top tax rate was too low. I don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t what some union leaders had wanted. But it’s not just the past, and how bad New Labour was that draws union leaders’ ire. It’s the influence of New Labour now.

I should hope that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, two members of New Labour government, feel quite insulted that they are not thought to be able to think for themselves. The times that they adopt centrist policy, it is claimed by Unite, is only at the times that those nasty Blairites lean on them:

“‘it was Progress who argued that Labour’s front bench needed to support cuts and wage restraint. Congress regrets that Ed Miliband caved into this pressure. Congress notes with concern the support by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband for public sector pay restraint, thus giving credibility to Tory arguments about the deficit”.

For the record, Progress did not argue that.

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What we talk about when we talk about Tony

26/06/2012, 07:00:52 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour’s new policy supremo, Jon Cruddas, says that Tony Blair got worse the longer he was prime minister. Phil Collins, the Demos chair, not the Genesis drummer, says the opposite: Blair improved in office.

According to a speech that Cruddas delivered shortly before his appointment by Ed Miliband:

“From 1994 to 2001 Blair managed to build a liberal patriotic sentiment in the country; it subsequently collapsed. Blair set out as ethical socialist, ended as a neo-classicist.”

It all went wrong, on this account, when Cruddas stopped working for Blair. Collins disagrees. He thinks that Blair was a better prime minister by the time he was working for him at the end of his premiership.

When reviewing Anthony Seldon’s biography of Blair, Collins wrote:

“There is a common account of the Blair years that runs as follows: the first term contained some good things, hampered by excessive financial prudence; the second term was lost to Iraq; the third term was no more than a parade of vanity as a prime minister without authority hung on. This is conventional but a long way from wise … The second term was when Blair really found a method for reform of the public sector … The third term was, in many ways, the most fruitful: school reform, the NHS into surplus, pensions reform, energy, Northern Ireland – a good record for a supposedly defunct term.”

The man writing the next Labour manifesto has, therefore, succumbed to the conventional and un-wise. Perhaps this is a consequence of seeing politics, as Cruddas said in his speech, “more about emotion than programme; more groups, community and association – imagined as well as real – rather than theoretical or scientific”.

What Collins might praise as an effective method for public service reform, Cruddas may lament as a politics denuded of emotion. But when these judgements are made, they aren’t fundamentally judgements on Blair. They are windows onto the political soul of the judge.

What we talk about when we talk about Tony isn’t really Tony: it is political strategy.

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