Boris Johnson’s Blairism is bamboozling Labour

Is Boris Johnson the Blairite who may not speak his name?

All the PM’s talk of levelling up rather than levelling down? That is pure, plagiarised Blairism.

Fixing public services – like chaotic Northern Rail – with a focus on what works, rather than an ideological attachment to private sector or public sector ownership?

That would be Blairism mirrored – inverted in the sense that Blair’s mission with Labour supporters was to make the case for the private sector, whereas Johnson needs to remove the stigma of public ownership for Tories.

As for allowing Huawei to build a third of the UK’s new superfast digital networks – more than a hint there of Blairite triangulation, in that by creating incentives and pressure to squeeze out Huawei over time, there is an attempt to reconcile the Tories’ manifesto promise to roll out new digital services as soon as possible with his Tory colleagues’ anxieties about giving a Chinese colossus such a pivotal position in critical infrastructure.

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And conspicuously both talk up and talked up toughness on crime and on causes of crime – though perhaps with differently calibrated weightings of importance.