Tony blair

Tony Blair has made his predictable intervention in the Labour leadership contest. At an event with the Progress think tank in London this morning, the former Prime Minister made his pitch for the New Labour-ish direction Labour should be heading. Unsurprisingly, it’s somewhat different to the sentiments that have dominated the leadership race so far: ‘We won not because we did what we thought was wrong as a matter of principle but right as a matter of politics; but when we realised that what is right as a matter of policy is right as a matter of principle. ‘Labour shouldn’t despair. We can win again. We can win again next

With rumours flying around the Commons that if elected, Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn would appoint a Shadow Peace Secretary in the place of a Shadow Defence Secretary, Mr S is also looking forward to hearing Corbyn’s plans to reform judicial punishment. However, Mr S is happy to place a bet on his approach not being as radical as a crime policy Tony Blair heaped praise on while in power. In today’s Times, Blair’s former chief speechwriter Philip Collins reveals what happened when he put forward a paper which suggested Blair take a less liberal approach when it came to dealing with crime: ‘The Blair government was, to my mind, daftly authoritarian

I’ve often wondered if Freudian theories could be applied to the Left in the same way they have been applied to the Right in the past. Is there an equivalent, for example, of The Authoritarian Personality but perhaps labelled The Moralising Personality, which would explain the mind-set of so many people? (I agree with this writer that a lot of people who rail against patriarchy seem to have a direct problem with their own fathers. It’s also curious how some strident feminists convert to Islam, which could possibly be something to do with their dads. But maybe that’s at the root of my own political insanity, too.) Moral righteousness is not confined to the Left, but it appears to

George Osborne had a ringside seat for New Labour’s dominance of British politics and you could see the influence that this has had on him in the Budget. First, there was Osborne’s determination to unpick the structural changes that Gordon Brown had made to move British politics to the left. So, Osborne took the axe to tax credits not only limiting the numbers who’ll receive them in future, down from nine out of ten families with children in 2010 to five in ten by 2020, but he also attacked the intellectual rationale for them, arguing that they have actually kept wages down. But the Budget also owed something to Tony

Ed Miliband believed that after the financial crisis, Britain had moved to the left. He argued that there was no need to adopt all the Blairite positions to win. The election result appears to have disproved that thesis. But, as Andy Grice argues in his column today, Blairite is still being chucked around as the insult of choice in this Labour leadership contest. As Grice points out, Labour particularly need the Blair agenda’s ability to connect with English swing voters now given what has happened in Scotland. In a world in which the swing required for Labour to win Midlothian is larger than to take Kensington, Labour will have to

Although Richard Desmond recently pledged his allegiance to Ukip’s Nigel Farage, the media mogul previously backed Tony Blair, with the owner of the Express papers donating £100,000 to Labour in 2001. Now, in his new biography Richard Desmond: The Real Deal, Desmond claims that he made a £5,000 profit from the donation. Desmond writes that the donation came about after he attended a dinner with Lord Alli: ‘Waheed said Tony really liked me. Would I make a contribution to the party? What they didn’t realise was that I had put everything I’d ever had – some £37 million – into the Express, along with £97 million that I had borrowed, my house and

If you peer deep into the statute book, you will see that it is still an offence to enter parliament wearing armour. Even more amazing, it has been a crime since 1313. I mention this because the moment has again come for parliament to clear some of the redundant legislative noise off its books. This is a time-honoured process, and one that is becoming increasingly complex thanks to the sheer volume of modern legislation. A cursory wander through a suitable library will reveal that the statutes passed during the reigns of our medieval monarchs are neatly grouped together in a handful of surprisingly slim volumes. Back then, good rule was

Tony Blair popped into King’s College London this morning to discuss ‘how to run a government’ with his former adviser Michael Barber. Amongst other things, the former Prime Minister discussed David Cameron’s efforts to remodel No.10 to make it more Blair like, as James reveals in his column this week. But he made no attempt to disguise the fact that he thinks structures are no substitute for the ‘guy’ at the top being on the case 24/7 when looking to deliver change: ‘It works when you have the clearest possible sense of priorities and what you want to achieve … you’ve got to have the Prime Minister’s authority behind this all the time. ‘My

Following months of speculation, Tony Blair has finally announced he is standing down as the Quartet Representative to the Middle East after eight years in the post. It is tempting to ask whether anyone will notice. His time in the job has been marked by a stagnation of the Peace Process, a hardening of the position of increasingly belligerent Israeli governments and a growing distrust among the Palestinians. Tony Blair himself had long become an irrelevance in negotiations. The truth is that Blair was hamstrung from the moment he took the job (immediately after he stood down as Prime Minister in 2007). He was never a ‘Peace Envoy’, although there was

Reports are coming in that Tony Blair is set to stand down as a peace envoy to the Middle East. AP is reporting that the former Prime Minister has tendered his resignation to the Quartet on the Middle East — consisting of representatives from the US, EU, Russia and the UN — and will leave in June. Blair has worked for the Quartet for several years, joining on a wave of publicity and hope in 2007. But with the collapse of the US-led peace talks last year, as well as continual questions about his business links, his efforts to bring peace to the region have been doomed. Given that Blair’s foreign policy reputation is already toxic

With Chuka Umunna out, the choice for Labour party members is simple. If they want to win the next election they will choose Liz Kendall as their next leader. There is a very simple test for suitability for the job: their reply to the question ‘did the last Labour government spend too much money?’ Kendall is the only one who has passed. On yesterday’s Newsnight she was straightforward: yes, Labour did spend too much. Yvette Cooper, by contrast, said on Radio 4 this morning: ‘I think there were things that we were spending wrongly on, there were issues that we would have been spending money, too much money on –

What’s Labour’s problem? Following its fantastic drubbing at the polls, the most common answer to that question is that the party has for too long ignored its traditional base: working-class voters. Among media Labourites in particular, those currently writing emotionally unhinged articles about how isolated they feel in this cruel new Britain — bless ’em — this has become the go-to excuse for Labour’s rubbishness in recent years. Yes, there’s the issue of Tory-backing Rupert Murdoch’s stranglehold on people’s mushy minds, they say, revealing their disdain for tabloid readers. And there’s the apparently irresistible lure of the Tories’ politics of fear, which they believe ensnared a dumb electorate, once again

Tony Blair once counted Noel Gallagher as one of New Labour’s key celebrity backers. However, under Ed Miliband’s leadership, Labour can rely on no such support from the musician. In an interview on Alan Carr’s Chatty Man, which airs tonight, the former Oasis member said he was unable to endorse any politician out of the current line-up: ‘I’m not sure I can get behind any of them at the minute. I dunno. The fact that Cameron didn’t turn up for the debate is a disgrace. I think that Miliband, if he gets in, is just going to fail us.’ And why would Miliband fail? ‘Because he is a f**king communist.’ Mr S suspects it’s