It is unusual for a governing party under 2 years into government to undertake a public debate about what it believes and what it should be doing. This is what Tony Blair has asked them to do , writing a powerful and interesting essay with some wise words in it. He is right that so far they have drifted leftwards from the stance adopted to win the election, and have u turned on many occasions when public opinion and or unhappy backbenchers tell them something is unpopular and will not work. He makes the point that there is no purpose served by having a leadership contest before the party has decided what it wants to do and how it is going to do it. He could have added that the Starmer winning Manifesto in the last election was careful not to overpromise or to threaten us with radical change. There is no mandate from the election for a socialist experiment in further largescale wealth and income redistribution. There is no mandate for a more thoroughly nationalised and state controlled economy.
Some in Labour disliking Mr Blair can riposte that a leadership election could force the candidates to propose different visions and to grapple during the leadership election itself with what the party thinks it now is and what it wants to do. The problem with that idea is the party should feel bound by the few General election promises it did make that cut through and were part of the decision making process of many voters. Most wanted faster economic growth, and that was the central pledge. Many wanted proper control of borders and liked the sound of Smash the gangs. Most were relieved with the promise not to increase main taxes on people. Many believed they would just make marginal changes to VAT on schools and to income tax on rich foreigners.
Instead Starmer and Reeves embarked on a reckless increase in spending, part financed by aggressive tax rises on enterprise, business, farms, shops, success and jobs. Despite this they are seen by many in Labour as too mean, not expanding the public sector even more quickly and extensively. Any new policy needs to start from the realisation that Starmer and Reeves have pushed the extra spending, taxing and borrowing too far already. The markets are uncomfortable and the voters largely angry and feeling cheated. We have not been living under 40 years of neo liberal market based economics, but under a highly overregulated EU style slow growth economy, nearly bankrupted by Labour’s banking crash and recession 2007-10.
The Labour MPs and Ministers are talking to themselves and a few Green party voters with ideas to spend and borrow and tax more. Far from bringing faster growth and some relief from tight finances this route will bring more disaster on the government. The answer to youth unemployment is not more subsidies but more jobs. More jobs require tax cuts for businesses that might create them, and ending the bans that stop them.Debt interest is already through the roof and Rachel Reeves has to pay much more to borrow than Liz Truss. The markets do not see Rachel Reeves as some tight fisted right winger, but as a left inclining spender who has already pushed the limits of what the UK can afford. If there is to be a new Prime Minister who wants a more left wing Chancellor and approach, he or she will be speeding a bond crisis that could see interest rates much higher and the UK state forced by markets into reducing its appetite for loans.
May 31, 2026
John, When we see Blair as a moderator of the Labour Party excesses it really is time to ask ourselves a few serious questions about where we are.
Blair is the architect of deindustrialised Britain. Blair is the founder of the ever expanding Public Sector position that has come to regard itself as the democracy and not the voters. Blair was the founder of open borders, his principle helpers were Peter Mandelson, Alistair Campbell and of course his eventual successor Gordon Brown.
Is it any wonder the Nation is is chaos and lacking self belief when those characters spent their entire time denouncing all that was and is best about the United Kingdom. Let us remember it was Blair who turbo charged the deconstruction of that United Kingdom by devolution for Wales and Scotland.
It is not a pretty legacy and certainly not one that gives his the ongoing elder statesman position he is granted by the establishment and the BBC in particular.
Labour are on a mission. We are all victims of their flawed ideology and their profound incompetence in government.
We must do all we can to advance the general election. We have to get them out.
May 31, 2026
A few wise words from now Tory Blair – do what it takes to stop illegal immigration and ditch net zero, sort out welfare bills all blindingly obvious but he is still pro EU but does not mention the vast levels of low skilled legal immigration nor the vile two tier justice and policing system we have.
But Blair was the start of all these problems – see David Starkey’s Tony Blair was worse than two world wars video.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bruges.group/posts/10162927948544936/
Alas Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak just built on the New Labour lunacy of Blair and Brown rather than undoing it.
Blair asks “Does our economy need right now the goal of clean energy or cheap energy?” Nothing dirty about CO2 plant, tree and crop food and the gas of life Tony. I suppose Blair dropped science at 16 like most lawyers. We should drill, frack, mine and invest more in nuclear. The so called renewables/unreliables are fine where they work and are cost effective without subsidies or market rigging. But this is rarely the case.
The other would be PM essays all just say the doom loop anti-growth Labour lunacy should continue but with a different less robotic and less despises face at the top.
May 31, 2026
“Starmer and Reeves embarked on a reckless increase in spending, part financed by aggressive tax rises on enterprise, business, farms, shops, success and jobs.”
Aggressive NI tax rises that Starmer promised not to do and anyway will raise less tax not more (in the medium term) as will the evil VAT on school fees lunacy from the dire and bitter Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson. Rarely have government raised more that 38% of GDP in tax and we are spending (largely wasting or actually doing net harm with more like 45% of GDP.