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Sunday 29 May 2016

The Tony Blair issue

Tony Blair - also known as former Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party, the man responsible for Blairism and New Labour, and one of the biggest red Tories out there. I try not to talk about Tony Blair if it can be avoided, I think ultimately the involvement of Tony Blair in current political affairs is counter-productive - let me explain. Tony Blair is not representative of the Labour Party or at the very least, he is not representative of what the Labour Party is now in 2016. We are moving past the times of New Labour and Blairism ('bout time) and entering the age of Corbynism, Labour are becoming reconnected with the grassroots movement, the links with the trade unions and socialist parties, that they began with.



The issue being that Tony Blair continues to make public statements about the status of the Labour Party and his opinion is still widely listened to and respected by people, the words he says still make an impact because of the position of power he once had. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if he was productively supporting the party he claims to be backing, but all Blair seemingly does when making statements about the Labour Party is complain that they've moved too far to the left since he left government which does nothing but undermine the party. When someone with that amount of political influence makes sweeping statements like it would be a 'very dangerous experiment' if Jeremy Corbyn's Labour with its 'populist policy-making' got into power, it is an outright endorsement for the Conservatives, they can and they will capitalise on the fact that a so-called Labour supporter (and not just any so-called Labour supporter but the one who just so happened to be Prime Minister for 10 years) isn't even supporting Labour under its current leadership, and that to me sounds much more dangerous an experiment than the idea of a Corbynite government.

Not only do Blair's statements endorse the far right, they also reignite support for New Labour which divides not just the members of the party but also members of the public. Division in the Labour party is feeding right into the hands of the Tories and we cannot afford to give them fodder in political discourse. It is vital that the Labour party are united under the common goal of defeating the Tories, and that cannot happen when red Tories are bringing down the party from the inside. What's being presented from that is that Labour's internal politics are not consistent, why would anyone vote for a party that can't unite and inspire their own members let alone the general population? Outside of the party, members of the public are reminded of New Labour and it's possible that they could defect to Tory because Blair is essentially saying that if Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party gets into power, it would be disastrous. It's blatant that Blair is telling us to vote for an alternative, and in this two-party state realistically the only alternative is Conservative. If members of the public who support New Labour take on board what Blair is saying, we may have possibly lost a huge chunk of Labour support - I repeat, we cannot afford to do that.

Another issue with Blair chipping in on these issues is that a lot of people don't respect his opinion and may completely disagree with him - myself included! This is a problem though, because if miraculously Blair does stop bitching about Jeremy Corbyn and gets behind Labour before 2020, this could be a negative endorsement for Labour and could result in people abstaining from voting. Jeremy Corbyn's tagline when running for leader was that he was advocating 'a new kind of politics' and a move away from centrist* Blairite policies. If Jeremy Corbyn is advertising a non-Blairite style of government and he is endorsed by the biggest Blairite there is, Blair, I somehow doubt that many people will be convinced that Labour are going to act any differently to how they have when they have previously been in power. Tony Blair's input in this discussion is not remotely helpful for the left, and Labour has and always will be fundamentally at its core a left wing party, so if Blair cares as much as he claims about the future of Labour, he would do the admirable thing and stop publicly making statements about Labour. It's counter-productive and Tony Blair should no longer have access to this public platform.

On a final note - Tony, if you want to talk about a 'very dangerous experiment', do you want to talk Iraq?

*BLAIRISM IS NOT CENTRIST IN THE SLIGHTEST. LET'S BE REAL. 

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