Everyone else is thinking it, so I’m just going to say it: we need Tony Blair back in Downing Street. I don’t know by what mechanism and I don’t especially care. A by-election would be ideal, I suppose. They’re all the rage these days. Sedgefield is now known as Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (ugh) and Alan Strickland should do the decent thing and step down in the national interest. If for some reason this didn’t work out, there’s always the Lords. I’ve never been keen on this modern convention that prime ministers cannot lead from the upper house. The last PM who did so was, of course, the Marquess of Salisbury. He left office for the third and final time in 1902, and it’s been all downhill ever since.
Blair’s essay is the talk of Westminster not because it’s being pushed by a shadowy network of Centrist Dad columnists, as his obsessive and orcish right-wing haters imagine, but because he is the first prime minister since, well, himself to grasp the scale of Britain’s maladies and, most important of all, be prepared to take radical action to remedy them. In contrast to all those useless Tory prime ministers who presided over unprecedented waves of illegal immigration, Blair says: ‘We should deal by whatever means with small boats.’ He even uses the phrase ‘whatever it takes’. While the Tories cling to gerontocratic socialism, redistributing wealth from young workers to older retirees, Blair calls the triple lock ‘unaffordable long term’, and says the two main parties should work to reform welfare.
Unlike Starmer, whose government is failing to meet its own (modest) house-building targets, Blair denounces planning laws as an ‘abomination’ and urges ‘truly radical reform’. Labour remains prisoner to ideology and sentiment but Blair slaughters sacred cows left and right. He says that Britain ‘must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources’ and proposes ‘whole-system health-care reform’ with a ‘fundamental realignment’ of private and public provision.
This. This is exactly what we need. Political Nikeism: just do it. Can’t reform government because the civil service says no? Replace the civil service with political appointees and just do it. Can’t build data centres because Susan, a retired dental hygienist from Wiltshire, thinks they cause cancer? Build one on her front lawn and everywhere else they’re needed. Just do it. Can’t deport Johnny Jihad because, as everyone knows, the ECHR was specifically drafted to uphold the inalienable right to dinghy your way to Dover, claim your social housing, and knife the odd kafir when the notion takes you? Disapply the convention, amend the Human Rights Act, and if need be withdraw from the Refugee Convention. Just do it.
Blair was an effective leader because he was a Nikeist. He just did it. Followed his instincts, which were more often than not in tune with those of the British public, and because he did so he got things done. Sometimes those things were bad things because, being in sync with the British public, Blair is a bit of an authoritarian. All that ASBOs/marching toe rags to cash machines/illiberal speech laws stuff. No more of that, Tony. And, no, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room. Before he is allowed to return to No. 10, Tony will have to show contrition for his worst mistake, his gravest failure of judgement, the betrayal for which millions of Brits simply cannot forgive him. Yes, he will have to make a heartfelt, televised apology for setting up the Scottish Parliament.
There are a few tragic souls who would object to my proposal. A fourth term for Tony Blair (and fifth! and sixth!) would make the left and the nationalist right miserable – just abjectly, soul-shreddingly despondent – and while I’m not saying that’s as good a reason as any to get Tony back, it totally is as good a reason as any to get Tony back. On a more serious note – because I am stone-cold serious about this – a Blair revival is the only hope for this country’s future. There is no one on the national political scene with a fraction of his steel, his nous, his charisma, his determination or his superstardom. And before any of you Gen-Z whippersnappers call him a boomer because he came along before your Tiketty Toks and your Snapstagrams and your intersectional avocado toast, know this: he is one of the good boomers. He tuned in, turned on, but didn’t drop out.
The Blair era might have frustrated intellectuals, but for the average Brit it was a time of prosperity
He dug the music and the freedoms and the bewildered shudder of an old order greeting the new; he wanted to change things and, his father being a Tory, he naturally became an earnest young barrister. But in time he put away childish things and grew into one of the foremost centre-left politicians of the post-war West, a radical pragmatist who was practical about ends and unsentimental about means. He called his Labour Party ‘the political wing of the British people’, but it wasn’t the party, it was him personally. He prospered in politics by making himself an avatar of the popular will. Labourism is the theory that power belongs to the people but is best exercised by privately educated trade union lackeys who hate their guts. Blairism is the theory that maybe the people know what’s best for themselves.
Nineties nostalgia is huge right now, and if Oasis can do a comeback tour, why can’t that other Britpop icon, Tony ‘Ugly Rumours’ Blair? The Blair era might have frustrated intellectuals, who regarded it as a philosophically and culturally moribund epoch, but for the average Brit it was a time of prosperity, jobs, falling poverty, border security, public investment and optimism. Britannia was cool, everyone loved J. K. Rowling, the countryside wasn’t racist, Nigella Lawson was never off the telly, and hating the Jews was still an impediment to a career in progressive politics. Britain can have a bright future again, but only if it is led by a figure equal to the moment. There is one person who fits the bill. Go on, Tony. Just do it.
ENDS
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