Tony Blair’s missing project

The former PM’s essay fails to reckon with the real choices on austerity, tax, welfare and energy

Tonight on Arguably, Torsten Bell, the Treasury minister and former Resolution Foundation director, responds to Tony Blair’s major essay on Labour’s future. This piece is paid but you can read it now by becoming a full subscriber or signing up for a seven-day free trial.

Tony Blair during a visit to Ukraine (Shutterstock)

Famously, Tony Blair knows how to win elections, so we should always listen to what he has to say. He also knows how to write. In over 5,000 words, he has put that on full display in his new essay on the future of Labour. He has done so in a way that reminds us all of what is in many ways his greatest gift: to lay out a political argument grounded in his own view of the global trends shaping the future (that was globalisation in the 2000s, but in the 2020s technology – and AI in particular – is centre stage).

The key argument of the essay – that getting the policy right, not the politics, must come first – is spot on. But, awkwardly, the truth is that this essay fails to live up to its own advice. Blair paints in broad brushstrokes but pays far too little attention to the canvas for those brushstrokes: modern Britain. He rightly highlights the technological and geopolitical changes shaping our world, but not their gritty interaction with Britain in the 2020s.