Tony Blair warns Labour to avoid identity politics

I love that pledge. I absolutely bloody love it. It proves everything we've been saying is one hundred per cent, copper bottomed true. They can no longer wriggle out and say we're crazy and of course not. They signed a fucking pledge with every last scrap in glorious technicolour.

It works wonders when discussing this with ordinary, decent, sensible people. As does Julia Long's getting Nandy to agree that she thinks male rapists belong in women's prisons, self-ID. So solely and purely if they want to be in one.

Hard for people to ignore that sort of clarity, when what is being sought is the most eyewateringly women-hating actions it is possible to imagine - to anyone not drenched in Kool Aid, at least.

That pledge, and these hustings, have done so much for the gender critical cause. All we needed was people to know what was happening, and now that genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

No pledge wouldn't alter the direction of travel. It would just have disguised it. And disguise only benefits regulatory capture.

With the 'defect from birth' bit, I guess he's referring to the way the Labour party, when it came along, split the non-Tory vote, when it might have been more effective to have worked with New Liberals to make a sustainable progressive alliance from the outset.

Just listening to them discuss this on World at 1 and they played a bit of his speech. It does like he’s come out with an awful lot of common sense.

I love TB. And say it often. It’s made me an unpopular in the Labour Party as well. We need another Tony desperately

I've just written pretty much that on another thread and was coming on here to say it again Langsdestiny

Until he went berserk and supported the Iraq War Tony Blair did do many good things. He also understood how to get into power.

No surely he means the exact opposite. The difference between Blair and the current crop is that he wanted to be elected.

Blair is a more skilled politician than anyone Labour has at the moment. If they actually listened to him, Johnson would be very worried indeed.

Read the article, wondered about this:

"In his speech opening the event, Blair said Labour should examine trying to “correct the defect from our birth” that separated Liberal and Labour traditions on the left." (my bolding)

What on earth does that mean? That Labour should never have been born, they should all have joined the Liberals instead?

I picked that up too mimi

These awful pledges have at least brought this out of hiding and into mainstream discussion.

The more exposure to this destructive regime, the better.

His clear comment that he would not have signed the pledge because'there are other things that need to be resolved first '
I have little time for Tony Blair but a simple comment illustrating the lack of political nous with all the leadership candidates

I bloody love him. It's my most controversial opinion (as a Labour party member) and I've got a few