Anyone else think Tony Blair is talking sense?

[Bleachedjeans]

And I have read his full essay online (twice)not just the cherry picked headlines in the papers. and I watched the interview on Radio 4 today.
I doubt Keir Starmer could have performed as well in an interview.
He makes a lot of good points, especially the one that this government doesn’t have clear policies for improvement.

Can the man who led us all in the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ debacle be trusted?
I am very interested in hearing other people’s opinions.

No. He doesn't

He does make valid points, Blair has always been a persuasive man.

He is as untrustworthy as they come, though.

Edited to add - make no mistake if he was PM now, we would be eyeball deep in the USA’s war with Iran.

No, and he doesn't provide any details to what he is proposing.

No i dont trust a word out of his mouth. Him and his son will earns millions from digital ID so of course he wants labour to stay in power. He is a weasal

Yes, I do.

We can no longer afford luxury beliefs.

A painful transition to living within our means is needed before anything can improve.

Hes always been very charasmatic unlike Keir Starmer but look where that got us?

His audacity is astounding.

Nooooooo. He’s an absolute cad and a bounder and whatever he’s doing is NOT in our best interests, but us definitely in his best interests. He’s a wolf. Avoid!

He could tell me the sky is blue, and I wouldn’t believe him.

He needs to skulk back to whatever rock he crawled from underneath. Vile man.

He was right about the welfare bill. Before anyone comes to start an argument about that, I'm absolutely not saying it's an easy fix. I have a close relative who has a complex range of disabilities which prevent him from working almost all jobs, and I certainly would not want his life to be made harder than it already is.

But Blair's essay says "By the end of this decade, we could be spending more on incapacity and disability benefits than on defence. No serious country can do that." He is right about this, I think.

I don't like him but he was a good thing for the labour party. Now the leftie loonies look set to take over.

I can't stand the man. The problem with the current lot is that they are not highlighting their successes. They're probably on track to deliver more of their manifesto pledges than TB's government was after this length of time, but that little nugget appears to have been omitted from his essay.

Starmer is a truly terrible leader, but Tony Blair is pure evil.

Please go away Tony. You had your turn.

I was idly wondering if he was planning to defect to the Tories, try to take over the Conservative Party from Kemi and then have another go at being PM. For this to actually happen the Tories would have to offer him a safe seat or make him a Lord.
If this is what he does, you heard it here first.

I should start by saying that I was a Labour member between 1995 & 2003. I met Blair several times between 95 & 97 when I was an activist in an important bellweather marginal seat in Derbyshire. I left the party over Iraq.

Blair is absolutely right about welfare & the pension triple lock. The cost of the current rate of growth of the benefits bill is completely unsustainable and the government (whichever party is in power) has to be brave enough to tackle it. The alternative is an inevitable debt crisis in which the markets do it for them, and that will be worse for everyone.

I partly agree with him about Brexit. It has been a complete disaster for the UK and it’s in all of our long-term interests to recognise this. The problem is that we won’t get the same deal we had when we were members of the EU, so rejoining will be a difficult & painful negotiation and we have to regain our economic & military strength in order to be in the best position to re-join.

I disagree with him on AI because he has swallowed the tech industry’s marketing propaganda wholesale and he is representing the views & interests of tech billionaires rather than those of working people. Presumably because the billionaires are the ones bankrolling his ‘institute’. He is completely & hopelessly out of touch with ordinary people and with their concerns about AI destroying their jobs and their children’s futures.

Can you expand?

I don’t set much credit on the opinion of a war criminal. He should be rotting in jail.

Thank you. It’s interesting to hear from someone who has been in the thick of it.

Isn't he on trumps peace gang board or whatever it is? I wouldn't trust anyone a part of that as far as I could throw them.

He keeps poking his nose in. I suspect he wants some sort of consultancy job or a contract for his son’s company.
It will be self serving of that I have no doubt.

Speculating some more about what he is really up to, beyond serving his own commercial interests or indulging some hubris...
Suppose he did join the Tories and become the leader before the next GE, under the existing electoral system.
That GE would then be:
Andy Burnham (Lab, tbc) vs
Tony Blair (Cons) vs
Nigel Farage

Also raising the profile of his 'thinktank'.

Even a stopped clock (or a war criminal) is right twice a day.

And he is right on this one.

The UK was already in steep decline. The bunch or idiots headed up by Starmer have accelerated it. This country is doomed.

Plenty of people have said that the Government doesn't appear to have a vision, a clear plan or any coherent polices, so at one level Blair hasn't really said anything new. But of course he no longer has the labour party or country to worry about (if he ever did), just his institute and its relevance, along with all his commercial interests. So one has to question his motivation for saying what he has, when he has said it...

And of course the Blair legacy is hardly one to be proud of. His position on Iran today is clearly framed so as to minimise his gross, verging on negligent if not criminal mistakes around Iraq. His presence on Trump's 'peace' board is frankly bizarre. On the economy he did well to start with, because his government just stuck to the previous governments plans and even had a modest budget surplus as a result. But then it went on a spending and borrowing spree such that when they had left office they had built a structural gap between receipts and expenditure of over £100 billion a year. Just think what that would buy in today's money Yes, the country felt fairly prosperous in the late 90s but it was living way beyond it's means, and one could argue has been ever since. But, they did deliver growth, and everyone felt good so it was not all bad :)

It would only be vaguely repeatable if the government had a plan for growth...

https://tenor.com/bCVLu.gif