Has Tony Blair shifted far right?

[WildEnergySupplier]

Tony Blair was always a warmonger with Iraq, but he seems to have gone full on far right / Reform now, criticising Starmer for not jumping in with Trump and the US on Iran.

He's saying we should have let them use our bases straight away and "show up" for America no matter what.

He also said Labour has made mistakes by spending more on welfare, focussing on Net Zero, increasing taxes on businesses..

Has he completely lost the plot? This sounds like proper far right policy to me.

I used to think Blair was centre-ground New Labour, but this feels like he's shifted hard right. In fact it's giving me proper far right / racist vibes.

Where has he disagreed with anti racism?

I don't necessarily agree with him but none of what you have mentioned in your OP is any indication of being far right.

I don't think you know what 'far right' actually means.

Really? the exact opposite, the whole of UK politics has shifted to the right, not a single Labour policy could ever be described as left wing.

Even their Renters Rights Act was a cut n paste Tory policy and the employment rights bill is very weak compared to anything in comparable euro economies.

That's what I think.

He has some interesting things to say. Not so much on foreign policy (which he made a hash of when he was PM) but on other issues.

The Labour party have been trying to avoid - as you say - important difficult conversations about complex subjects.

They don't want to alienate any one group of voters but the effect is they don't appear to have much conviction about anything.

His views on domestic policy aren't far right, they are things that need to be discussed and he was a very successful PM for many years - partly because people saw him as a leader which they are struggling to see with Starmer.

Is Tony Blair far right?? I mean I know he is deeply unpopular in many labour circles and will forever be associated negatively with the Iraq War. You may not like him, that is fine. But bloody hell the man is definitely not a fascist!

Whilst not far right, he is v quiet on Trump, silent on the atrocities in Gaza/Lebanon, says little about the Cons, Reform or Restore but when he does put pen to paper... he does a hatchet job on Labour....

He has become, like some people in old age, right wing.

The Net Zero legislation was brought in under Theresa May though? And the various programmes ef new housing standards were carried through by Johnson and Sunak (and I don't think Truss had time to do anything about though she might have wanted to).

One of the reasons people ARE going far right is because Labour are terrified of making an actual decision. Domestic politics in the UK has been plagued by indecision and dreadful fudges in order to avoid alienating voters. It hasn't worked because it's allowed problems to grow and fester.

The centre is all about having difficult grown up conversations rather than name calling - eg "far right".

People want to find solutions and they want to get to grips with identifying issues that aren't easy to solve.

Blair is frankly stating the bleeding obvious to many.

He has always been a war hawk, and killing brown people for political abstractions like ‘democracy’ has always been his thing.

Only a fool would suggest that getting closer to a vile individual like Trump is a good idea.

Blair seems to only worry about making money these days and has gone full on Tory and seem to have given on on whatever few principles and decency he had left.

Also let's remember that this was the guy who took Peter Mandelson's advice throughout his tenure as PM, another extremely dodgy politician and human being, and who chose to use dodgy 'facts' to justify the Iraq war.

Frankly I am surprised anyone still listens to his rantings.

No.

He's saying that the lefts failure to talk about x, y and z is its own failure and it needs to take ownership of this. Unless it has those conversations it can't identify problems that are central to voters - it's just having a back slapping conversation with itself. If it can't accurately identify problems, it can't draw up policy that the public like and support. Instead it allows the right to do this and set policy whilst it has nothing to offer in response.

One of the issues with politics is if you spend the entire time blaming the opposition for problems when you are in power is you are utterly pointless and have wasted the opportunity you have been given by the public. You are fully of meaningless hot air rather than being a doer who gets things done.

The Labour party has become the party of virtue signalling rather than achieving anything practical in line with it's historic values. Any serious party which wants to stay in power needs to do more than just blow and have slick socials.

Meanwhile whilst there's a lot of hot air elsewhere, the doing bit isn't being tested.

They closed all the sure start centres and stripped education to the bone from 2010 onwards. It’s only under this new Labour government that sure start centres are opening again.

Evidently a significant cohort on MN will never support any policy which would jeopardise their welfare entitlement.

It’s blindingly obvious, and yet it’s also unsustainable.

Only ignorant people use those two terms interchangeably. Do you think they mean the same thing?? How insulting to non Zionist Jewish people.

I wasn't referring to them shutting the centres. You said Tony Blair did a good thing. I said Tories do do good things some times. Just because he did a good thing doesn't make him not a natural Tory.

I think he did a lot of good - SureStart etc - and that his legacy was overshadowed by Iraq, and definately gave him the benefit of the doubt re the dodgy dossier - there was evidence, albeit dodgy, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

But to say that Britian should have unquestionably supported Trumps war on Iran was bizzare - Trump is a war criminal, blindly supporting Netanyahu, another war criminal, and he thinks that the UK should have joined in?

Thank god there wasn't a Reform/Tory got in place. Baddenoch took the same position as Blair initially, though she'd like us all to forget that now.

Tony Blair was always cent left.
The fact that you now think hes far right shows you how far to the left the Overton window has been shifted.
@WildEnergySupplier the fact is we have got so used to the far left and their dangerous demands that even normal centrist are labeled far right.
People forget that the far left are just as dangerous as the far right (infact they are more so having murdered more people that the far right ever has)
We seriously need a reset of the Overton window so we can stop labelling normal centerists as far right and recognise that large swathes of labour are now hard left and the greens are extreme far left who should never be allowed near power, before the general public who are and always have been center right will vote in a hard right or truly far right government in response to the actions of the hard and far left policies of labour and the greens.
The people who like to bang on about the far right and rise of so called facisim in the uk never want to talk about the far left or warn about stalinisim (remember that it was stalin who gave us the phrase "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic") have you ever stopped and asked yourself why or why horseshoe politics is no longer taught even though its a true and accurate description of both the far right and the far left

He's a neocon in neoliberal clothing.

He is definitely not far right, he’s right about net zero we make f all emissions compared to China for example, that said Tony Blair should be in prison for war crimes.

🤔Surely you can only have left of centre and right of centre? Gets a bit boggling otherwise!

Blair didn't bring in austerity that was the result of the 2008 banking crash that had Gordon Brown as PM followed by David Cameron.
Honestly im not fan of Blair but if you want to be taken seriously stop blaming people for things that they weren't part of or we will assume that you are lieing about everything

Teflon Tony.

His even more loathsome sidekick, Campbell.

The image of him smiling with sunglasses and oil field burning in background.

His latest "Tony Blair Institute of __"

And his property portfolio, in a country where housing is a struggle for many.

I’ll answer your question if you answer the question I asked you first: who in British mainstream politics isn’t “pro Zionist” in your opinion?

Being very simplistic, there’s a left wing party (Labour) and a Right wing party (Conservatives).

Blair used to be on the right of the Labour Party he led.

His best political home now would probably be to the left of the Tory party.

(just my opinion of course & he may well still self identify as a Labour supporter).

@SmashThePatriarchy , I know it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. @WildEnergySupplier

He lost all credibility for me when he suggested that Starmer’s government should have ripped up its manifesto pledges on workers’ rights, the environment and tax once it was elected. I can only imagine the outcry if that had happened. I wish he’d get back in his box and shut up.