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.

Oh sorry, I do agree!

But voters like simple messages.

We have Reform promising to fund all the policy wish list / giveaways by "cutting wasteful Government spending " which is either undeliverable or will produce bugger all in £.

Then we have the Greens promising to fund their policies/ giveaways by simply printing money (hyperinflation in Weimar Germany or Zimbabwe anyone?)

There is absolutely zero economic credibility in either Reform or the Greens but the voters seem to love it.

Oh boy i just read what he's saying now in the Mail. He's further right than ever! He wants Labour to collaborate with the Tories to cut the welfare bill, it's extraordinary 😲

@WildEnergySupplier, calling for welfare reform, affordable energy and support for business is not “far right”.

Labelling culture has shifted and I think that poses a greater threat to society than anything Blair has to say.

Does welfare reform frighten you that much? Should we not have some level of control over immigration. Is any call for such control automatically racist.

Tony Blair may be many things to many people but calling him a far right racist is stretching reality.

OP, you may need to read a bit more, follow more diverse forms of media and news outlets and aim for informed opinion over emotional outrage.

On the anti fascist
point, Zac Polanski hates capitalism, wants to nationalise key industries, is intolerant of opposing views - questioning whether the "far right" should be part of society (he gets to decide who are defined as far right), blames our problems on millionaires, billionaires and Jews and to top it off is a vegetarian.

OK he is missing a funny little moustache but does that remind you of anyone in particular?

Don’t believe everything anything you read in The Mail but if he’s really suggested this he’s just proving that most people move right with age. Thank goodness I’m the exception that proves the rule.

@Imdunfer Any sensible person would understand the economics of what he’s saying. We must cut welfare spending and also pensions should not be triple locked. We have the lowest birth rate since the 70s. There’s no way our economy can sustain what we want oit if it. Fools think money is just growing but we simply don’t have enough to keep paying people more for doing nothing. We need growth and yet we over tax business so it cannot grow. There’s fewer jobs so higher welfare spend. Who exactly is going to pay for this endless demand. Overall Blair is right. We keep borrowing and don’t remotely care about what this means for anyone paying tax. There is only so much we can do and you really do need to understand taxation and spending.

Maybe Tony Blair had moved more to the right simply because he has just got older:

https://youtube.com/shorts/_iLc6FhugJ8?si=oMMjIKESRM73PBKX

It's just common sense to think that growth is a necessary prerequisite for both progress and to provide a functional safety net for those who are vulnerable. But we have no growth, taxation is too high, spending is too high and borrowing is too high - pretending more of the same will produce anything more than misery is an exercise in self delusion. If you want to say that's a marker of the left, then I have come to agree with you.

Who exactly is going to pay for this endless demand.

Well we could encourage selective immigration to fill labour shortages and increase tax revenue but that’s been royally fucked over now.

@BlossomtoesHow does that increase tax revenue? It’s a drop in the ocean! We do have selective immigration hence the immigration numbers have dropped a lot. Had you not noticed? Neither is there a lot of work.

@Upstartled Yes, the left are utterly deluded. Blair is much more on the money.

How do you get growth without workers to create it? Before Brexit the economic effect of immigration was net positive. Now all the EU trades people have gone home we can’t build anything because we don’t have skilled trades to do it. We have a shortage of nurses, care workers and farm workers. It’s ridiculous to suggest there was no upside to immigration pre 2016.

@BIossomtoes, has any country implemented a sustainable immigration system that genuinely benefits the nation economically, socially and culturally?

Western countries are struggling with this and any voice that raises this question is automatically branded racist.

You have obviously missed my strident defences of capitalism in all the pro socialism threads.

You increase productivity.

Otherwise all you've got is higher GDP but stagnant GDP per capita which is an illusion of growth that leaves nobody any better off.

@BlossomtoesWe have people of working age in abundance! They just don’t want to work or have the wrong skills! These people need to be working. We need some immigration of course but we are paying out vast sums to people doing nothing or very little. We have a system that mitigates against working.

How do you increase productivity without workers? Do you even know what productive means?

Well, you can start by taking the brakes off our businesses with punitive taxation, by not making minimum wage so high that you cut the legs off youth employment and put 1 in 7 hospitality venues out of business, by not ploughing money from the treasury into the welfare budget to silence the backbenchers and use it to push through ambitious projects, you can be more moderate in our net zero goals and ensure you aren't hobbling manufacturing for mad Ed's vanity.

You can make sure that you aren't creating perverse incentives by making tax so high that workers pull their punches and give up on ambition and settle for work/ life balance.

Off the top of my head, I mean, I'm no chess-master economist chancellor but something like that?

Off the top of my head, I mean, I'm no chess-master economist chancellor but something like that?

I mean, if we take that factually, neither is Reeves!

@Upstartled Totally correct. Growth and wellbeing comes from employers and business. It’s vital business is given space and incentives to grow. All the left worries about is profits which are viewed as greedy and grubby. Risk takers need rewards and we punish risk takers and then wonder why there’s no growth. The left will punish business even more.

Given our discussions on other threads, this is frankly hilarious. You get so much wrong about economics I wouldn't know where to start trying to correct you. Plenty of people have pointed out your errors to you, which the last time I recall had you posting a document claiming that it showed that the person it relates to had paid no tax when it clearly showed that he had paid over £7 million.

It is you who doesn't know what productivity means.

To increase productivity you have to increase the amount of GDP that each worker creates.

You cannot increase productivity just by increasing the number of workers doing the job.

Yes agree too.

You could try being polite. I understand it’s much more effective. I know perfectly well what it means, thank you.

I don't think you understand what productivity mean at all. We've had this discussion several times on other threads, I'm sorry if you think I'm being rude but my patience wears thin making the same points to the same person multiple times. I'm not the only person who points out your errors.

You are being rude. You frequently insult people who disagree with you. And the non apologetic apology doesn’t wash.

Nobody is forcing you to engage with me. If it’s so frustrating to do so just ignore me. I really won’t mind or be offended.