Tony Blair in The Times today

[oviraptor21]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4955e1e4-88d3-11ec-a837-0153f5f4adaf?shareToken=94c076de44190bb4e85a3885618c9f80

I assume he is going to cite the third way again, but Blair comes down firmly on the side of the author JK Rowling. “They [voters] don’t want a situation where women can’t talk about being women. I have this conversation quite often with Labour people and I know their inclination is to walk round this issue, but I am telling you to go right into it and resolve it in a way that makes it absolutely clear where you stand. That is how to shut down the Tories on it.”

Long article but about 4/5 of the way down.

@Gardeningcreature

I'm a Blair fan. Best prime minister in my lifetime by a long mile.

If you're into attacking disabled people. Blair was a horror.

I'm not a fan. Much of what is wrong with Labour now was wrong then - authoritarian, manipulative, deceitful and above all the attitude that the entire party has to be homogeneously "on message" and move around as a single, slogan chanting group. What I admire about the Tories is that they don't even seriously pretend to like each other. They are just prepared to do business with each other.

Anyway sorry for wading in. Unfortunately any mention of Blair is like red flag to a bull with me . But I appreciate my points are perhaps not relevant to this thread. Apologies.

It was painfully nostalgic reading that. I’d say the same about an interview with John Major, Gordon Brown or Theresa May. Just the sense of politicians with a conscience, personal integrity, a sense of the responsibility they hold. They’re adults, stateswomen and statesmen. Of course they all made mistakes, that’s politics. But you can tell they all had red lines they would never cross. And today’s politics is terrifying because there are such huge challenges and there is seemingly no floor to how low Boris Johnson will sink. We can’t trust him. We’re all on our own. It’s frightening.

Cameron and Johnson have let us down so badly. Their arrogance, entitlement, their unwavering self interest, their contempt for ordinary people as so much lesser human beings than themselves.

Johnson in particular with his constant lies, enjoyment of chaos and disruption and distraction. He’s debasing the office he holds. I’m really worried we’ll all start to see that as normal or inevitable in a government leader. It’s literally corruption.

@JustSpeculation

I'm not a fan. Much of what is wrong with Labour now was wrong then - authoritarian, manipulative, deceitful and above all the attitude that the entire party has to be homogeneously "on message" and move around as a single, slogan chanting group. What I admire about the Tories is that they don't even seriously pretend to like each other. They are just prepared to do business with each other.

I disagree with this

Poorly skilled politicians certainly do sound like parrots regurgitating the rage inducing three word slogan, but done properly you should have your MPs all aware of the policies and giving an articulate, engaging consistent message to the media and the public.

How long has the accusation been levelled at Labour now that people don't know what their ideas are?

The poor quality of political discourse is due to a poor crop of MPs who have to rely on slogans, not the ethos of having consistent and clear communication.

I miss the heady days of the late 90s when it felt like Britain was clever, caring, articulate and progressive.
The TRAs have set this country back 500 years with their twitterfied witch burning.

I'll never forgive him for the Iraq war.
I suspect all he cares about is Labour becoming electable again and his own potential comeback, since Starmer is making a complete pigs ear of leadership.

Funny how women's feelings are never the most important!

Remember when labour were calling people bigots for having concerns about immigration and not having those confer addressed - roots of Brexit right there.
And the raid on pension schemes.
And the lying to the whole country about wmd? The consequences of which have been very severe.
Politicians weren't better in the past - just less obviously awful!

Blair has spoken out about this before. He can see the quagmire that the LP are in with identity politics. It makes them unelectable. Twitter likes are not votes.

It's a playful use of grammar @Iflyaway turning the work "terf" into "terven" so that it's either a plural or an adjective denoting "pertaining to", "having the qualities of", "resembling", "like".

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-en#Etymology_2

I miss the heady days of the late 90s when it felt like Britain was clever, caring, articulate and progressive.

Yeah, it was good times wasn't it?

Now we have on one side, a bunch of bullshitting jokers who so clearly couldn't give a fuck I could cry, and on the other a bunch of purity spiralling misogynist cowards who are so busy arguing between themselves about who is the most ideologically perfect that they have forgotten that they are actually supposed to be winning over the electorate.

And I’m sick of Labour being this useless introspective movement and not acting as an effective opposition. They have squandered years of more pain on the country by acting like total bystanders or just looking in the opposite direction to what is going on. That has especially hurt the most vulnerable people dependent on the UK having a functioning welfare state and an accessible cost of living. Nobody expects the Tories to give a fuck about them, we know they don’t. That’s like a law of nature.
That’s why I am so furious with Labour (and the Lib Dems) abandoning the middle ground and setting off on these decadent fools’ errands of seeking idealogical purity when they could have been trying to urgently make people’s actual lives better and more stable.

Labour could have built on Blair and Brown’s years of practical Labour politics and trying to build a fairer economy. That work had only just got started. Reversing entrenched inequality will take generations, of course in three terms (including dealing with a global financial crisis and recession) Labour didn’t get anywhere near there yet. But we have to start this work if we want a functioning society. There is no alternative.

I get the rage when I read interviews with all of the past Labour leaders over the years who have all said they’re not the natural party of government. Current leaders who believe that should consider standing aside and letting someone with actual self-belief lead the Labour party. Being in opposition isn’t what political life is for, we need a minimum of two parties with the want to be in power, with one of them happening to have actually been democratically voted in to power.

For people in their 40s and older, who are not a small number of the voting population, we’ve had 3 terms of Labour government in our adult lives. We recognise Labour as a governing party. Or certainly that it once was. Three terms over 13 years.

Starmer has an open goal, the bar has never been lower than this dangerous farce of a Johnson government. He needs to become more visible and show he can offer some real change. We know you’re not Corbyn, he left two years ago. Thank fuck for that. We just can’t carry on like this under the Tories. Focus your efforts on getting your party elected. Please!

Today’s BBC feature:
Keir Starmer's 'I'm not Corbyn' hints are getting louder
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60353516

I love this board! From engaging political discussion to marvelling that a baby I recall being born is now 21.
To pick up previous point, Blair does seem to be motivated by the LP being electable but isn't that the game for politicians? At least he seems to realise on a strategic level that riding roughshod over the experience of half the population isn't a vote winner. Its refreshing to hear at the moment.

How long has the accusation been levelled at Labour now that people don't know what their ideas are?

@MrsTophamHat

Forever. Because they hide their ideas under a veneer of solidarity engineered through fear. There's an air of "not in front of the children" about the party. Embracing disagreement and having a good old row in public about everything would do them a world of good. Then you make up. A refusal to debate entrenches division. If you can't disagree within a political party, then what's the point of it?

Office intrigue isn't politics. Politics is loud, public horse trading.

I remember sitting with joy on the sofa hearing Blair had won that general election. It felt like a fresh start. I mistakenly thought electing Starmer was the first step in getting back into power as he seemed to have that same idea. But he doesn't get it - or is constrained by the sloganists - and is so obsessed with sitting on the fence that he's useless. It should be an open goal - the Tories have spaffed so much money down the drain while cutting back on so many services they are hitting most people now, even those who aren't interested in politics. They repeatedly show themselves to be corrupt and lacking morals and yet, and yet only they have the confidence to say women have vaginas.

I love this board too. And I was also really shocked that baby Leo is now 21!

WTF is the purpose of politics if not getting elected and effecting change? It’s not a parlour game (or shouldn’t be). Blair at least has a sense of urgency about it for Labour. Rightly.

@Slothtoes

WTF is the purpose of politics if not getting elected and effecting change? It’s not a parlour game (or shouldn’t be). Blair at least has a sense of urgency about it for Labour. Rightly.

This is very true. That's a part of Blair I am a fan of.

I miss the era of coherent politicians so bad 😭 Tony Blair was, and is, a great man (and he didn’t invade Iraq single-handedly, there were a lot of other people involved, plus a vote in Parliament.)

Not sure about Leo though. Since when are feelings more important than facts? Maybe stay away from busy roads and level crossings Leo.

Cameron and Johnson have let us down so badly. Their arrogance, entitlement, their unwavering self interest, their contempt for ordinary people as so much lesser human beings than themselves. This has been levelled at Labour, remember Emily Thornbury. Labour talk to themselves and expect the working class vote to come their way because they know best. Labour has never liked the working class. Labour formed from one arm being the unions, and then there was the intellectual endeavour, which was largely middle class from socialist affiliations and, of course, privileged class who could wile away the hours in debate. Students still flock to Labour to debate and keep the 'revolution' alive and the current debate being CRT which, using trans rights, they have managed some footholds, but now there is pushback.

I was never a fan of Blair but some of the things New Labour did were really good, whilst others set us on the progressive road, which was never thought through. My favourite was Neil Kinnock, he had the guts to get rid of the militant tendency leaving the way for Blair and he understood the working class

K Starmer is currently in the lead in the opinion polls and so is Labour however, this appears to be because of the Tories party fest rather than in spite of it. That's no way to win an election and Labour knows it. I am not sure KS has the guts to stand for women but if he does, I think it will be because of political expediency rather than as a supporter of women's rights.

In all honesty, KS got to be leader by stealth, because he was fully backing Corbyn all through his own campaign. Bit like the Brexit stuff really (remainer here)

I want to be able to vote Labour again but this current support in opinion polls (temporary IMHO might make KS think he's winning regardless of his progressive ideology, who knows?

Bit of a ramble

Good for Tony Blair. I didn't agree with the Iraq war but think he makes a good point and wish Labour could get their shit together on this and everything else and challenge the Tories on their corrupt behaviour.

Leo's the same age as my own son and I'm not surprised to read his comment.
I hear it in the same tone that DS would use: more of a caution to protect his dad than because he actually believes it himself.

Totally hear you highame.
I guess I am trying to say that for me the relative political sins and relative party concerns in power outweigh all that though. Party political perfection is impossible. Individual politician perfection also impossible.

So there’s a world of difference between someone ‘not liking’ a white van or the display of a Union Jack or whatever it was Thornberry did or Ed Miliband ‘not knowing how’ to eat a bacon sandwich or whatever and a whole party (the Tories) endlessly, and ideologically from their core political DNA putting in relentless strategies to reward the rich via minimal taxation and punishing everyone else especially the poor.
The poor are an expanding class- child poverty has rocketed since the end of New Labour. They are endlessly being punished via burdensome taxation, neglecting to address cost of living and housing cost rises, and all the while decimating the welfare state, NHS, and public services in Tory austerity and it’s consequences.

We have to get away from this childish idea that feelings matter more than facts. They just don’t. In the very many situations where we can’t have both, then we need to vote for relatively more responsible politicians who are relatively more likely to go with facts.

I know I won’t always like that as a voter because we all have feelings, but the alternative of only dealing in feelings (and telling lies) is a very well-trodden path to corruption and chaos.