Tony Blair devotes relatively little space amid the 718 pages of his autobiography to David Cameron or the Conservative party. But in comments set to rile the left of the Labour party, the former prime minister makes some positive noises about certain strands of Tory policy, prompting Mark Hoban, financial secretary to the Treasury, to claim Blair is backing Tory economic policies in the book and rejecting the policies followed by Brown and the Labour party.
On the economy, Blair counters the consensus view among Labour's leadership candidates, who are criticising the government for trying to cut the deficit too quickly amid claims that doing so will put the economy at risk.
He writes:
If Labour simply defaults to a "Tory cutters, Lib Dem collaborators" mantra, it may well benefit in the short term; however, it will lose any possibility of being an alternative government. Instead, it has to stand up for its record in the many areas it can do so, but also explain where the criticism of the 13 years [of Labour rule] is valid. It should criticise the composition but not the thrust of the deficit reductions. This is incredibly difficult.
He adds:
We should also accept that from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit ... Labour has no option but to be credible in its own right. That means, as I say, having a coherent position on the deficit.
The British public elected what they want to be a Tory version of a centrist government, Blair claims.
Tellingly, we lost business. This was crucial. When the Tories brought out 30 or so chief executives who were against the national insurance rise, I knew the game was up ... Labour's case in 2010 was that the Tories would put the recovery at risk. If 30 chief executives, employing thousands of people in companies worth billions of pounds, say it's Labour that will put the economy at risk, who does the voter believe? Answer: the chief executives. Once you lose them, you lose more than a few votes. You lose your economic credibility. And a sprinkling of academic economists, however distinguished, won't make up the difference.
What the public ended up doing, in that remarkable way they have, is elect the government they wanted. They were unsure of the Tories, so they put a strong Lib Dem showing alongside and urged them to get together. They elected what they want to be a Tory version of a centrist government (whether they get that is another matter!) ... The danger for Labour now is that we drift off, or even move decisively off, to the left. If we do, we will lose even bigger next time.
On the economic policies that he believes Labour should have pursued, he seems to broadly endorse the Tory plan to accelerate the pace of deficit reduction:
What should we have done? As I suggested in my analysis of the economy earlier, in my view we should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct tax rates competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform.
On coalition policies, Blair says the Tories will be "at their best" when unfettered by "old Labour" instincts in the Liberal Democrat camp.
The real challenge for the coalition will be simple: the Tories and the Lib Dems don't really agree. In many areas of domestic policy, the Tories will be at their best when they are allowed to get on with it – as with reforms in education. They will be at their worst when policy represents an uneasy compromise between the old Labour instincts of the Lib Dems and the hard decisions the Tories will instinctively want to take, or where, as with the Tory and Lib Dem insistence on being "the civil liberties" proponents, they end up failing to meet genuine and legitimate public concerns about public security.
About Cameron himself, Blair says little, but he records his view of him in 2007, two years after Cameron succeeded Michael Howard as Tory party leader.
David Cameron was clever and people-friendly, and I thought he had some real steel to him, but he had not gone through the arduous but ultimately highly educative apprenticeship I had gone through in the 1980s and early 1990s.
On the Tories' weak points, he says: "Where the Tories will be vulnerable is where they always are vulnerable: their policies will be skewed towards those at the top, fashioned too much by the preoccupations of the elite (which is why they despised action on antisocial behaviour), and too conservative, particularly in foreign policy."
Comments in chronological order (Total 19 comments)
Post a comment1 September 2010 3:12PM
Meh.
He and his maunderings ought to be considered sui generis like Ramsay MacDonald.
1 September 2010 3:49PM
We already knew that New Labour was Tory-lite
1 September 2010 3:58PM
The second paragraph quoted is bang on, and is important.
1 September 2010 4:03PM
And any position other than Tony's is, of course, incoherent.
1 September 2010 4:10PM
Of course.
One wonders precisely how established his grasp of either economics or economic history is anyway, I'm guessing it is minimal. Credit where it's due I suppose, he had enough grasp of his own incompetence not to interfere with economic matters at all during his tenure.
1 September 2010 4:15PM
Blair:
Never mind the more-than-occasional tipple, that must be some primo-quality crack he's smoking to position the LibDems as 'Old Labour'. As for the voters siding with 'business leaders' rather than 'academic economists', that sounds like lazy populist positioning against pointy-headed intellectuals - Blair behaving like a dessicated calculating machine as to where the votes were (maybe he should have chatted with the likes of Danny Blanchflower and not with the likes of Rupert Murdoch). The same goes his favouring a regressive rise in VAT against increases in the top rate of income tax (which only affected super-earners like himself). George Osborne should send Blair a bottle of champers and a thank-you card.
1 September 2010 4:59PM
So Blair is basically saying the Labour party must obey the wishes of the chief executives of major corporations (who of course have the interests of the average citizen at heart...) regardless of what the expert economists say the effects will be. It's just like how when the US says invade Iraq Blair knows his job is to salute and shout 'yes sir!' and ignore all those 'distinguished academics' saying it's going to be a bloody mess. He's literally further to the right than Thatcher.
1 September 2010 5:08PM
The thing is GB disagrees and he was the economic genius of the two. Despite his obvious failings.
1 September 2010 5:23PM
Blair said the LibDems "put on a strong showing" at the election?! They gained fewer seats.
1 September 2010 6:03PM
So basically Blair supports the coallitions slash and burn economic policies but would rather they got rid of all that rubbish about civil liberties and went back to locking people up for months on end on the off chance that thay might be terrorists? And he wounders why so many people in the Labour Party hate him.
1 September 2010 6:37PM
One more line on Tony Blair and I will throw up.
Bury the poodle, for heaven's sake.
1 September 2010 7:16PM
Labour is at sixes and sevens as to what their economic policy is - until it proved hugely unpopular with the public, they were going for 'Labour investment versus Tory cuts', then they briefly flirted with the "we will cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher" line before settling on a 'we will cut, but a bit later' line.
The truth is that, if Blair actually understands what the Labour position actually is, then he's doing a lot better than the Labour front bench itself!
1 September 2010 7:38PM
Blair should know enough to know he knows nothing about economics. He had the sense to see Brown, emotionally literate or not, had more economic nous than he did. He left him with the piggy bank for ten years and now should be sensible enough to hang him out to dry for the mess that caused.
1 September 2010 8:31PM
I think the headline above this article is misrepresentative. Blair is saying that Labour must not end up as the party that is opposing deficit reduction. That should already be obvious, and is the position of the frontrunner in the Labour leadership race.
He spells out that Labour should oppose the specific thrust of the coalition's cuts without opposing cuts per se. What's to disagree with? That's the position of this very newspaper, as I understand it.
1 September 2010 11:31PM
Parvulesco
Don't you mean Ronald Macdonald?
Why are we not surprised. For new Labour read old Tory or is an anagram of Tony's name Tory plan B and isn't he really the son Maggie always wanted?
Oh what's the point. Lets just hope no one buys his damn book, he's had far too much money out of us already
2 September 2010 6:19AM
Let's not forget Blair won three elections in a row. Gordon Brown failed rather badly and his national percentage of the vote was only slightly larger than Michael Foot's in 1983.
I'm no fan of Blair, and have always felt New Labour surrendered all too often to the views of the populist press. However, on the deficit he is right. Labour DID take its eye off the ball on the economy, especially after 2005. And they must shoulder at least some of the blame for the crisis that hit us in 2007-08.
As for the deficit, if Labour carries on with the current strategy of denial on the deficit, it may score a few points in the short term but lose the war. Blair is absolutely right on that point. Ultimately you can't spend money you don't have. The only real issue of debate is the speed of the reduction, not the fact that the government needs to get the public finances back under control.
Like him or loath him, Tony Blair knew how to win elections. Labour would do well to listen to him and not to dismiss his views out of hand.
2 September 2010 8:03AM
The problem with the Blairite corruption of civil liberties is that it too easily becomes not a solution for genuine and legitimate public concerns, but a means of protecting ministers from criticism of having failed genuine and legitimate public concerns about security, and becomes barricaded behind a refusal to face facts when it fails.
Herein lies the toxic legacy of Blair to his own party. It's not about actually making things better, it's about poseur progressivism and the refusal to countenance any opinion other than your own. Which is exactly how Thatcher poisoned her own party for a decade. Comingling the things that were good with things that were bad, as a means of justifying the bad, is both lazy and ultimately destructive of political validity.
2 September 2010 8:42AM
Blair has always been a fifth columnist in the Labour Party. His natural home is the Conservative Party but was in denial earlier on in his political career but as time goes on he is starting to..” come out of the closet” He was the great pretender and told people what they wanted to hear....The whole Iraq debacle is his legacy a totally illegal war sold through smoke and mirrors so I am glad that his political career will always be marred by this... Blair is still in complete denial and espouses that he has done nothing wrong over Iraq and a man who cannot face up to his mistakes from the court of history shows a deep personality disorder...
2 September 2010 9:18AM
This explains why investment bank JP Morgan are paying Blair £2,500,000 a year.
There is no alternative to retaining the deregulated City-orientated economy we have, rolling back the state dramatically and making the poor pay for the banker's mess while bankers continue to see multi-million bonuses roll in and stash their hoard in tax havens.
There can be no political debate of this. Hopefully Blair's intervention will convince Labour to adopt the new right-of-Thatcher "centre" ground of British politics and elect the heir-to-Blair Miliband