In his angry speech yesterday blasting Labour’s election management to bits, this historically discredited prime minister, who has since made millions, blamed everything on the Corbyn left. He claims the road to power lies in a return to his hallowed centre. This reeking quagmire is exactly where absolutely nobody among voters wants any government now to be. We have had over twenty years of that and look where we are.
No, the root cause of Brexit and now Boris, is none other than Blair himself. His New Labour confection of spin, a con trick war, and the preservation of all the worst bits of Thatcherism, without any revival of industry or decent jobs across great wastes of former industrial heartlands, offered neither hope nor succour. His new pink left chattered and dined out on the spoils of asset inflation, funded by quantitative easing, driving the working class to detachment, distrust and despair.
They walked from New Labour. Millions stopped voting altogether. Between 1997 and 2010 Blair and Brown lost 5 million votes. Corbyn won back 4 million in 2017, but lost about half the gains in 2019. He still did better than Milliband, Brown, and Blair himself in 2005. Corbyn in 2017 won 2 million more votes even than Blair in his second landslide of 2001.
There is no doubt that Labour ran a bad campaign and were unprepared for the brilliantly executed attack on their subsidence weakened Red Wall. Coming on top of the party’s wipe out in its Scottish roots in 2015, this has decimated its tally of seats at Westminster. There are many remedies which spring to mind to be explored in the months or years ahead, but none involve following the advice of Tony Blair. That would indeed lead to oblivion.