Sir Tony Blair has launched a broadside against Sir Keir Starmer and his jostling leadership rivals by saying Labour has “no coherent plan” and that Britain risks becoming “marooned on an island of irrelevance”.
In a major intervention into the Labour leadership debate, the former prime minister took aim at some of the ideas Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have floated as they prepare to challenge Starmer, saying it was not “serious” for the party to try to change leader before knowing its policy direction.
However, he also criticised Starmer himself, accusing the Prime Minister of coming to power without a “worked out, coherent plan for the country” and attacking a slew of government policies, from banning oil and gas drilling to hiking employers’ national insurance contributions.
In an essay for his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, billed as his first major political intervention since Labour came to power, Blair warns that “the Labour Party is playing with fire, or, more accurately, with its future, and that of the country.”
The essay lays into decisions taken by Starmer and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as well as ideas proposed by the Prime Minister’s main potential leadership challengers – the former health secretary, Wes Streeting, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who is currently vying to return to Parliament in the Makerfield by-election.
It also attacks the flagship employment rights legislation championed by another potential leadership contender, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
According to Blair, Labour has struggled since it returned to office because it “had no properly thought-through analysis of how the world was changing and what that meant for policy”.
Blair warns that this risks continuing with a change of leader because no one has yet set out a response to what he argues are the two biggest challenges facing the country: the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a “changing world order” caused by the emergence of China as a rival superpower to the US.
“Wes Streeting is a huge political talent and Andy Burnham was an outstanding member of my government,” he writes. “But this leadership debate has an extraordinarily retro 20th-century feel to it.”
“The world is turning on its axis and today’s politicians living in a 24/7 pressure cooker have barely time to recognise the turning, let alone study it.”
He criticises both Streeting’s proposal to increase capital gains tax – a tax on profits – to the same level as income tax, and a claim from Burnham that the UK has been on the “wrong path for 40 years” by pursuing “neoliberalism”.
Blair says: “We have a fight between a ‘modernising’ wing of the Labour Party appearing to advocate rejoining the EU (and now equalising capital gains and income tax, something rejected by successive governments for good reason); and the alternative which thinks the answer is moving even further left on taxes, spending and welfare, spun with a rehash of the far-left critique about nothing good coming out of the last ’40 years’ of ‘neo-liberalism’, which presumably includes the last Labour government.”
‘Reversing Brexit isn’t the answer’
On Streeting’s recent call for the UK to “one day” rejoin the EU, Blair says that while “no one was more passionately opposed to Brexit than I was”, any attempt to go “back into a structured relationship with Europe needs to be handled with care and with strategy”.
“Just as Brexit was never the answer to Britain’s challenges back in 2016, reversing it isn’t the answer to the country’s far worse situation in 2026,” he says.
On the question of Starmer’s future, he argues: “The Government’s principal problem isn’t Keir’s personality… It is because we don’t have a worked out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world and are in the wrong political position from which we can devise one and win a second term.”
“Whether there is a leadership change or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t start with a policy debate… Trying to force the Prime Minister out before we know what policy direction we’re bringing in is not a serious way of conducting ourselves.”
Blair criticises a number of Starmer’s policies, accusing him of “governing from an essentially traditional Labour’ soft left’ position, parked firmly in the party’s comfort zone.”
Measures such as “the new workers’ rights laws; the net zero acceleration and phasing out of the British oil and gas industry; the uplift in the minimum wage beyond inflation; and the Non-Dom [tax] changes” have created “headwinds not tailwinds to British business”, he argues.
Singling out decisions taken by Reeves, he says increasing employer national insurance contributions damaged business confidence, and that by using the last Budget to put up tax while abolishing the two-child benefit cap, “it appeared as if we were increasing tax to pay for additional welfare spending, when the public already thinks welfare bills are too high.”
Britain in a ‘long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of Nations’
The essay proposes a series of changes, from using “what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources” to abolishing the state pension triple lock. Taken together, Blair argues the policies would improve the UK’s competitiveness and allow it to negotiate a new relationship with Europe “from a position of economic strength”.
On the changing new world order, Blair says the UK should build its “defence capability” to have more sway with the US, warning that “the isolationist tendency of parts of the right and misguided progressivism of parts of the left” put Britain in “danger” of being “marooned on an island of irrelevance”.
He finishes the essay by saying: “Without an agenda of this nature, radical but sensible, Britain will continue its long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of Nations.”
Downing Street declined to comment, as did Burnham’s campaign team. Streeting and Rayner’s teams were contacted for comment.
Tony Blair wading back into Labour politics is always a moment
As the only person to take Labour to three consecutive general election victories, Blair is the most electorally successful leader in the party’s history. But despite this (he would argue partly because of it), he remains a highly polarising figure in the party, with more detractors than devotees.
In the past, he has generally chosen to make policy interventions at a distance via the auspices of his think-tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
The fact that he has now personally penned an essay of more than 5,000 words setting out what he thinks has gone wrong for Starmer’s Government, and how to put it right, shows that he is deeply concerned about the future of his party.
The other thing which makes it exceptional is the breadth and intensity of the criticism: the essay reads like a drive-by of most of the main players in today’s Labour Party.
The intervention has clearly been spurred in part by the uncertainty over Starmer’s future, with Blair issuing scathing – if slightly veiled – criticism of Burnham’s redistributionist vision for the country. Streeting gets off more lightly, though Blair still has a pop at his policy on capital gains tax and suggests he’s going the wrong way about returning the UK to Europe.
If there is a leadership change, Blair would no doubt prefer Streeting to Burnham. But he is careful not to provide an endorsement – given Blair’s unpopularity among the Labour rank-and-file, it would certainly be counterproductive to the former health secretary’s leadership chances.
Much of Blair’s argument is compelling. But there are several obvious weaknesses for Labour critics to latch onto.
Given that the Iraq war was the main thing which poisoned his legacy, Blair restating his argument that the UK should have done more to help the US in its attack on Iran is unlikely to convince many in the party.
Bits of his policy prospectus are also extremely vague. For example, he says that the Government should do “whatever it takes” to end the small boats crisis, but does not offer any ideas.
More generally, while Blair may be right that harnessing AI is the biggest challenge and opportunity facing Britain, he does not explain how you convert that into the sort of retail politics which is going to turn around the polls and win Labour the next election.
Despite these legitimate objections, Blair’s ability to shape national debate is a reminder that although many in the party would like to turn their back on him, they cannot quite escape his long shadow.
Will Hazell, Whitehall Correspondent
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