Sir Tony Blair is an election winner, in contrast to Ed Miliband (Image: Getty)
Why? Because Blair showed it is possible for a Labour PM to run the country without wrecking the economy. On his watch, the UK went a full decade without a meltdown. That’s almost unheard of under Labour (and not that common under the Tories either). When the economy did blow up in 2008, successor Gordon Brown was in charge. Of course, the Labour left never forgave Blair for adopting sensible, vote-winning policies. They branded him a right-wing neoliberal sell-out, and still do.
They preferred Brown, even though he destroyed our private final salary pensions, sold the nation’s gold reserves for a steal, drove up the deficit and national debt with his carefree spending, and fuelled the banking and property bubble that burst during the financial crisis. When voters finally ejected Labour in 2010, a cabinet minister flippantly joked that “There is no money left.” And there wasn’t. Brown had blown the lot.
Yet Blair proved Labour could still be electable, if it chose the right leader. So when Sir Keir rocked up, with slick hair and soothing promises about growth, a third of the country bought it. Only to betray us all with a massive lurch to the left.
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Within days, it became obvious that Starmer was no Blair. Instead of encouraging the economy to grow, he and chancellor Rachel Reeves sunk it with higher taxes, while destroying business confidence and driving thousands of wealthy taxpayers overseas.
Now Sir Tony has seen enough. In a blistering essay, he’s just torn Starmer’s Labour apart. He’s slammed Reeves’s damaging National Insurance raid, Angela Rayner’s jobs-crushing employment laws, Ed Miliband’s net zero acceleration, and Starmer’s failure to tackle Britain’s bloated welfare bill. He says Britain is “not a sensible country” any longer, and he’s right. Starmer should listen and reverse course, but of course he’s too weak.
Blair is also dead right about the least sensible cabinet member of the lot, energy secretary Ed Miliband. If there’s any man in Westminster who shouldn’t be anywhere near power, it’s Red Ed.
Miliband has taken a sensible objective, shifting towards a lower carbon energy mix, and carried it to fanatical extremes. He’s done it to signal his green purity virtue and endear himself to hard-left activists, and doesn’t care about the jobs and businesses he’s destroying along the way. Blair has called this out repeatedly.
Last year, the Tony Blair Institute dismantled Miliband’s claim that net zero would create hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs. It also ridiculed the idea that green investment can reverse Britain’s long-term industrial decline. And it slammed Labour plans to shut down North Sea oil and gas production. All completely correct.
Now Blair is back for more. Today, he urged Labour to scrap net zero altogether, arguing that Britain cannot solve climate change alone when it contributes less than 1% of global emissions. Instead of heaping net zero costs onto consumers and businesses, Blair called for tax cuts. And a proper growth strategy. One that’s likely to work.
In doing so, he’s shown how he managed to win three elections. And why today’s lunatic rabble will be annihilated at the next one. With luck, Labour will never again win power. A party that promotes fanatics like Ed Miliband shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.