How Tony Blair would fix Keir Starmer's Labour

What’s the story?

“I don't particularly want to be back in the headlines again. I find it very comfortable to be out of them,” says Tony Blair.

He’s speaking with Jon Sopel, explaining why he has gone against his urge to exist in relative anonymity to write a new essay about Keir Starmer’s government, the existential problems it faces, and how they might be solved.

“It depends how serious you think the country's mission is at the moment,” Blair says.

“I’m looking at it objectively and thinking, we've got to change direction, otherwise we're in real trouble.”

The UK is on track for its seventh Prime Minister in ten years, if Andy Burnham’s manoeuvring goes to plan, with Keir Starmer’s behind-the-scenes approach to governing and incremental change in the UK making him one of the least popular PMs since polling began.

Only Liz Truss polled worse.

Blair doesn’t believe a change in leader is what Labour needs. He says it has to rebuild its entire strategy to governing, and not be drawn into personality politics in the hope it will cure all ills.

"I'm really worried that we've got this the wrong way around," he tells Jon Sopel.

"We're talking about the politics first and the policy second, and it should be the policy first and the politics second.

"The first thing we should be debating is what's the right answer to the country's problems."

‘Labour can’t carry on like this’

His essay sets out what he believes has gone wrong, and how it can be put right, with Jon Sopel describing his analysis of Starmer’s leadership as “scathing”.

But Blair insists his frustration is how Labour, just two years into its time in power, is echoing the derided final years of the previous Tory government.

“It's like shuffling the cards, you take one prime minister, you throw them out, you get another prime minister, you throw them out,” he says.

“We can't carry on like that.”

Blair says the solution to Labour's problems does not lie in changing its leader, but in changing its approach to governing.

“You've got to work out what the direction of the country is that you want, and then you could debate who should be leader,” he says.

“There's no point in making a leadership change until you're satisfied with the policy direction.

“What's happening at the moment is the absence of a real policy debate.”

Instead, he says, names such as Andy Burnham are being thrown around on the strength of personality alone, not because they have any greater idea of how to govern the UK in 2026.

But Blair entered Downing Street in 1997 and since then politics – and the world – has changed. So does Blair's experience in power still have the same relevance 20 years later?

He says nothing matters more, now or then, than good policy.

“Personality matters, and your ability to communicate, but if the project isn't a good one, well thought through, it doesn't matter how good a communicator you are, you're not going to succeed,” Blair adds.

People want radical change – but can Labour deliver?

Blair is now calling for Labour to establish a "radical centre-ground" of politics before any change of leadership is made in the party.

“We have to accept that the Labour government is in difficulty,” he says.

“Less than two years in, we're talking about the government getting rid of the Prime Minister who won the last election.”

He praises "talented" government ministers, but believes they are being let down with a lack of "clear direction" – and says this is made more difficult by the accelerated growth in populism in UK politics, and promises to deliver everything British people are desperate for.

“What people want today is radical change,” Blair admits.

“The difficulty is that too often today, the radical people aren't sensible and sensible people aren't radical.

“What you end up with is a situation where you've got a radical right-wing group in Reform, or even the people further to the right of them, and then you've got radical left in the Greens.”

Labour and the Tories, he adds, are still "in rehab" for the mistakes of the past 10-20 years of political mismanagement, leaving both unable to engage today's modern voters.

But it's not just mainstream politics that’s in crisis, he says, it's the whole country.

“Without an understanding of the way the world's changing and how Britain fits with that change, you can't really make progress, and you're going to continue this slide,” Blair says.

“I feel really anxious that we are continuing to slide towards relegation from the Premier League of nations, and we've got to halt that.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.