There is only one political organisation occupying the centre ground in UK politics. It is not the LibDems who vacated it years ago. It is Tony Blair and his Institute for Global Change. It is time the Tories embraced its commonsense centre-ground analysis of the world’s problems. You don’t have to agree with Blair’s choice of clients or his slavish obeisance to America to agree with much of the Institute’s output.
Worth listening to…
But Blair has particularly come to the fore this week with his take down of today’s Labour Party. Here is, I confess, a partly AI generated summary of his critique edited by my good self ( I don’t need to read through all the 5600 words…):
- The “Radical Centre” Blair argues is Labour’s only viable path warning that shifting left to appease internal critics is a perennial, dangerous delusion
- Governments which succeed don’t start with a personality contest, or a political question, as in: how do we ‘save the country’ from Reform?” Blair writes. “They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right.”
- Labour doesn’t have a coherent, worked-out overall plan for running the country in a fast changing world
- The government has been tone-deaf to the business community in its initial policies—such as expanding workers’ rights, above-inflation minimum wage hikes, and net-zero carbon pledges. Such initiatives stifle economic growth by failing to make the private sector feel supported
- Welfare reform is crucial. The rising bill for incapacity and disability benefits is unsustainable, and the triple lock should be the first to go
- The AI revolution needs to be applied to the whole of government and not be treated as a ‘niche industrial sector’
- The government needs to keep a grip of immigration to head off the far-right
- There needs to be a reset on ‘net zero’ policies to tackle the expense of the UK’s energy supply
- Rejoining the EU is no more a solution than leaving it. A wholesale recalibration of our relationship with the EU is needed, however.
So here we go. What sensible moderate Conservative supporter would disagree with this analysis even with regard to the Labour Party. Of course, Labour’s leadership contenders reply with barbs about inequality showing they don’t have the backbone to take the necessary measures to reduce inequality. The country needs to be better governed with a firm, long-term plan to turn the country around (from not as bad a position as many people believe!). It starts with patient forward thinking policy development focused specifically on the economy.
Today’s Tories seem incapable of the hard work required in Opposition to present a viable case for governing three years from now. It takes time which Thatcher and Blair used effectively. Perhaps they should team up with the Institute for Global Change for a bit of grown-up politics free from worrying about month-to-month opinion polls…
Inside Right Politics 