A Rare and Unusual Intervention

Tony Blair's essay about what's gone wrong in the Labour Party has been widely read and discussed, and earned decent length ripostes from Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham, and Keir Starmer. The cage of Labour statecraft was well and truly rattled. Still, if you've read one Blair essay you've read them all. There was nothing new here that he hasn't already said in a thousand-and-one other rare and unusual interventions. Blair is a massive fan of ChatGPT and its like, but even he doesn't need to engage their services when a cut and paste from his archives does the job.

Blair was right about one thing, and that's the absence of strategic direction at the heart of this government. A point so obvious that even my cat knows it. But apart from that, the 5,700-word screed is interesting for one reason: for unapologetically laying out the empty world view of the ruling class. Something that "this shows Blair has moved to the right" takes fall far short of. In the piece, Blair says that welfare needs cutting (of course he does), military spending boosting, state intervention and regulation pared back, and more government funds made available for AI development. On world affairs, he says Britain needs to carry on sucking up to the United States. And does so with an argument identical to that pushed by Peter Mandelson during Donald Trump's Greenland bullying at the beginning of the year.

Central to Blair's argument is that rudderlessness comes from a lack of policy. That is what drives the politics. But politics, which is always a clash of interests, counts persuasion among its properties. While lecturing others about doing politics properly, this is entirely absent from the essay. What the state should be doing, the backing of AI, and continued subservience to the US under Trump are treated as self-evident truths. They certainly are to Blair, because having trousered tens of millions since leaving office his personal, private interests are now entirely aligned with the class interests of the super rich, whose ranks he long aspired to join.

There are two forms of ruling class politics that dominate the powers-that-be. The technocratic managerialism personified by and incompetently manifested by Starmer and his cabinet of right wingers is what "sensible" and "grown up" politics is. Living in the real world means never changing the fundamentals, keeping the present class settlement as is - even though it's breaking down - and fiddling around the edges and selling that as "change". The alternative is just letting it all hang out in the open. The establishment's euphemism for this is populist right wing politics, but it's just the rule of oligarchic capital transacting in full view of everyone. The endless enrichment of the already rich is its programme, and the scapegoating and culture war rubbish are its politics of distraction. Neither, you'll note, come anywhere near to Gramsci's view that ruling hegemony requires intellectual, political, and moral leadership. Both rest on what was established by Thatcher and Reagan, and consolidated by their successors. One perspective says this is the way of the world, while the other almost goads everyone outside the private jet class to do something about them. There is no effort to persuade, let alone mask the realities of class rule.

Blair's essay manages to bridge both camps, making a technocratic case for big power bullying, the oligarchical interest, and what needs to be done to consolidate both. Not in terms of winning an eroding popular consent for this state of affairs, but simply letting ruling class interests run riot. AI for perfecting new forms of exploitation, more markets to keep the balance titled for capital over labour, and the bombs and guns to continue enforcing their grip on global affairs. Blair used to say class politics was old hat, but here he is proffering a manifesto for open class warfare. One comfort zone that he's always been more than happy to inhabit.

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