Afternoon summary
- Jeremy Corbyn has rejected Blair’s criticism of his politics. (See 12.11pm.)
- Corbyn has put a call for massive infrastructure spending, possibly funded by quantitative easing (or “printing money”, as it is often called) at the heart of his economic programme. (See 1.04pm.)
-
Mary Creagh, a shadow cabinet minister, has said Labour is in danger of becoming “the political equivalent of Millwall FC”, whose fans boast that “no-one likes us, we don’t care”.
Must read: @MaryCreaghMP on the Labour crisis: "We are like Millwall FC: no one likes us, but we don't care." http://t.co/7gtM6PF5zB
— Jason Cowley (@JasonCowleyNS) July 22, 2015
That’s all from me for today.
And not just for today. I won’t be writing the Politics Live blog again regularly until Tuesday 1 September. I’ll be on holiday, or else writing regular news, while it’s quiet for the next few weeks. And we won’t be running the readers’ edition either, although that will come back in September.
I hope you all have a good summer and get some holiday.
The SNP MP Mark McDonald has a response to Tony Blair’s comment about nationalism being “caveman” politics.
As Tony Blair compares the SNP to cavemen, I have prepared an official response. pic.twitter.com/TUahUpWiv0
— Mark McDonald (@markmcdsnp) July 22, 2015
One of the nice things about this job is that I get sent a lot of new politics books. If they’re good, and worth recommending to readers, I always try to give them a plug here in the blog. Normally I wait until I can link them to a story running in the news, but as the summer holiday looms - after today, I won’t be writing a daily blog again until the start of September - I realise there is a pile of books on my desk that I have not got round to mentioning.
These aren’t necessarily the best books I’ve read this year (although Good Times, Bad Times is exceptionally good). But they’re all one that I would recommend. So, for anyone looking for something to read, you could try:
Good Times, Bad Times by John Hills: This is a superb book about welfare spending, which goes a long way to demolish some of the myths about it. It’s an academic book, but it is very clearly written and illustrated, and should be essential for anyone who writes or talks about this topic.
Extract:
Taxes and benefits narrowed income inequality in the UK more than in archetypal egalitarian countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark. As Figure 2.9 comparing the UK and Sweden shows, inequality ends up much higher in the UK than in Sweden, because it starts so much higher, despite the UK’s greater redistributive effort.
Nicola Sturgeon by David Torrance: “Instant” biographies of political figures who have just become prominent are often a little unsatisfactory, but this one is very good: extremely thorough, fair, well-written, and informed by a deep knowledge of Scottish politics.
Extract:
Sturgeonism, therefore, had to be much more than just Salmondism with a social conscience; it needed time to become something deeper, compelling and genuinely tranformative, finally making good on so many fine words and erudite speeches. ‘She’s pragmatic,’ reflected a colleague, ‘deeply pragmatic.’ Indeed Sturgeon’s politics, both practical and ideological, reflected wider shifts within both the SNP and Scottish politics more generally, which had led her and others towards a very different concept of both independence and the Union.
Election Notebook by Nick Robinson: This is the diary that Robinson kept in the 12 months before the general election and, although the events he covers are familiar, his behind-the-scenes insights are shrewd, spiky, illuminating and extremely readable.
Extract (from a passage on the leaders’ debates):
Few politicians can be quite as spectacularly disingenuous as David Cameron when he wants to be.
Commons and Lords by Emma Crewe: Crewe is an anthropologist, and she writes about the different cultures in the Commons and the Lords. This is very short - it is little more than an essay - but it is original and very revealing.
Extract:
Patriarchy in parliament throws up the second puzzle. The apparent aristocratic social status of peers in the Lords might create the impression of rigid and old-fashioned hierarchy and, more specifically, patriarchy. In contrast, the apparently more modern Commons may conjure assumptions of equality and fairness between members. I certainly went into parliament with these assumptions. But observations of everyday talk and relationships within the two Houses reveals the opposite: while the Lords have an egalitarian and co-operative ethos, and women thrive in the upper House, the competitive and aggressive Commons is a far less comfortable place for most women.
Following Farage by Owen Bennett: A hack turns his covering Ukip notebook into a road trip memoir; it’s not a promising pitch, but it is much better than it sounds, not least because of detailed interviews with some key Ukip figures, and it provides a colourful insight into the whackier fringes of Kipperdom.
Extract [from an interview with Stuart Wheeler, the former Tory who became Ukip treasurer]:
Michael Green, who was head of Carlton at the time and a member of my bridge club, stopped me in the street as I happened to run into him during the Tory leadership campaign and said: ‘You are going to back David Cameron, aren’t you? So I looked a bit doubtful and then, as if to clinch the argument, he said: ‘You know he can be a real shit when he wants to!’ I told that to David and he was quite amused.
If a hastily-deleted BBC tweet is anything to go by, Laura Kuenssberg is the new BBC political editor.
BBC news exec tweeted that Laura Kuenssberg is new BBC political editor, then deleted it. LK apparently not been told...
— John Plunkett (@johnplunkett149) July 22, 2015
Yvette Cooper’s team have been highlighting a poll of almost 300 Labour councillors suggesting that Cooper is on course to win the leadership contest (narrowly).
Creagh says Labour is in a 'horrible place' and it could get worse
Mary Creagh, who wanted to contest the Labour leadership election but, unlike Jeremy Corbyn, did not get enough support from colleagues to get onto the ballot paper, has written an article for the New Statesman saying the party is in a “horrible place”.
She says, as in 2010, four things have gone wrong: the leader stood down immediately; the leadership contest is lengthy and exhausting; a leftwinger has been included for balance, even though the electorate is moving to the centre right; and centre ground candidates are being branded Blairite or Tory.
She concludes by saying the party’s plight could get worse.
Labour is not yet in the place where we can say with confidence: “The only way is up.” Early findings from the “lessons learned” report commissioned by Harriet suggest that voters think that Labour simply does not understand their lives. We are in danger of becoming the political equivalent of Millwall Football Club. Their chant? “No one likes us, we don’t care.”
This is from the Mirror’s Jason Beattie.
Shadow Cabinet minister on surge of support for Corbyn: "This is anti-politics within the Labour Party. They are selecting opposition"
— Jason Beattie (@JBeattieMirror) July 22, 2015
Roy Hattersley, the Labour former deputy leader, told the World at One that Jeremy Corbyn was a “24-hour sensation” and that he was not going go win the Labour leadership.
I quite like Mr Corbyn and support some of his ideas but he certainly couldn’t win a general election and if he did win a general election, I don’t think he’d run a very good government but then he’s not going to win the Labour leadership. This is a 24-hour sensation, nothing more than that ...
[He appeals to] young people who haven’t thought about it, I don’t want to patronise them, but they have not gone through the difficulties that we have gone through in the last 30, 40 years. He is a lively candidate, he seems to be offering an easy prescription, and he is not facing the reality or the difficulties that a new Labour government would have to face.
Turning away from Labour for a moment, Number 10 has revealed that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, attended cabinet today “at the invitation of the prime minister”, even though Johnson only normally attends political cabinet. This was a normal cabinet, although it did meet at Chequers, not Downing Street.
Perhaps Cameron is trying to repair relations with Johnson in the light of reports that Johnson feels “humiliated” by the way he has been treated since the election, particularly by Theresa May over water cannon.
The full YouGov polling figure for the Labour leadership election are here, on the YouGov website (pdf).
There is also a good commentary on the YouGov figures from Peter Kellner, the YouGov president. He says in 2010 YouGov were spot on when they called the result of that leadership contest.
He says it is clear that the trade union affiliates being signed up are helping Jeremy Corbyn. On first preference voting, Corbyn leads with 57% amongst this group. Amongst ordinary members he is still in the lead, but on 40%.
And Kellner says it is a mistake to think that, unless Corbyn can get 50% on the first ballot, he will lose.
As a rule of thumb, if Corbyn wins around 40% in round one, then it is touch-and-go whether he wins the overall contest; every point above 40% he gets in round one makes his victory more likely.
This runs counter to the view that if Corbyn can’t win on the first count, he can’t win at all, because nobody who backs Burnham, Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall will give him their second preferences. This is not so. In our survey, 26% of Burnham’s supporters give Corbyn their second preferences; among Cooper’s supporters the figure is 22%. Only Kendall’s supporters seem overwhelmingly averse to Corbyn: he receives only 6% of her second preferences. Moreover, a fair number of Burnham, Cooper and Kendall supporters either won’t cast a second preference or are undecided.
My colleague Alberto Nardelli has been looking at the YouGov tables, and he’s sent me this line.
Only 27% of Labour supporters view “understands what it takes to win an election” as quality needed by the next leader.
On this measure - albeit on a small subsample - Jeremy Corybn - comes last.
“In touch with ordinary people” - which was Ed Miliband’s biggest strength is viewed as the top quality to have.
Here’s a Guardian video with Jeremy Corbyn responding to Tony Blair’s criticism of him.
Margaret Beckett says she regrets nominating Corbyn for Labour leader
On Newsnight last night John McTernan, a former aide to Tony Blair, said those Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn, so that he could be included in the leadership election, even though they did not intend to vote for him were “morons”. He added: “They need their heads felt.”
One of those MPs was Margaret Beckett, the former foreign secretary. On the World at One she was asked if, in the light of the poll suggesting Corbyn is on course to win, she regretted her decision. She replied:
To a certain extent, to be honest, yes I do.
At the time, she explained, Labour MPs were under pressure to ensure that there was a wide field of candidates in the contest.
If Jeremy had been a long way behind, I don’t think the thought of nominating him would have crossed my mind. I had no intention of making him my nomination. But, then when it looked as if he might almost be able to stand but then not be able to, I was concerned that people would feel they had been deprived of the opportunity for that point of view to be aired. And I do think it is and will be healthy for the party to thrash out this dialogue about austerity, or not austerity, or what it means, etc etc. So that was the reason that I gave the nomination. But, yes, I’m beginning to wish that I hadn’t, I’ll be quite honest about it.
Mhairi Black, the SNP MP, has hit back at Tony Blair on behalf of her party following his comments about the SNP and nationalism earlier. Here’s an extract from her statement.
Tony Blair’s legacy still haunts and damages Labour today, and led them into the sorry position of not even voting against the Tories’ welfare cuts and budget bills this week - leaving the SNP as the real and effective opposition to the Tory government.
On any reading of his record, Tony Blair was the one with the primitive policy - dragging the country into an illegal war in Iraq, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and causing massive instability to the region, the ramifications of which we continue to live with.
His criticism of the SNP government suggest someone badly out of touch, presumably unaware that SNP poll ratings have reached 60 per cent this month, but we take nothing for granted for the future.
Since coming to office in 2007, the SNP have frozen council tax, delivered free Higher Education, scrapped prescription charges, boosted apprenticeship numbers by almost 60 per cent, protected Free Personal Care, maintained the concessionary travel scheme, increased Scotland’s health budget to record levels, and protected those hardest hit by unfair Tory welfare cuts. All this has been in the face of massive Westminster cuts to Scotland’s budget.
Corbyn's economic policy - Summary
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech/policy document is entitled The Economy in 2020 (pdf). It is a manifesto for large-scale redistribution, through more progressive taxes and a crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance, and traditional, Keynesian public investment.
Here are the main points.
-
Corbyn said he wanted a massive, publicly-led programme of infrastructure spending. This would be led by a new national investment bank. He suggested two methods of financing this: quantitative easing (“printing money”, as it sometimes called), along the model set out in this proposal from the tax campaigner Richard Murphy; and cutting the £93bn corporate tax reliefs (a figure Corbyn seems to have got from this research published in the Guardian).
The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future.
How do we do this?
One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital pro- jects:
Quantitative easing for people instead of banks. Richard Murphy has been one of many economists making that case.
Another option would be to strip out some of the huge tax reliefs and subsidies on offer to the corporate sector. These amount to £93 billion a year - money which would be better used in direct public investment, which in turn would give a stimulus to private sector supply chains.
These funds could be used to establish a ‘National Investment Bank’ to invest in the new infrastructure we need and in the hi-tech and innovative industries of the future.
-
He defended taxation and said it should be more progressive.
Paying tax is not a burden. It is the subscription we pay to live in a civilised society.
A collective payment we all make for the collective goods we all benefit from: schools, hospitals, libraries, street lights, pensions, the list is endless.
Our tax system has shifted over the last generation from taxing income and wealth to taxing consumption; and from taxing corporations to taxing individuals.
These changes have helped to make our society more unequal and our tax system more regressive.
So I make this pledge: Labour must make the tax system more progressive.
- He proposed a series of measure to reduce what he said was the £120bn that the government loses through uncollected tax. They included: a proper anti-avoidance rule; proper country-by-country reporting for multinationals; reformed small business taxation; tougher regulation of companies to ensure they pay their taxes; and a reversal of staff cuts at HMRC.
-
He said if the deficit has been eliminated by 2020, Labour under his leadership would run a surplus under current spending, but also borrow to invest.
As I said on the Sunday Politics, if the deficit has been closed by 2020 and the economy is growing, then Labour should not run a current budget deficit – but we should borrow to invest in our future prosperity.
- He said if the budget deficit still existed in 2020, he would close the deficit by “building a strong growing economy that works for all”, not by increasing poverty.
- He criticised the government’s plans to cut inheritance tax and corporation tax.
-
He said George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse initiative was “largely hot air”.
The Northern Powerhouse is largely southern hot air:
It devolves only already slashed budgets, leaving the real levers centralised and unused.
-
He acknowledged that “creative individuals” had a role in wealth creation.
Wealth creation is a collective process between workers, public investment and services, and, yes, often innovative and creative individuals.
-
He said Labour’s plan at the election for an £8 an hour minimum wage was too modest. He suggested £10 an hour would be preferable.
Here is the full text of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech this morning (pdf).
And here is a summary of his argument from Corbyn’s campaign.
I will post the best quotes shortly.
Jeremy Corbyn's Q&A - Summary
Here are some more of the key points from Jeremy Corbyn’s “doorstep” - his interview with journalists on the street outside the venue where he gave his speech.
There was no coverage of the speech itself, because film crews were not allowed in, but I will post excerpts from it soon.
-
Corbyn said that Blair’s “big problem” was Iraq. Responding to Blair’s claim that the party could not win under his leadership, Corbyn said:
Well, I think Tony Blair’s big problem is that we are still awaiting the Chilcot report to come out ... Yes, we did win the 1997 election. We lost support consistently after that, and he led us into a disastrous illegal war.
Asked about Blair’s claim that Corby was the Labour candidate favoured by the Tories, he replied:
I would have thought he could manage something more serious than those kind of rather silly remarks.
He also suggested that Blair had not read his policies.
- Corbyn said he would not comment on today’s poll putting him ahead in the leadership contest.
-
He dismissed claims that his policies were too radical. Referring to his plans to set up a national investment bank to promote infrastructure improvements and innovation, he said:
It is not particularly radical to do a lot of what Germany has been doing for a very long time.
-
He rejected claims that Labour could not win under his leadership. The activists who supported him were in touch with the public, he said.
The people that make decisions in constituency parties are those that knock on doors, are those that do put the Labour message over one to one, day to day, to other voters. Surely they are people with some knowledge and some experience and some perception.
-
He rejected Tristram Hunt’s claim that the party would become a mere “pressure group” under his leadership. (See 11.34am.)
I don't think I've ever seen so many cameras at a Jeremy Corbyn speech #jezzapack pic.twitter.com/444cVqvAK1
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) July 22, 2015
Here is an audioBoom of the doorstep.
Updated
Corbyn puts crackdown on £93bn corporate tax reliefs at heart of his economic strategy
My colleague Patrick Wintour has filed a story on Jeremy Corbyn’s speech. Here’s how it starts.
Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn vowed in his first major economic speech on Tuesday that if elected prime minister he would not cut the defecit on the backs of the poor but raise taxes on the rich, clamp down on corporate tax evasion and use up to £93bn corporate tax reliefs to create a national investment bank.
Corbyn - who a YouGov opinion poll said was on course to win the party’s leadership election by a margin of six6 points ion the final round - avoided setting out specific personal tax rises, but said the wealthy would pay a little more, with the bulk of extra Treasury receipts coming from higher corporate tax revenues.
The speech came on the same day as former Labour leader and prime minister said those who said their hearts were with Corbyn should “get a transplant” and warned the party could not win a general election from the left.
Corbyn pledged a progressive tax system in which the rich pay more not just in absolute terms but proportionately
But the big issue, he said, was not the precise level of corporate or income tax rates, but ensuring the wealthy and corporate paid their fair share. As much as £120bn was left uncollected by the Treasury due to uncollected tax debt, tax avoidance and tax evasion, he said.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn is doing another doorstep in London outside the venue where he gave his speech.
He says the problem at the last election was that Labour was not offering enough of an alternative to the Tories. They were offering austerity-lite.
Q: Will people trust your agenda?
Corbyn says he wants more investment. Above all, he wants to collect more tax by tackling corporate tax avoidance.
Q: Tony Blair says you would take the country backwards?
Corbyn says he does not know what that means. He has just set out an agenda that includes collecting uncollected taxes, and keeping control of the banks.
Here’s a Guardian video with an extract from Tony Blair’s Q&A.
On the Today programme this morning Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said the Labour party would end up as a “pressure group” if Jeremy Corbyn became leader. He said:
I think the danger is that the Labour party, one of the great governing parties of the 20th and early 21st century, that did enormously important things for Britain and Britain in the world, would be on a trajectory to becoming a pressure group, would not have that broad reach into all parts of the United Kingdom ...
There are many people in the Labour party who can cope with the effects of another Tory government but there are many people in our communities who will be hit really hard by the assault on working tax credits, by taking away maintenance grants for poorer students to go to university and we can’t overindulge ourselves.
Our job is to represent those people, to look like a viable opposition and a prospective government and I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn’s politics or economics will be able to deliver that for us.
Corbyn was asked about this. He says Hunt should think about “the longer social process”.
Tristram Hunt has a very good knowledge of history, very good books on Marx, very interesting. Perhaps he should think about the whole longer social process. Surely the job of Labour is to represent many of the worst off in our society, and try and rebalance our society and make it a more inclusive country. I’m sure he would agree with that.
Actually, Hunt wrote a book about Engels, not Marx.
Updated
Corbyn says people will judge Blair when Chilcot report comes out
Jeremy Corbyn has responded to Tony Blair’s criticism of him.
He said people would judge Blair when the Chilcot report came out.
Corbyn's response to Blair: "I think Tony Blair's big problem is we're still waiting for the Chilcot Report to come out"
— Michael Deacon (@MichaelPDeacon) July 22, 2015
Corbyn was speaking to reporters outside the venue where he has been delivering his speech. I will post more from his “doorstep” (his interview on the streets) and from the speech shortly.
Tony Blair's speech and Q&A - Summary and analysis
In 2010 Tony Blair did not intervene in the Labour leadership contest. David Miliband, his preferred candidate, was expected to win, and Blair must have known that an intervention would have been counter-productive. When Lord Mandelson backed David Miliband, Miliband did not welcome it.
Blair did not endorse a candidate today either.
Blair, asked if he'd endorse any leadership candidate, says 'it's not appropriate...and possibly not even helpful for them'
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
But this was certainly an intervention in the leadership contest. With the “Blairite” candidate, Liz Kendall, expected to come last, Blair may well have felt that speaking out could not make her position any worse. He did not seem to be positively backing her, or any of the other candidates, but his speech and Q&A amounted to an hour-long argument about why Jeremy Corbyn would be a disaster. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who until last night’s poll were the favourites, have been reluctant to challenge Corbyn, and even Kendall has been relatively muted in her criticism. Today it was as if Blair decided that, with no one else taking up the challenge, he was going to do it himself.
One other thing; on Sky and BBC News this morning, presenters have been asking pundits whether Labour is going to split. If it is, on the basis of what he was saying today, it won’t because Blair is going to walk out. There was nothing Roy Jenkins about his speech today, and he did not float the idea of creating a new, centrist party. In fact, he explicitly ruled it out.
Here are the key points.
-
Blair said that Labour would never win an election if it adopted Jeremy Corbyn’s policies. He did not mention Corbyn in his opening speech, although he clearly had Corbyn in mind when he attacked “radical leftism” and set out his longheld belief that Labour needs to adapt its principles to the modern world. But in the Q&A he was more explicit, saying that Corbyn was the candidate whom the Tories wanted to win and that his policies would be wrong for the country. He was particularly dismissive of those who supported him with their “heart”, saying:
If your heart is with Corbyn, get a transplant.
And he said this too.
Blair on the prospect of a Corbyn leadership: 'It's like going back to Star Trek or something. Back to the old days'
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
- Blair insisted that Labour could win in 2020 and he set out five steps the party could follow to make this happen. (See 9.48am.)
-
He said that he would not leave the party if Corbyn won the leadership. He was Labour “through and through”, he said. (See 8.59am.)
Blair warns he won't give if Corbyn wins: "Even after this leadership election there's going to be a debate in the Labour party"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
- He criticised Labour’s platform in the election. He said he thought Ed Miliband was wrong to think that the centre of gravity in British politics had moved to the left, and that people did not vote Labour because they thought it did not undertand the modern world. But he said he admired the way Miliband stuck to his guns during the campaign. (See 8.56am and 8.59am.)
-
He described nationalism as “caveman” politics.
Nationalism is not a new phenomenon. When they talk about it being new politics, it is the oldest politics in the world. It’s the politics of the first caveman council, when the caveman came out from a council where there were difficult decisions and pointed with his club across the forest and said, ‘They’re the problem, over there, that’s the problem’. It’s blaming someone else.
- He said Labour should attack the SNP’s record. He cited this article by John McDermott as a good example of how this could be done.
Blair takes on SNP over literacy rates going backwards, and health 'outcomes' getting worse.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
-
He said Tory policies would “destroy lives”.
Blair: "The tories are going to destroy lives. If there was a Labour govt it wouldn't be happening" #blair2015
— Owen Bennett (@owenjbennett) July 22, 2015
-
He said Labour needed to reform its party organisation.
Tony Blair: We should have a root and branch review of party organisation #blair2015
— ProgressOnline (@ProgressOnline) July 22, 2015
-
He said unity in the Labour party was not always a positive thing.
Blair on 'the great unity thing..unity doesn't really work if you hv a whole set of diff positions + say just hold hands + pretend we agree'
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair clear call to his party to fight the Left: "'Unity' does not work if you're all together in the bus going over the edge of the cliff"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
-
He indicated that he had not ruled out Britain one day joining the euro.
Should Britain still join the Euro one day? “Depends on the economics” says Blair. Not exactly an emphatic denial #Blair15
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) July 22, 2015
-
He criticised the way the EU has handled the Greece crisis.
Tony Blair: EU has "seriously mishandled" the Greek debt crisis - is a problem of Greek debt sustainability. "Greece isn't like Germany."
— Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) July 22, 2015
-
He suggested Labour should pick a woman as deputy leader.
Blair does intervene in deputy race: says cd be important to have a woman.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair on Deputy Leader - should be a woman and someone who "takes us away from machine politics". Deputy contest should get more coverage.
— Tom Price (@TomPrice80) July 22, 2015
-
He said he was opposed to proportional representation.
Asked if proportional representation is a good idea, Tony Blair says: 'no.'
— Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) July 22, 2015
...because 'a disproportionate amount of power ends up in the hands of a small party.'
— Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) July 22, 2015
-
He said being a good communicator was not just about being good with words.
Tony Blair: The best communication comes from knowing not just the big vision and tactics but the strategic policy in between #blair2015
— ProgressOnline (@ProgressOnline) July 22, 2015
Blair on oratory: best comms come not just from words but from getting the big picture right first
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Tony Blair says the reason someone like Bill Clinton was a great communicator was that he had "worked it out" in terms of strategy
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) July 22, 2015
Updated
And you might want to know why Iraq did not come up.
Blair has been speaking & taking question for over an hour now. And nobody has even mentioned the word 'Iraq'. Journos banned from asking Qs
— Jack Blanchard (@Jack_Blanchard_) July 22, 2015
I’ll post a summary with the highlights from the Q&A shortly, but this line is particularly fun.
Blair finishes by pointing out he is actually younger than Jeremy Corbyn. "I'm back - as the younger generation."
— Jack Blanchard (@Jack_Blanchard_) July 22, 2015
Tony Blair’s point about it being a mistake to assume there is a conflict between the pursuit of power and adherence to principle (see 9.48am) echoes an argument made by my colleague Rafael Behr in his Guardian column today. But Rafael explained it better than Blair did. Here is the key extract.
This is a significant cultural difference between the two major tribes in British politics. Conservatives see governing as a vocation, intrinsically the right thing to do. Failure in elections is a betrayal of the party’s purpose. For Tories there is an obvious correlation between what is good and what works. Labour tends to measure virtue and effectiveness on separate scales, making it possible, especially on the left fringe, to see failure as righteous and victory as betrayal. Marginalising that tendency was Tony Blair’s achievement; rehabilitating it is Miliband’s legacy.
Blair's speech - Extracts, and his 5-point plan for how Labour can recover
Here are the key extracts from Tony Blair’s opening speech. It would not be a proper political speech without a five-point plan, and Blair had one for Labour’s recovery.
- Blair said that Labour should not make the mistake of believing there was a conflict between “the pursuit of power and the purity of principle”.
-
He criticised “radical leftism” and said the party should not defend outdated policy.
However the large millstone is that perennially, at times congenitally, we confuse values with the manner of their application in a changing world. This gives us a weakness when it comes to policy which perpetually disorients us and makes us mistake defending outdated policy with defending timeless values.
We then misunderstand the difference between radical leftism, which is often in fact quite reactionary and radical social democracy which is all about ensuring that the values are put to work in the most effective way not for the world of yesterday but for today and the future.
So when our reforms produced declining waiting lists in the NHS or transformed much of London’s schooling or cut crime these weren’t a betrayal of principles but implementation of them. Betrayal would have been leaving a system of failure in place, even if we created such a system in an earlier time.
- He said change, and change driven by technology, was the most important characteristic of the modern world.
-
He said Labour could win in 2020.
We won not because we did what we thought was wrong as a matter of principle but right as a matter of politics; but when we realised that what is right as a matter of policy is right as a matter of principle.
Labour shouldn’t despair. We can win again. We can win again next time. But only if our comfort zone is the future and our values are our guide and not our distraction.
- He said Labour should treat the election defeat as an opportunity and he suggested five things the party needed to do to rebuild.
So we should use defeat as an opportunity. We have to rebuild. But approached in the right way this is exciting not depressing. How?
1 - We get thinking – about policy, real policy not one liners which make a point (useful though those can be in a campaign). Technology and its implications for everything from the NHS through to Government itself, is the single most important dimension. But across the board, from infrastructure to housing to tax reform to welfare, we should be thinking through new solutions framed against how people live and work now.
2 - We need to regain economic credibility. There is a perfectly sound case for saying we should have tightened policy before the crash; there is absolutely no case whatever for effectively accepting that Labour ‘caused’ it. But we cannot address the future unless we are clear about the past and unless we show we’re completely confident in economic policy.
3 - Some forward-thinking Labour Local Councils have done great work. Celebrate them and learn from them.
4 - Develop a dialogue with business about their challenges and needs; about productivity, skills and a modern industrial policy.
5 - Work out what a political organisation looks like today: how we make decisions, how we communicate, how we get our message across. There is a wealth of example all over the world. We should access it.
Here are some of the line that I’ve missed while the live feed has been down.
Possibly the Blair line that will grab the headlines most: "People who say their heart is with Corbyn, get a transplant".
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair takes on SNP over literacy rates going backwards, and health 'outcomes' getting worse.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair: 'Labour Party is the only party capable of uniting the UK.'
— Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) July 22, 2015
Blair: PR works in 'devolved' setting but not nationally cos gives too much power to small parties. That used to mean LDs, now cites UKIP
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair clear call to his party to fight the Left: "'Unity' does not work if you're all together in the bus going over the edge of the cliff"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair on the prospect of a Corbyn leadership: 'It's like going back to Star Trek or something. Back to the old days'
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 22, 2015
Blair: "Being anti-immigrant is just foolish" #blair2015
— Owen Bennett (@owenjbennett) July 22, 2015
"In the world today, being anti-immigration is stupid." #blair2015
— Conor Pope (@Conorpope) July 22, 2015
Tony Blair: "The answer to some guy who's unemployed in one of the seaside resorts...is not stopping Polish people coming to this country"
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) July 22, 2015
The Progress live feed keeps packing up. Which, given that it is a Blairite organisation and that Blair has just been highlighting the importance of new technology (see 9.01am), is somewhat ironic.
Blair says the Tories are doing things Labour does not like.
Labour has to attack them, but also have a platform for government.
On the welfare bill, he says his government was hit by big rebellions when it brought in welfare reforms.
The live feed crashed a few minutes ago, but it is back up.
Q: Ukip only got one MP, although they got more than 3m votes. There is a real problem there, isn’t there?
Blair says there are problems with the alternatives too.
If you have a proportional representation system, you can end up with parties like Ukip exercising disproportionate power.
Q: Do you agree with Tristram Hunt’s claim that Labour could just disappear, like Woolworths?
Blair says that he does not think that will happen. But of course parties can disappear, he says.
He says he recently spoke to Labour members heavily involved in the Scottish campaign.
He has two pieces of advice about confronting nationalism.
First, you need to take them on.
Their philosophy is one that has been around since the first caveman came out and blamed the other lot of cavemen living somewhere else.
Essentially nationalism is reactionary, he says.
You have to take that on.
He says the SNP also benefit from the fact that they are a government acting like an opposition. And he recommends an article in Prospect magazine by the FT’s John McDermott, which he says is good on this subject.
-
Blair says the SNP are reactionary and describes nationalism as a “caveman” ideology.
Updated
Q: Is the Labour party ready to hear your message?
I think so, says Blair.
He recalls a Labour meeting when he first became leader. A woman stood up and said she had worked out what he was about: he was trying to get Tories to vote Labour, she said.
That was a common accusation, he says. He always pleaded guilty.
He says Labour has gone through this before. But his argument would be that Labour should “shorten the process” this time. There is no need to have four election defeats.
Blair says he does not believe the claims about Labour being out of power for ever. That reminds him of what people used to say about Labour, old Economist covers, he says.
He says politics does not work like that.
And he says the Tories are going to start getting “cocky”.
Blair says technology is transforming the world.
There is not a single company that is not thinking about this. Some companies are going out of business as a result.
If you are organising the NHS and not thinking about how technology changes things, “you are not at the races,” he says.
It is not a matter of whether or not you have 5,000 more nurses, he says.
Q: Did you make these points to Ed Miliband?
Blair says he has “great admiration” for how Miliband stuck to his guns. He came to have a lot of admiration for him.
But they disagreed. He thought the centre ground had shifted left. He does not think the centre ground does shift in that way.
But the important thing is what you do now.
Those who lived through the 1970s and 1980s find it fascinating - no, fascinating is not the right word - familiar, he says.
Q: If Corbyn becomes leader, will you give him advice?
Blair says he is not sure that will happen.
But he says he is Labour “through and through”.
Anyone who fought the 1983 campaign for the Labour party is Labour through and through.
He says his objection is not to Corbyn as an individual.
It is about a platform that would not work for the country.
If people say their heart is not in something - get a transplant.
-
Blair says Corbyn’s policies would be wrong for the country.
Blair says at the election people did not vote Labour because they did not think it understood what the modern world was about.
He does not understand the logic of stepping right away from the modern world, he says.
Q: What do you say to people in the Labour who are being branded Tories because they support modernisation?
Blair says Labour needs to adapt. People who criticise people in the party on those grounds are engaging in abuse because they cannot win the argument.
Q: Can’t you get on Twitter and say that?
I’m not sure that will help, says Blair.
Blair's Q&A
Blair is now taking questions.
He is “in conversation” with Matt Forde, a former Labour organiser who is now a talkSPORT presenter.
Q: Are you putting Jeremy Corbyn first or second?
That’s the Tory preference, says Blair. So - no.
-
Blair says Tories want Jeremy Corbyn to win.
.@mattforde bringing the discussion with @tonyblairoffice to a close #Blair2015 pic.twitter.com/yDuMJGsbUZ
— ProgressOnline (@ProgressOnline) July 22, 2015
Updated
Labour should not despair, he says.
It can win again. It can win again next time, but only if its comfort zone is the future, and its values are a guide, not a distraction.
Blair says Ukip and the SNP have clouded Labour’s view.
The problems facing Scotland will not be solved by independence.
So take them head on, he says.
He says he does not know if that will work. But it is what he believes in.
Blair says defeat offers an opportunity.
First, the party should think about policy - not just one-liners that get you through a debate, though those can be useful in a campaign.
Second, Labour needs to regain credibility. There is no case for saying Labour caused the economic crash. But it has to show it is credible.
Third, learn from Labour councils. Some are doing great work.
Fourth, have a dialogue with business.
Fifth, think about what a successful political party looks like in the modern world, he says. There are lots of examples around the world.
Blair says people on the left sometimes confuse values with policy.
That leads to people defending outdated policy.
And it leads to a confusion between radical leftism, which is often quite reactionary, and radical social democracy.
In government, Labour cut waiting times in the NHS, and improved schools. That was not a betrayal of principle. That was the implementation of principle.
He says change defines the modern world. That has vast consequences.
Individuals live quite differently with infinitely more choice over their own life.
Development of human capital is vital.
But the fall-out creates new problem, like social care for the elderly, and those left behind by change.
So change requires new thinking. And 2015 is not 2007 or 1997. So, yes, move on. But don’t for heaven’s sake move back.
If the party moves back, the public won’t vote for it because it is out of touch.
Blair says he became leader of the Labour party 21 years ago yesterday.
Since then, a lot has happened. Labour has discovered winning successfully. And it has discovered losing successfully.
He could give a speech on how to win. You win from the centre.
But he doesn’t want to do that. That will reinforce the idea that there is a contest between heart and head. There isn’t, he says.
Tony Blair arrives on stage now. He is getting a warm round of applause. There is some shrieking too.
John Woodcock, the Labour MP and Progress chair, is introducing Tony Blair.
He says Blair won because, under his leadership, the party decided to face the modern world. It applied its timeless values to the modern world.
He says people forget that, as well as being a successful prime minister, he was also a successful leader of the opposition. He is the only person alive to have done this. And, depending on how you define it, he is only the second person in history to have done this.
Tony Blair's speech
Tony Blair is speaking at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in London.
He is being introduced now.
Here is a live feed of the speech.
Even just after Labour’s election defeat, it would have been hard to imagine a time when Jeremy Corbyn might have been a more influential figure in the Labour party than Tony Blair.
Yet today, with Corbyn on course to win the leadership contest, according to one poll, we may have reached the point. Here’s the Guardian’s story about that poll, and here’s an extract.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has rejected a poll conducted by YouGov for the Times showing Jeremy Corbyn on course to win the Labour leadership election, with a 17-point lead ahead of the other candidates on first preference votes.
Cooper was the only Labour leadership hopeful so far to speak out against the findings of the YouGov poll, which is the first to be published since the leadership contest began and claims to be based on a sample of Labour members, registered supporters and union supporters. As well as a win for Corbyn (43%), the poll suggests Andy Burnham (26%) would come second, Cooper (20%) third and Liz Kendall (11%) fourth.
Polls of party members are difficult to conduct and the British Polling Council has yet to conclude its inquiry into how the pollsters managed to get the general election result wrong ...
The poll, which predicts Corbyn winning with 53% of the vote in a runoff against Burnham, questioned 1,054 people, of whom 20% have yet to decide how to vote.
This morning we’ll hear what Blair has to say about that. He is giving a short speech on the future of the Labour party, and then taking part in a Q&A, in an event organised by Progress.
There is a live feed here. It starts at 8.30am.
Later Corbyn will be giving a speech.
