The Guardian view on Tony Blair’s advice for Labour: policymaking like it’s 1999 will not lead to a revival | Editorial

A scathing essay by the former prime minister rehashes assumptions that underpinned his own rise to power. But the challenges are quite different now

A paradox lies at the heart of Sir Tony Blair’s latest sermon to a Labour party that he seems actively to dislike these days. The 5,700-word intervention, published on the website of his Institute for Global Change, emphasises the sheer novelty of challenges such as the AI revolution and the rise of insurgent populism in western democracies. Yet the advice he offers is based on assumptions unchanged since he was bashing “old Labour” in the 1990s.

In his essay, Sir Tony suggests that Labour’s “infinite capacity for self-delusion” is set to lose it the next election, irrespective of who is leading the party and the country by then. Only if it embodies a “radical centre”, he argues, can the government deliver the rises in growth and productivity that Britain desperately needs. This, it turns out, means rejecting more or less any policy that smacks of progressive ambition and intent.

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