Labour is finally learning to love Tony Blair again

Sir Tony Blair, as he is now royally designated, has a dictum for winning elections. Before Labour can gain any sort of hearing from British voters, two (pretty low) bars must be passed: the party must be trusted on security, and it must appear to like the country it seeks to govern. Over its past decade marinating in opposition, it has failed on both.

Labour’s former prime minister remains despised by some of the party and the wider public — more than half a million people have signed a petition calling for his knighthood to be rescinded — but his textbook on how to win elections is being reopened. In post-Brexit Britain, where identity is potent, the party’s challenges over patriotism are more critical than ever.

The ex-leader’s influence on another knight, Sir Keir Starmer, is manifestly clear. In a hopey-changey speech on Tuesday, the opposition leader sought to “celebrate the country we live in”. Straight out of Blair’s playbook, he name-checked the Queen, football, the Commonwealth and the BBC — with talk of “security” throughout. The only thing missing was a direct reference to The Beatles.

Starmer wielded patriotism as an impetus for change. Invoking Clement Attlee’s 1945 election triumph, he argued: “I don’t think you cease to be a patriot because you notice your country has flaws. On the contrary, the reason we in this party want to correct those flaws is precisely because we are patriotic.” He also referenced Harold Wilson, Labour’s only other former election-winning prime minister, as a lodestar for reshaping society.

Beyond tone, Starmer’s party is increasingly looking like New Labour Mark 2. Some of the most notable appointees in its new front bench team — shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson — embrace the term “Blairite”. And it is these figures who are the most concerning to Conservatives. “Wes is the one to watch. I can see why Keir has put him in such a prominent role,” one Tory official notes.

Lord Peter Mandelson, a key figure of the New Labour era, naturally welcomes this shift but warns Starmer must go beyond draping himself in a Union Jack. “He should be clear that he wants his patriotism to be judged not by the number of flags he stands in front of, but by what he genuinely feels about the country, the British values he believes in and what he will actually do to make the country better,” he says.

Mandelson is right that Starmer may be relying too heavily on saccharine rhetoric. At moments, he appeared to be riffing on Hugh Grant’s character in Love Actually, where the fictional prime minister praises all things British down to David Beckham’s left foot. Starmer’s intellectual framework of security — economic, national or environmental — is a compelling one but is currently vague on any specifics.

Beyond talking up how much he loves Britain, Starmer’s 2022 mission must be to define what Labour wants to do. That cannot be reverting to a centre ground of politics that no longer exists, or opposing whatever Prime Minister Boris Johnson does for the sake of it. Labour may take comfort that it has moved ahead in the polls, yet much of that is thanks to the unpopularity of the government. If Johnson’s gamble on averting further Covid restrictions pays off, the Tories expect to slide back into the lead.

Starmer’s biggest challenge, however, is his party. Last year, 61 per cent of the general public described themselves as patriotic, but 44 per cent of Labour voters did so versus 88 per cent of Tory voters.

For all his realignment hopes, a ghost still haunts Starmer. He was asked on Tuesday why he opted not to reference Jeremy Corbyn, his leftwing predecessor who lost two general elections but remains dear to many hearts in the party. “I have always cited Attlee, Wilson and Blair precisely because they won,” he curtly noted.

With Corbyn no longer a Labour MP and with no prospect of him returning to the fold, Starmer is attempting to draw a line under his era. Fifteen years after Blair left office, Labour is accepting what his governments achieved — a sure sign that the party may be getting serious about winning elections again.

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