𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Tony Blair’s intervention in the Labour leadership debate is, unfortunately, spot-on. And say what you like about Blair – and with the wars, the spin and the speaking fees, there’s a lot to say – but he has the one quality entirely missing from the current front bench. He can still read the room. His warning ran to almost 6,000 words , cautioning that Labour has an “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” and is sleepwalking towards defeat. That is what stings for Keir Starmer. Blair didn’t accuse him of being dull or failing to shout about his achievements (things we already know).

He said the Prime Minister has no plan at all. That he governs from Labour’s comfort zone while the ground shifts under him. Ouch. Yet instead of listening, arrogant Labour insiders prefer to brand Blair as a relic flogging net-zero scepticism and cosier ties with Donald Trump. Unfortunately for Labour, most ordinary voters reached Blair’s verdict months ago.

The maddening thing is that the former PM is right about the cure, too. Growth comes first – you cannot pay for generous public services without it. Punishing the businesses meant to deliver that growth is madness. Government should enable rather than direct. You would hope that this would be obvious. But unfortunately, we’ve been cursed with a front bench more interested in competing over new ways to tax and meddle.

There is no small irony in the fact that Blair can read the room so well partly because he helped redecorate it – leading to the mass migration and disastrous housing policy that did so much to sour the country. Then there is Andy Burnham, a man whose real claim to the title ‘King of the North’ is anyone’s guess. His is a city whose council loaded on another £289million of debt in a single year, taking its borrowing to £1.6billion and making it one of the most indebted in the country.

Manchester is stretched and struggling like everywhere else, not the success story its mayor likes to sell. Yet here he is, fancying himself the man to save a party that seemingly does not want saving. Just look at how his return has been set up. A sitting MP, Josh Simons, has resigned his Makerfield seat purely to clear the way for him.

Nothing like it has happened since 1965, when a by-election was last engineered to find a seat for someone who was not even in Parliament.

Burnham was handed the candidacy with no rival name on the table and the local members barely consulted. And if he wins on June 18, he has to give up being mayor of Greater Manchester straight away, leaving the mayoralty vacant and saddling the region with yet another costly election by August.

All of it so one man can get the seat he needs to run for leader. The members want him, mind you – pollsters Survation has them backing him over Starmer by 61 to 28. It is hard to square all that with the humble local hero he likes to play. It looks far more like a stitch-up dressed up as public service. And it tells you something that the seat he is being handed voted 66% for Brexit, while Burnham has spent the last few months quietly dropping his old line about wanting to rejoin the EU. For a man of such firm conviction, he bends awfully easily towards whatever seat happens to be free.

Which is exactly Blair’s point about him. Blair warned that Labour cannot keep losing seats to Reform on the right and somehow win them back by drifting left, and that is precisely what Burnham is selling.

All that vague talk about ending 40 years of neoliberalism is the comfort blanket Blair was describing. He offers warmth and a friendly face and the feeling that someone, somewhere, has a grip on things.

What Burnham has never offered is one solid idea on debt or growth or defence that would survive a week of proper scrutiny in Downing Street. So Blair is right about him too.

Burnham is nowhere near the saviour fans think he is, and the real kicker is that Blair, the ghost Labour would most like to be rid of, is the one who has correctly worked out what is wrong with them. They would just rather sit in denial than admit it, especially when the diagnosis comes from a man they cannot stand.