𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

When Bill Shankly left Liverpool he would return to the Kop terraces every day during training, basically telling Bob Paisley where he was going wrong.

The man was such an Anfield legend no-one dared tell him to bugger off. But his continued presence was not entirely helpful. Which brings me to Tony Blair.

Tony Blair’s very existence must be like Kryptonite to Keir Starmer.

He seems to exist only to irritate and weaken the Prime Minister and show him up for the hapless, rudderless, liability to UK Plc he so clearly is.

This is usually done in the shadows. But today Blair locked and loaded and levelled both barrels at the Rt Hon Member for Holborn and St Pancras saying his empty box of political ideas and the Party’s subsequent “delusional lurch to the left” was in danger of “making Britain irrelevant”.

It’s hard to credit today, and even harder to relate, but when Blair came to power in 1997 the nation heaved a sigh of relief. We might even have allowed ourselves a little smile… a Labour politician we actually liked, who didn’t sound like he’d just graduated LSE with a head full of 19th century Marxist drivel and a briefcase full of Stalinist economic suicide notes. A Labour politician who seemed to have common sense and good values. It was unheard of.

Of course John Major’s government had long since run out of both intellectual and political steam. Two Tory superstars were literally behind bars, the decline and fall was complete – the post-Thatcher era was over and Labour’s ascendancy was all but assured.

Still, to his credit, the boy Blair did pretty well for a spell.

Admittedly not anywhere near as well as he’s done since leaving office, but then full-blooded Loadsamoney capitalism with a wafer-thin socialist veneer was always Tony’s style.

He’s worth an estimated £60million right now, has an extensive property portfolio valued at tens of millions, and can command up to £200,000 a pop on the public speaking circuit.

To each according to his needs comrade! Up the workers!

(Oh and you still pay his £63,468 pension and £84,000 annual allowance, assuming he can be bothered claiming such paltry sums.)

But Tony’s clear gift for capitalism is not my beef about his latest goodness aren’t I fabulous five and a half thousand word polemic on everything this Labour Party is doing wrong.

Which is of course everything.

It is that the deep economic and political sickness gripping Britain (which may yet prove fatal), was incubated under one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. How dare he come back like some omniscient benign force we must prostate ourselves before, when he was responsible for setting in motion all the forces now damaging Britain.

Just look how the evidence stacks up.

Immigration: Clearly Britain’s No1 cause celebre. In today’s 5,500-word bleat Blair now takes a positively Faragian stance saying Starmer must do “whatever it takes to stop the boats”.

Which sounds great until you realise that between 1997 and 2010 – the Blair years – net annual immigration quadrupled, and the UK population was boosted by more than 2.2 million outsiders. Much of this was due to Blair’s weakening of immigration process opening the door to family members, then catastrophically in 2004 when the EU absorbed TEN former Soviet bloc states and Britain became one of only three EU nations to say “come on in guys.” Blair told us a maximum of 13,000 would arrive. In fact one million economic migrants came to the UK. The flood gates were open and have remained so ever since.

Welfare: In his new 20-20 hindsight polemic Blair is especially critical of Sir Keir’s handling of welfare (especially caving in to rowdy backbenchers over planned reforms to personal independence payments) and said: “By the end of this decade, we could be spending more on incapacity and disability benefits than on defence. No serious country can do that.”

Which sounds great until you realise during the former PM’s premiership welfare spending rose from roughly £96 billion to £157 billion in cash terms. Adjusted for inflation, this represented a real-terms increase of about 30%. Meanwhile defence spending as a share of GDP collapsed from about 3% to about 2%.

Net Zero: On the day Ofgen reminded us our energy bills are set to rise £200, Sir Tony said that Labour will lose the next election unless it ditches Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive.

Which sounds great until you remember in 2003 a white paper made it Blair government policy to phase out reliance on North Sea oil and gas in favour of green energy. Two big windfall taxes on producers rather hammered the point home as did his post-No 10 role as an global environmental evangelist.

He now appears more pro Big Oil than the Esso Tiger and wants to drain every drop from the North Sea. He’s right of course but after years posing as Greta Thunberg’s big brother, and accidentally fashioning the net zero maniac that is Ed Miliband, it may be a little late.

Let us not forget too that Tony also gave us the Supreme Court – which gave unelected lawyers SO much more say over your life, and the 1998 Human Rights Act which incorporated the ECHR into UK law… giving unelected foreigners even more say over your life. He also fought long and hard to overturn the Brexit Britain voted for, but now seems happy not to talk about it.

Oh, and he gave us Peter Mandelson.

But, credit where it’s due, he’s not wrong about everything.

In one passage of today’s essay he takes a bit of a nasty backhanded side-swipe at Starmer saying: ““The Government’s principal problem isn’t Keir’s personality.”

It’s the modern Labour Party.

Even when it’s good it’s dreadful.

And when it’s dreadful, like this one is, it is catastrophic for Britain.