However, as I read on (or rather scanned on, as I half-heartedly speed-read it on the bus home), it did appear to be a defence of his term so far. Meaning, if I'm being honest, it kind of rang true. Like there was a genuine underlying division.
(Incidentally, I also saw footage of Keir Starmer taking a penalty on Twitter. He's a left footer. Bottom corner. Nicely taken.)
These are the things I saw on my bus ride home. They're not why I'm posting though. What I want to note is how people on the right, especially conservatives, are all swooning over Tony Blair again, following his mildly right-leaning essay. He only has to show a flash of ankle and they get all giddy. In fact, in the essay he hints at leaving the ECHR. He doesn't actually say it. He says that Britain needs to do whatever it takes to stop the small boats (I think, I didn't actually read it fully. It's way longer than the Starmer substack and I'm not going back to check.)
Either way, I've seen right-leaning commentators say, "He even hinted at leaving the ECHR !😍" They didn't include the exclamation mark and the heart-eyed emoji, they were my additions, but that was the vibe. Showing that he does indeed only have to show a hint of flesh to get them swooning.
It's so funny to me.
Especially when the wider context is apparent. Back in 1997, when Blair first became PM, conservatives at the time thought, "It won't be so bad, he's kind of a Tory anyway."
This was because Blair presented himself as an heir to Thatcher. Of course, that wasn't really the case, and his government turned out to be quite radical. So radical that people are now saying we have to literally reverse half the changes he made just to do something as basic as manage the border.
Yet, after all this, in the year 2026, conservatives somehow manage to find themselves thinking the exact same thing.
"He's kind of a Tory really."
It's like watching Satan give Saddam Hussein yet another chance in an episode of South Park.
We already had a mini version of this two years ago when Starmer was elected. He was Blair's protégé, and Zero Seats "wouldn't be so bad," as at least the pragmatic (non-Corbynist) Blair regime would get the potholes fixed. This is partly why I was initially so sceptical of Starmer's substack rebuke. Starmer is Blair's creature, isn't he? He probably told him to hire Mandelson, lol.
So why are people applauding Blair for attacking a government he helped bring to power just two years ago?
(Though I must remember that we had the whole Sue Gray issue at the start of Starmer's term. Suggesting there are indeed factions within Labour.)
Whatever's going on it's quite the spectacle when taken on face value. Why are these people so dumb? They have goldfish brains.
Okay, maybe if there's some 4D chess type thing going on, I might be the dumb one. But if all these people really are just genuinely wooed this easily, heaven help us.
Again, it is funny though. Watching people that have made hours of content saying we need to upend every constitutional change that's happened since 1997 suddenly join Team Blair because they've been presented with a left/right dichotomy of Blair versus Burnham. Which, in reality, is Blair versus a Blairite. Or, at best, two very slightly different shades of New Labour red.
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