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Protesters wearing Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson masks hold pictures of Tony Blair and bloody money on March 24, 2026 in London, England. Denise Baker\/Getty Images)<\/p>\nRelations between Blair and Starmer have been remote in recent months, according to a senior figure at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the ex-PM\u2019s sprawling policy and strategy consultancy. Having given up having much influence on the Starmer operation, Blair now \u201cwants to rise above right or left and talk about the center much more broadly \u2014 what are the ideas Britain needs to thrive? He wants politics to look upwards and outwards. And whoever wants to take that forward, that\u2019s up to them,\u201d this person said.<\/p>\n
Protesters wearing Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson masks hold pictures of Tony Blair and bloody money on March 24, 2026 in London, England. Denise Baker\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to take the raw politics out of a Blairite clash with the Labour Party. The essay contains coded messages for Burnham, who is hoping to make his way back to Westminster via a\u00a0forced\u00a0June by-election. It also targets the ex-health secretary Streeting, who resigned\u00a0after the\u00a0disastrous\u00a0local elections earlier this month\u00a0in protest at the drift under Starmer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndy has defined himself against 40 years of neoliberalism which also included the New Labour era. We would push back strongly on that,\u201d\u00a0the TBI senior figure added. \u201cEven Wes has been critiquing the New Labour. We are trying to say: that\u2019s not the best way to look outward to a changing world and what that means for the Labour Party today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony unzipped<\/p>\n
The intervention was conceived long before the present leadership standoff. In the event, it has become a hot potato in the contest of ideas between the holdout camp,\u00a0which supports\u00a0Starmer\u2019s attempt to hang onto office, and a suite of hopeful challengers who want a change at the helm.<\/p>\n
Jack Straw,\u00a0who served as\u00a0home and foreign secretary in the Blair years, also\u00a0interpreted\u00a0the Blair manifesto statement as a tough intellectual critique of its current leadership offer \u2014 and defended his old boss against criticism that he has lurched rightwards in his political afterlife.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI strongly support what Tony said,\u201d Straw told POLITICO.\u00a0\u201cHe kept his mouth zipped for the local elections, and most people know that this government made serious, unforced errors like failing to properly prepare for government. It is useful because it forces people to discuss the issue of what has gone wrong, and something has, pretty plainly. We have three years to turn this around. Talking as Andy [Burnham] does about 40 years on the wrong path is interesting. I don\u2019t remember him saying that when we were in government together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relations between Blair and Starmer have been remote in recent months, according to a senior figure at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7786,1360,173,94,160,5035,7388,604,1369,593,3880,73,91,5,6,461,4108],"class_list":["post-50516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-andy-burnham","tag-elections","tag-england","tag-keir-starmer","tag-markets","tag-peter-mandelson","tag-produce","tag-regulation","tag-rights","tag-services","tag-tanks","tag-tax","tag-tony-blair","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-wes-streeting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}