Blair is closer than ever to regaining political power, albeit through a proxy Labour government led by Keir Starmer. The beauty (for Blair) is that he will be able to continue expanding his global political consulting empire at the same time.
One of the great contradictions of British political life over the past 15 years is Sir Tony Blair. The three-term prime minister is broadly reviled by the British public, even among many Labour Party voters, yet he continues to be feted and fawned over by the British establishment and media. Even after the “crushing verdict” (in The Guardian‘s words) of the Chilcott Inquiry — that the Blair government’s case for the Iraq war was “deficient” — was finally made public in 2016, Blair remained a go-to person for the British and international media on all manner of topics, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is a very different story for the British public. In a recent YouGov opinion poll, only 22% of respondents said Blair had had a positive effect on the Labour Party, with 38% saying his impact was broadly negative. Even among Labour Party voters, only 26% labelled his impact as positive compared to 38% who saw it as negative. According to another YouGov survey, this time from 2022, a mere 14% approved of his knighthood and only 3% strongly so, while 63% disapproved, 41% strongly so. Over a million people signed a petition demanding the knighthood be revoked.
In other words, the last thing most people in the UK want to see is Blair making a political comeback. Yet the former PM is closer than ever to regaining political power, albeit through a proxy Labour Party government led by the current party leader, Keir Starmer, who is hotly tipped to win the next general election, which must take place by January 28, 2025. Starmer is favourite to win not because of a groundswell of support for his vision or candidacy — the UK public view the party under Starmer even less favourably than under Ed Miliband — but because support for the governing (if you can call it that) Conservative Party is in freefall:
Blair will probably have no official role in the resulting Starmer government, but he will wield plenty of power from behind the scenes. The beauty of such an arrangement (for Blair) is that he will have zero public accountability or responsibility while at the same time being able to continue serving his corporate clients and expanding his global political consulting empire.
Many of the key positions in a Starmer government will be filled by members of the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, which has spent the past four years purging the party of its genuine left-wing politicians and members, including former party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach. As the veteran US journalist Robert Kuttner writes, Starmer “has virtually outsourced his entire program to Tony Blair” and his modestly named non-profit foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (often shortened to TBI).
TBI was spawned in 2017 by rolling together all of Blair’s for-profit and non-profit ventures, including the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, the Tony Blair Governance Initiative, and his consulting firm Tony Blair Associates, into one vehicle. Some of those ventures had begun to attract a little too much attention for their opaque tax structures, fragrant conflicts of interest and dodgy client lists, including the despotic governments of Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan – all, of course, rich in mineral deposits. TBI continues to take money from the Saudis as well as large corporations and philanthropic foundations…
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Nick Corbishley 