Lewis Goodall

Now, even Labour MPs, but particularly Labour voters, do not get up in the morning and think, oh, my goodness, Britain is about to be relegated from the Premier League of Nations.

They think about cost of living pressures.

They think about the fact precisely...

that wealth and power and inequality seem so badly distributed across the country, he could have said, he could have argued in a way that early Blair would have done.

Early Blair would have done when he talked about Christian socialism, when he talked about, you know, we must be our brother's keeper, when he talked about the idea that socialism was about empowering the freedom of the individual.

He could have said, we can't afford these labour law restrictions because they're fine if you're in work.

but they're terrible if you're out of work.

If you're a young person trying to get into the labour market, he could have said, which would have been classic Blairism, he could have said, what was Blairism?

What was the third way?

It was about having a free, dynamic market economy which ensured you had social justice, which used the proceeds of growth to ensure that you could have the strong public services that you needed.

He could have said all of that, but he didn't.

And a result of basically not doing so, of simply talking in, frankly...

a deeply neoliberal way of basically just saying, we have to do this because business wants it, and if not, we'll be relegated from the Premier League of Nations.

Frankly, he sounded like a slightly more fogeyish Sunak or a slightly politer Camus Badenoch, and that has just pissed off a load of people in the Labour Party.

Which he doesn't really address.

Well, and that is an argument which does seem to be gaining some traction now that Ed Miliband is rather alienated from the prime minister.

Apparently, the prime minister is looking at the North Sea.

I'm sorry, I overspoke there.

But like, you know, but John, I suppose where I'll push back on you is to say, I think, you know, when I think about Tony Blair.

And his most successful period.