182: Make Hay
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Page 94, the Private Eye podcast. Hey, everybody. And when I say hey, I mean, hey, festival, everybody. Welcome to a live episode of Page 94 recorded here at Hay. So without further ado, let's get into it. First question for all of you. We have a once loved, now hated, Labour Prime Minister, came to office in a landslide, is now completely loathed, his legacy in ruins. Is there any way back for Tony Blair?
I'm going to go first as the lonely Tony defender on the panel. So I grew up in the... Well, I was a teenager in the late 90s, right? So I lived through the kind of a new dawn has broken, has it not? I still think that new Labour record is really good. But the thing that we're talking about tonight is the fact that Tony Blair has decided to make one of... It was described as a rare intervention. I was like, I don't think it eases it, really. But into the Labour leadership contest where he said a variety of things. The thing I think he said that was true is that Keir Starmer came into that Labour leadership essentially painting himself as continuity Corbyn. He then pivoted very hard afterwards to say, actually, I'm going to put the left back in the sealed tomb of Mandelson.
Watch out badly.
And then now it's kind of just... If anyone can escape a sealed tomb, it's Peter Max.
What is the significance of Tony Blair's legacy in modern politics?
It's Peter Max.
Rise. But then essentially, without a proper programme for government, without a governing ideology, you will snap back into a sort of wishy-washy soft left comfort zone. You know, that is a legitimate ideology, but you have to kind of make a case for it, not just it be the kind of default that you come back to. And I think that's the problem. The people around Starmer thought they were very clever that they said, well, we're not getting involved in these labour wars. We're not Benite or Blairite or Wilsonite or Callahanite or whatever it might be.
But we are shite.
That's the only ite that we are. But as it's turned out, that's the problem, is that no one knows what they think.
Yeah. I couldn't see in his arguments any policies that haven't already been adopted by the Conservatives and reform.
LAUGHTER
Which is interesting because if he wants to say, hi, vote Tory, that's a different view from him. It's free to do so, yeah.
How did you feel about his thoughts on oil and gas, Andy?
Loved them. Couldn't fault them. Quite impressive on a 35-degree day to sign off an argument that says, more oil and gas, that's what we need. That's the secure future we need. No, his views are consistent. He believes that we need more oil and gas.
How has Keir Starmer's leadership impacted the Labour Party?
He believes we need to rip up the Clean Power 2030 commitment. He's proposing the same things you would do if you were a climate denier, and which, in fact, Reform and the Conservatives... are pitching at the moment. There is a reason that China are installing hundreds of gigawatts. Basically, one gigawatt is a large nuclear power station. China's installing hundreds of gigawatts of solar power every year. They are not doing that because they've had a really inspiring talk from Greta Thunberg. They're doing that for very hard-nosed reasons of their own energy security. They are not dependent on a mad choke point in the Middle East that can apparently be closed at any time. And they're doing it for reasons of cost.
China's electrified more of its economy than we have by about... 35% to 25%. China has overtaken us in the race to get things clean and efficient.
I can tell that I've spent too much time sitting in a room with you because as I was reading it, I thought it's fascinating to me that he's very excited about AI. Now, the Tony Blair Global Institute has lots of links with AI companies, and I think there is a genuine sincere thing there, which is he just loves the future. It's shiny and new and exciting. And I thought there's a really big contrast with why is he not excited about clean energy? Incredible strides of technological advance in the last decade. But that one apparently is not exciting to him.
Well, because none of the people he meets at international conferences are going on about that.
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