Let’s talk about Blair

By David Talbot / @_davetalbot

A former Prime Minister has for some years played a significant paid advisory role for a secretive Washington DC-based private equity firm with annual revenues of over bn. It is hard to imagine an address closer to the heart of American power. The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone’s throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle’s position at the very centre of the Washington establishment. The group employs an impressive list of former politicians, including former President George HW Bush.

The ex-Prime Minister in question is John Major – which perhaps explains why you have not read about it in the papers or being subjected to a Dispatches programme on it. No one questions the former Tory leader’s cashing in with his old friend from the White House, and giving Carlyle the benefit of his myriad of contacts he had made while at 10 Downing Street.

The same cannot be said about Tony Blair. To say that he is hated – by a vocal constituency – would be a gross understatement. The word “hate” does not do justice to the violence of this group’s all-consuming rage at even the fact of his continued existence.

When Ed Miliband mentioned Blair’s name in his speech to the Labour conference this week, some in the hall could be heard booing. Self-appointed voices of the left could be seen preening themselves with pride admitting their discourteous behaviour. Miliband no doubt never intended that response, but it was an odd response – not to mention simply rude – to boo a man who took the party of habitual defeat into a movement of crushing victory that redefined the British political landscape. And now some Labour delegates see fit to boo his name in the conference hall.

A section of the conference that cannot stomach its own greatest winner is a party in ill-health. The overwhelming majority of delegates take great pride in Labour’s achievements in power. It is to the great discredit of Blair that all too often the accomplishments of the Labour government cannot be attributed to him, whilst its manifest failures always are.

It took the Conservatives more than a decade to come to terms with Thatcherism and arguably they are still in her thrall. Labour faces a much more agonising task in making sense of Blair. This party has long treated generations of defeated leaders with respect, lionising Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock, but now seems driven to put as much distance as possible between it and the man who made it electable.

Last week the excellent Hopi Sen wrote that Labour needs to have an argument about the past because Brown’s premiership was so disastrous. This is patently true. But a more pressing issue is at hand; how do we address that great bête-noire of the Labour party – Anthony Charles Lynton Blair?

It is one of the peculiarities of the Blair’s predicament that he is a cause of such apoplexy on both the right and the left. From his new found wealth to his record as Prime Minister, he is attacked, abused and degraded. This is not a defence of the old order; I am not a Blairite ultra. But the Labour Party that booed its most successful leader of all time took bold steps this week towards ensuring it will never have to face the agonies of power again.