Tony Blair’s tips for a Tory revival

LONDON — Tony Blair has some advice for the four contenders currently vying for the leadership of the U.K. Conservative party.

The former Labour prime minister who saw off four Tory leaders may not be the obvious source of wisdom for his erstwhile political opponents.

But as they reel from their worst ever election defeat in the U.K’s July 4 general election, bruised Conservatives gathering in Birmingham for their first annual conference out of power in 15 years may well be seeking inspiration from wherever they can get it.

Having led the Labour Party to three successive election victories between 1997 and 2007, Blair said the Conservatives needed to “unite behind a clear vision” under a new leader, adding: “Whether they do that or not, it’s up to them.”

Asked which Tory leadership contender would be best at leading the party, Blair joked: “There’s no point in me condemning the poor candidate I would choose.”

Four hopefuls, former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, ex-Home Secretary James Cleverly, former Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugenhadt, who served as security minister in Rishi Sunak’s outgoing administration, are vying for the Tory crown, with the contest decided between the final two on Nov. 2.

Blair told Power Play podcast host Anne McElvoy that while Sunak’s defeated government attempted “perfectly sensible things” including on overhauling technology, “the real problem that he had in the end was that the Conservative party just became fundamentally disorderly.”

“The most important thing for any political party is you’ve got to have clarity of direction,” Blair added.

A nation of shared values

The ex-PM waded into the debate over remarks made by leadership contender Badenoch, who has called for a greater focus on integration for immigrants to the U.K, saying not all arrivals “automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border” as “their feet may be in the U.K, but their heads and hearts are still back in their country of origin.”

Pressed on whether he agreed with Badenoch’s criticism of liberal thinking on immigration, Blair suggested his own view was aligned. “It’s correct that people should assimilate into the common values.

“So your cultural space is a space rich in diversity where you can pursue your own culture in what you do and the celebrations you have and the ceremonies you have and the faith you have. All of that’s absolutely fine.

“But when it comes to basic rules about democracy or, for example in our country now, rules about the role of women or people who are gay being entitled to equality, that’s not up for argument. You integrate with those things and it’s really important because otherwise you end up with the situation where people often say multiculturalism failed.

“No, multiculturalism didn’t fail. There’s not a problem with most communities in the U.K.”

Blair also said that both parties had become too focused on ideology and had failed to focus on the electorate’s priorities.

Fixation with Brexit

Discussing his late father Leo’s involvement in Conservative politics, Blair said the traditional appeal of the party was that it shunned ideology. Voters “regarded them as having a solidity that meant that you could always turn to them and they would govern … and govern sensibly.”

However, the former PM said, in recent years a “fixation” among Tories with the European Union and Brexit “connected to them with a whole lot of other thinking and a bit like parts of the Republican Party in the U.S, they got ideology in a big way.”

Referring to his own Labour Party’s tilt to the left under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn in the run up to the 2016 referendum, he went on: “Unfortunately, the Labour party had its own nervous breakdown at the same time. So that’s what left the country in 2016 without leadership when it really needed leadership.”

In the wake of riots in England over the summer, Blair warned that the newly elected Labour government under Keir Starmer shared problems facing other mainstream parties in Europe in confronting populists on the far right.

“Populists in my experience rarely invent a grievance, but they do exploit grievance. They become adept at riding the anger rather than providing the answer, but the answer of the more conventional politicians is: sort the problem out. Immigration is a real issue. It’s not right wing if you say you want controls on immigration.”

Power Play is released Oct. 3.