Tony Blair has warned the next Labour leader against becoming trapped in a “cul-de-sac of identity politics” over issues such as transgender rights, as he used an event in London to reiterate his belief that the party must focus on making itself electable again.
The former prime minister, who also raised the idea of a possible alliance with the Liberal Democrats as a way to regain power, said the Conservatives would emerge victorious from any battles over contentious cultural issues.
“You’ve got to distinguish between the advocacy of certain things that are right, whether it’s about gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is,” he said in a Q&A session after a speech to mark the 120th anniversary of the founding of the party.
“You’ve got to distinguish between that and launching yourself politically into a kind of culture war with the right. If you go, ‘Transgender rights is our big thing’, and the right goes, ‘Immigration control is our big thing’, you’re going to lose that war.”
Transgender rights has become an increasingly significant issue in the leadership contest, with Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy both signing a controversial 12-point pledge that includes the promise to expel “transphobic” members.
Blair said he would not have signed the pledge, arguing there were “all sorts of difficult issues” that had to be resolved first.
In his speech opening the event, Blair said Labour should examine trying to “correct the defect from our birth” that separated Liberal and Labour traditions on the left.
“How this is done, institutionally, is a matter for debate. But intellectually and philosophically it is absolutely essential that these two traditions are reunited,” he said. However, he added that the Lib Dems would first needed to “show the same clarity of purpose” in being serious about trying to get into government.
Elsewhere in the speech Blair, who led Labour from 1994 to 2007, said “nothing less than born again head-to-toe renewal will do” for the party, and that it needed to have the “mentality of government”.
Members are to vote on who will shape the future of the party, with Keir Starmer, Long-Bailey and Nandy battling to take over from Jeremy Corbyn as leader. The result of the contest will be announced on 4 April.
Keir Starmer
Ambitious former director of public prosecutions has led the charge for remain in the shadow cabinet. He was instrumental in shifting Labour’s position towards backing a second referendum
Pitch Launched his campaign by highlighting how he has stood up for leftwing causes as a campaigning lawyer, and unveiled the slogan “Another Future is Possible”, arguing “Labour can win again if we make the moral case for socialism“
Blair said Labour had always won when it had broadened British politics, secured the centre ground and looked to the future. “And yet despite this obviously being true, we have exhibited an extraordinary attachment to retreating into a narrow part of the left which has always ended in defeat,” he added.
He said: “[W]hat Labour has stood for in terms of values has been magnificent; its achievements in government huge, but as a political competitor, it has too often been a failure.”
In the Q&A Blair said a major issue for Labour was an attachment to a form of state power that he did not think people believed in any more.
Asked whether he believed the party genuinely wanted to win an election, he said: “I think it does want to win. The question is, does it want to win enough so that it’s prepared, one, to understand why it lost and be prepared to make the changes so it doesn’t lose again.”
He criticised the 2019 Labour manifesto, saying: “The more you read it the less convinced you became.”
Blair continued: “On every page you could see, someone had come and knocked on the door and said, ‘Here’s a 10-point plan on this and I want £1bn.’ Any politician can say yes, it’s pretty easy. It’s when you say no, particularly to your own people.”
His speech came shortly after Nandy missed out Blair when asked to list the party’s best leaders on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Nandy said the New Labour years were “game-changing” but Blair did get “things wrong” during his decade in Downing Street.
