Sir Tony Blair has issued a pamphlet that signals a sharp pivot to the right, a document that his former political antagonists are now embracing as ideological vindication. The former Labour prime minister, through his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has published a sweeping set of policy prescriptions that read more like a conservative manifesto than a centre-left prospectus – and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP, has welcomed it as proof that Blair has “revealed his true colours.”
The prescriptions: a ten-point shift
The pamphlet, described by Rees-Mogg as containing “the normal platitudes you would expect of a former party leader” but also ten clear policy recommendations, marks a decisive break with the approach Blair took during his decade in Downing Street. At its core is a demand that the Labour Party abandon what Blair calls the “soft left” position and return to the “radical centre.” He accuses the current party of having an “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” and predicts it will lose the next election unless it changes course.
On energy, Blair calls for the UK to scrap its net zero targets, arguing that cheaper energy and electrification must take priority. He explicitly advises Sir Keir Starmer to “rip up” Ed Miliband’s green energy targets. While he stops short of endorsing shale gas fracking, he goes “quite a long way down that path,” indicating that all available resources from the North Sea should be used to lower costs. Rees-Mogg noted the irony that “the author of essentially our net zero policy suddenly loved swanning around the world and signing accords to limit emissions wants cheaper energy.”
Blair advocates radical planning reform and deregulation – something Rees-Mogg points out “he simply didn’t do when he was in office” – to accelerate infrastructure delivery and boost productivity. He calls for the “reindustrialising” of northern England through incentives, infrastructure, education and reduced bureaucracy, in partnership with the private sector. The entire government, he argues, should be reorganised around harnessing artificial intelligence, slashing obstacles to business growth and treating the state as an enabler rather than a director.
On foreign policy, Blair suggests the UK should have done more to support US wars and argues for a stronger relationship with Donald Trump, prepared to argue for alliances even when controversial. He makes what Rees-Mogg describes as a “pretty feeble defence of the European Union.”
Blair also criticises Labour’s new workers’ rights laws, an above-inflation minimum wage increase, and changes to non-dom tax status, claiming they hinder business and growth. He makes what Rees-Mogg calls “marginally condescending” remarks about Andy Burnham, looks down on Wes Streeting, and “pats Keir Starmer gently on the head.”
Welfare reform: the most striking reversal
The most radical proposal, and the one that most starkly contrasts with Blair’s own record in office, concerns welfare reform. Blair calls for fundamental reform of the welfare system, urging Labour to work with the Conservatives to cut the benefits bill. He argues that rising incapacity and disability benefit spending is unsustainable and that the pension triple lock is unaffordable in the long term. He highlights the growth in working-age incapacity and disability claims, particularly those linked to mental health, and warns of the fiscal and social consequences of people being outside the labour market.
Rees-Mogg seized on this as a moment of conversion. “He wants to reform welfare. Now it’s worth looking at how welfare exploded when he was prime minister, because it’s slightly do as I say, not as I do,” he wrote. “When he was prime minister, the welfare bill went up and up, particularly including pensions.” During Blair’s premiership, the New Deal programme introduced in 1997 aimed to encourage employment among benefit recipients, and later reforms sought to increase personal responsibility. But the overall cost rose significantly, and Rees-Mogg argues that Blair’s current call to challenge the triple lock is something “Nigel Farage isn’t brave enough to say, even people on the right have shied away from telling this uncomfortable truth.”
Blair also demands “whole system healthcare reform” for the NHS, shifting from cure to prevention. “This is the sort of thing that if the Tories said it, we’d be accused of privatising the NHS,” Rees-Mogg observed. Under Blair, the government launched major NHS reforms including new contracts for consultants and GPs, waiting-time targets, and a greater role for the private sector – but Rees-Mogg notes that the approach was essentially to “just throw cash at the NHS.”
The gap between Blair’s current language and his past record is profound. His own 1998 Human Rights Act, a flagship policy that incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, is now implicitly challenged by his demand to do “whatever it takes” to solve the illegal immigration crisis – a formulation Rees-Mogg interprets as requiring departure from the ECHR and repeal of the Act. Blair himself expressed frustration with the Act as early as 2006, suggesting amendments or even withdrawal from specific clauses if they jeopardised “community safety.”
Immigration: the final conversion
On immigration, Blair calls for the government to take whatever measures are necessary to end illegal migration, and to be “unashamed to advocate” targeted economic migration for specific sectors. This represents a dramatic turnaround from his own record in office. Under Blair, net immigration rose from 46,800 in 1997 to 222,600 in 2004 – a quadrupling that Rees-Mogg describes as a deliberate policy to “change the nature of this country.” The figures cited by Rees-Mogg show an increase from 48,000 to 273,000 a year during Blair’s tenure.
Blair’s government opened the labour market to EU accession states without transitional controls in 2004, triggering a marked increase in migration from Central and Eastern Europe. While his administration also imposed increased restrictions on asylum seekers, the overall direction was towards managing migration for economic benefit. Now Blair argues for a different approach. “Perhaps best and most important of all, in terms of the one sinner who repented, is what he’s saying on immigration,” Rees-Mogg wrote. “I rejoice, I open the champagne, I celebrate when people come round to conservative views. I noticed people grow up. They often become more conservative.”
