New Labour is still a home for Blair acolytes, I’ll need to see real evidence of change before I believe they’ve moved anywhere – let alone ‘on’.
I’m not sure ‘Progress’ is necessarily what New labour need to cosy up to.

“Ed Miliband is tapping Tony Blair”

Now there’s a story!

Nicholas Watt is talking about Blair solving the party divisions crisis. No evidence is given, so enough said. But I like the idea that in some people’s head Blair returned to cool the argument between Progress and the GMB off. Myself, I think Blair has returned because Luke Bozier has left Twitter.

This marks a coup for Ed Miliband, who has managed to disavow many of Blair’s policies (and Iraq of course) without sparking a civil war within the party

Oh please stop trying to be a spin doctor, Sunny. You’re not very good at it.

The Labour Party is the same one Blair left, still in the hands of unreconstructed professional wonks- just like Ed Milliband. The policies are the same

The only difference between then and now is that Blair was competent and photogenic.

Oh please stop trying to be a spin doctor, Sunny. You’re not very good at it.

To be fair he doesn’t have great material to work with.

So why doesn’t Tony send a big, anonymous cheque and keep his trap shut? I’m sure he dreams of the Labour Party and the public pleading with him to return to office and save Britain. At which point he’d probably declare himself to be the reincarnation of King Arthur. He’s done madder stuff in the past – see Mexican rebirthing ritual. Any return to public office would mean he would have very serious questions to answer about his income and his tax affairs.

Just look at the decades long poisonous legacy Thatcher left the Tories. If Miliband wants to be PM he must be praying for Tony to get Alzheimer’s and be locked away from public view as soon as possible

Sunny,

it doesn’t matter if Blair has marginal influence on policy. The relevant point is that the ‘Labour’ Party are associating themselves with -and seeking support from- a man who has the blood of hundreds of hundreds of thousands on his hand.

If this had been the Tories seeking advice from Pinochet, Milosevic, or Charles Taylor, you’d right howl the house down and the defence that they were only being consulted on ‘presentation’ rather than ‘substance’ would cut no ice.

It’s not a ‘coup’ for Miliband and he’s scarcely disavowed Blair. If the party had any guts or moral centre, it would be calling for Blair’s arrest and trial.

Blair is like Thatcher: a hate figure for many who will not be able to hold their nose and vote for Labour (the party who invented privatising the NHS and have been silent on claimant abuse.) Nobody is thinking: oh goodie! He’s back. The thought of his dirty hands lingering close to the throat of Labour is terrifying.

If all Tony Blair is doing is raising funds for the Labour Party, that is not a problem, just as long as it helps Labour return to government at the next election.

While I am a supporter of the Labour Party (especially Welsh Labour), I am no fan of Tony Blair, and disagreed with many things that Tony Blair did while in government, especially during the later years. It must not be forgotten that New “Labour” government did a lot of good, especially in it’s early years.

In essence, Ed Miliband is tapping Tony Blair to get more donations into the party and ease the party’s cash crunch.

Which would make the Labour Party financially responsible to the kind of people who think Tony Blair was a good prime minister rather than proof the country needed better birth control in the 1950s.

“Let’s remember first why the scandals at the banks matter. It’s about the family struggling to make ends meet and pay their mortgage. And finding it harder because someone in the City is cheating and fiddling the system and celebrating with a bottle of Bollinger.”

Blair wouldn’t say this possibly because it’s a load of cobblers. It conflates the LIBOR-fixing allegations with the causes of the banking sector crash, when there is no clear link at all between them.

The crash and its knock on effects in the broader economy has led to unemployment and stagnating wages. It has also led to low mortgage rates which mean that those who have retained their jobs even if they haven’t had big pay rises will have had lower mortgage payments to make. But was the crash caused by misrepresenting LIBOR rate submissions? No.

Of course, the narrative is that it is all part of a broader culture so that everything bankers do or did is the cause of the misfortunes of the poor “hard working families” and “squeezed middle” or whatever other description you want to use. But moralising about bankers won’t make a single new job or help a single family attempting to make ends meet.

Of course it does not matter what i think or you think, it does matter if the 5 million voters who walked away from labour come back, if the reason they left is Blair and Miliband has been working hard to tell us New labour was dead, in walks Mr New labour himself.

progress wins hands down

6: “Just look at the decades long poisonous legacy Thatcher left the Tories. If Miliband wants to be PM he must be praying for Tony to get Alzheimer’s and be locked away from public view as soon as possible”

That’s a very unimaginative solution. I’m still resting my hopes on Blair being made the next Pontiff by popular acclamation of the faithful.

As he used to often remind us: You can’t stop modernisation.

Pontiff Tony I would be a solution to so many problems in the Church as well as politics. The Church greatly needs his strong leadership as a distraction from its serial woes.

Tony Blair has done his worst, can things only get worse?

“I’ll need to see real evidence of change ”

We lost the election. Change enough for you?

If TB doesn’t quite make it as the next Pontiff by popular acclamation, with his special interest in UFOs, perhaps he could be appointed global envoy to aliens in outer space:

Prime Minister Tony Blair was briefed on the UK’s files about UFO sightings in 1998, newly declassified MoD documents have revealed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18797691

But I’ll have some sympathy with those who see in that the possibility he might want to launch a liberal intervention war with outer space, which could be a bit risky with the cuts to the army.

I hope that it is true that Blair is not being asked in any way to help develop policy. The Guardian report specifically said that he would be helping John Cruddas with the Policy Review.

Even without his presence those who think like him, gathered in the Progress fold, have a grip on Party policy formation, or the lack of it. The latest episode is Stephen Twigg giving Labour’s support for Academy schools run by the armed forces.

So Blairism is still an oppressive reality in the Labour Party whether or not Blair himself is called in.

About those 5 million lost votes. They’ve turned up alive and well you’ll be pleased to know. You’ll never guess where they’ve been:

http://labourlist.org/2012/07/labours-lost-voters-lego-politics-or-grand-design/