The piece argues that new challenges like AI and insurgent populism require Labour to change, but its proposed guidance relies on assumptions unchanged from the 1990s. It claims Labour’s self-delusion will cost it the next election regardless of leadership. It argues that only a radical centre can deliver needed growth and productivity for Britain. That approach requires rejecting policies associated with progressive ambition, including higher capital gains taxes and reforms framed as weakening private-sector incentives. It calls for curbing welfare spending to fund defence, sidelining net zero targets in favour of expanded oil and gas, and adopting a more accommodating stance toward Donald Trump. It also criticises Andy Burnham’s critique of financialised capitalism and links New Labour’s achievements to a favourable pre-2008 economic environment shaped by deregulation and inequality.
"In his essay, Sir Tony suggests that Labour's infinite capacity for self-delusion is set to lose it the next election, irrespective of who is leading the party and the country by then. Only if it embodies a radical centre, he argues, can the government deliver the rises in growth and productivity that Britain desperately needs. This, it turns out, means rejecting more or less any policy that smacks of progressive ambition and intent."
"The former health secretary Wes Streeting is thus attacked for advocating a rise in capital gains tax. Workers' rights reforms are criticised for dampening animal spirits in the private sector. Welfare spending needs to be curbed in order to spend more on defence. Net zero targets are to be sidelined amid a new dash for oil and gas. Donald Trump is to be appeased."
"The New Labour governments he led achieved much in vital areas such as NHS funding, and with policies such as Sure Start and the minimum wage. But, crucially, they benefited from a more benign economic context that was dangerously predicated on financial deregulation and scarred by rising inequality. The roof collapsed on this world with the 2008 financial crash."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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