I helped elect the Labour leader, but his first year has seen an unnecessary war on the left and the lack of any authentic vision for the country
It makes sense for those who want to see Labour return to power to examine the lessons of Tony Blair’s electoral victories: he was, after all, the only Labour leader to have won an election in half a century. Not such a surprise, then, that Keir Starmer has asked Peter Mandelson for help, according to reports at the weekend. As one of the strategic architects of Starmer’s successful leadership campaign, however, I believe that after a year in the job he appears to have learned the wrong lessons and needs to alter course.
Blair understood the need to bring his party together and to keep them on his side; it was not until his second term in office that he broke with the Labour membership over the Iraq war abroad and public service reform at home. “We cannot protect the ordinary against the abuse of power by leaving them to it; we must protect each other. That is our insight, a belief in society, working together, solidarity, cooperation, partnership. These are our words. This is my socialism, and we should stop apologising for using the word.” That was his first conference speech, a few months after being elected as leader of the Labour party. The first commitment on the famous pledge card of the 1997 election was to abolish the assisted places scheme and use the money to reduce class sizes for five- and six-year-olds – precisely the kind of antagonistic politics designed to appeal to the party faithful (and so widely used by Jeremy Corbyn).
