He was PM when living standards were inexorably rising and most people thought things in society were broadly getting better. As they broadly had been for decades.
He applies that paradigm to his current perspective on the political landscape. It is hopelessly anachronistic.
Left, right, centre - most cunts think everything is shite, and getting discernibly worse. His perspective is not founded upon that reality.
And then there are his treacherous comments on Trump, who is plainly a security threat to the the UK and Europe. He’s plainly compromised in some way. And this is why I now think he’s a ****.
Spot on. His comments are those of someone hopelessly out of touch with the economic and political reality the UK government exists in. Not surprising for someone with a messiah complex.
Not sure you can disassociate him and his politics from the continued rise in living standards when he was in power. Especially when you see what the left had done to Callaghan previously, Blair's electoral popularity was predicated on Kinnock's defeat of Militant, Scargill et al - a path Starmer has tried to follow but the class warriors are all behind Burnham now, anxious to purify the party again.
Yes you can. He arrived at a hugely beneficial point in the global macroeconomic cycle for him and new labour. Early stage benefits of globalisation before any of the downsides kicked in, the flexibility generated from our forced exit from the ERM, still some benefit from oil etc. All sorts of things conspired to provide him with an inheritance no modern politician could hope for. New Labour did some good things with this position, such as early years support and child poverty. However those potential gains were undermined by the fact they ignored lots of structural issues and in some instances exacerbated them like our over reliance on finance and debt. Debt levels weren't anywhere as bad when he left office but he also left timebombs that would blow up in subsequent leaders faces.
As for the class warrior comment, can you or any other person promoting the current 'centrist' (nothing of the sort) orthodoxy actually explain to me how we are going to get out of our current mess? And I mean explain with numbers that make economic sense. What level of growth is it going to take to reverse the decline on living standards and how is that going to be achieved? I've not heard a single economically credible explanation of where this magical growth is going to come from and how it will find it's way into the real economy. The irony of Blair banging on about AI at the point when Bill Winters is using language like 'lower value human capital' and Jamie Dimon is defending him would be laughable if it wasn't so depressing.
How have we got to the point where even a conversation about some minimal redistribution of wealth to make the economy function more effectively is viewed as some sort of terrible 'class warfare'?
There are indeed a fair few 'class warriors' whose extreme approach has completely reshaped the world in the last 40 years but most of them aren't in political parties and I'm damn sure none of them are Burnham supporters.
This is not a pop at you Johnny but on the one hand Blair says it should be about ideas and policies but then talks about the delusion of the labour left. It sounds to me like he's only interested in one set of ideas which are those that have palpably failed for the majority which sounds pretty deluded to me.
Irrespective of what he was or wasn't before he's now just a shill for some of the more despicable people on the planet.