Before the election, Keir Starmer was optimistically sold to the public as “Blair without the flair.” A moniker he likely welcomed, given Blair’s historic landslide and decade-long premiership. Though while Starmer certainly lacks the flair, he’s also proving he’s no Blair either…
Guido happened upon an intriguing nugget from Charles Moore in The Telegraph, recounting a moment when David Blunkett, then shadow education secretary, briefed a paper about Labour’s plan to slap VAT on private school fees. According to Alastair Campbell’s diaries at the turn of 1994-5, Blair went “berserk”:
“Are you telling me,” said Tony, “that one of our own people has done an interview and… we are going into the New Year with a story about Labour taxing people to educate their children?…Do we care about what a few activists think, or do we care about what millions of people think? Will we ever get serious?”
Fast forward to today, and Blair’s words might as well be aimed directly at his successor. Moore gathers Blair has “strong views on the matter,” while Blair says he speaks to Starmer “frequently”. Meanwhile, a source close to Blair recently offered a scathing summary of Starmer’s government: “a bunch of librarians and academics in charge of a government.” Blair could remind Keir this isn’t the “modernisation” people voted for…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”