‘The Real Radicalism the Moment Requires is at the Level of How the World Is Seen’

Nafeez Ahmed responds to Tony Blair’s recent intervention on the future direction that the Labour Party should take

Photo: PA/Alamy

Tony Blair’s recent essay – ‘The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over its Future and the Future of the Country’ – asked the right question but from the wrong perspective.

The pushback was swift. Andy Burnham criticised the former Prime Minister for not mentioning inequality once in 5,700 words. Treasury Minister Torsten Bell defended the Government’s net zero plans – as a cost the country can bear, rather than as the cheapest energy strategy on offer. Senior Labour figures dismissed the “reheated Blairism with no answers”.

Blair’s argument was made using a 1990s map of the UK that no longer resembles the reality of the country in which we live.

A Town that has Stood Still as the World has Moved On

James Bloodworth returns to Wigan after a decade, en route to Ashton-in-Makerfield, to explore whether Orwell’s sense of the area’s ‘decay’ still rings true

James Bloodworth

Turning the Tide on the Rage Wave? Nigel Farage’s Explicit Politics of Race and Violence Could Cost Him

Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election indicates that a ‘politics of hope’ may yet be possible to counterweight the far-right normalisation now found in the mainstream, writes Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

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‘The Real Radicalism the Moment Requires is at the Level of How the World Is Seen’

A Town that has Stood Still as the World has Moved On

Turning the Tide on the Rage Wave? Nigel Farage’s Explicit Politics of Race and Violence Could Cost Him