Tony Blair speaks for many in his latest essay but he remains the wrong man to take Britain back to the centre; where is the individual to rid of us the ‘Wheat Field Wanderer’ hiding?
Tony Blair increasingly says the right things. He remains, however, wholly unsuitable to be the figure to deliver what the nation requires and that is a new leader capable of uniting a deeply divided nation.
In a 2,700 word essay Saturday, published on his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change website, the former Prime Minister highlighted that “the centre may appear marginalised; but it the hearts and minds of many, it simply needs to be renewed.” He talks of “a country which has lost its footing and is stumbling; but with no choice but to stagger on” and highlights that both Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour fought the election “like one from the 1980s, but with competing visions of the 1960s.” In saying such, he understands how so many in Britain feel today: Dispirited by a situation where we have no viable opposition to a government run by a badly dressed, hectoring vicar’s daughter whose only ambition is to cling to power.
Blair, undoubtedly still considered one of the most toxic individuals to ever have governed due to his stance on Iraq and the perception of how he benefited so substantially financially from his time in office, is not the man to lead the return to the centre. We do need a Macron-like figure in Britain but ‘Teflon Tony’ misses one thing: He, also, is a man of the past and somewhere, just somewhere, out there is someone who’ll emerge and clear out the ‘Wheat Field Wanderer’. We just wish they’d hurry up and show their scythe.