Tony Blair’s verdict is a chilling realisation that even the devil knows hell is burning

Even Tony Blair can smell the smoke. As Keir Starmer’s Labour government stumbles through a self-inflicted leadership catastrophe, the architect of New Labour has delivered a brutal verdict: the party has no coherent plan for Britain, its policies are holding back business and growth, and simply swapping leaders will not save it from electoral oblivion. In a wide-ranging intervention, Blair has taken aim at Labour’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” and urged a “fundamental reset” toward the “radical centre”.From America, watching this car crash, there is grim satisfaction in the sight of the inmates fighting over the ashes. Labour is in full self-destruction mode. Excellent. Let them tear each other apart. Blair is right on the immediate symptoms. Starmer’s Government lacks a worked-out strategy for a country facing AI-driven competition, stagnant growth, and energy insecurity. He criticises new workers’ rights laws, above-inflation minimum wage hikes, and curbs on North Sea oil as anti-business measures that stifle prosperity. He wants pragmatism on welfare, migration, and – most deliciously of all – energy policy. Any strategy based on rapidly phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or forcing lifestyle sacrifices on British families? Doomed to fail, he now argues. From this side of the Atlantic, where President Donald Trump has warned for years that net-zero-style policies are economic suicide, the irony is thicker than Thames fog. Trump has repeatedly attacked renewable-energy and climate-policy orthodoxy, arguing that such measures raise costs, kill jobs, and weaken energy security while handing leverage to China. Now, Blair, of all people, echoes that realism elements of that critique on short-term phase-outs. The man who helped advance aspects of Britain’s climate approach is suddenly discovering that virtue-signalling unilateral disarmament certain aggressive timelines, doesn’t work.We should note the tactical truths where they appear. Blair seems to have little enthusiasm for a Burnham coronation and pines for a pro-business, pro-growth party capable of competing in the real world. He understands Labour risks relegation from the “Premier League of nations”. But the deeper verdict belongs to the messenger himself. Tony Blair is not diagnosing a sudden crisis under Starmer. He is surveying the wreckage of the post-1997 settlement he imposed on Britain – and admitting, rather late, that it is failing. Challenges have mounted. This is the same Tony Blair who oversaw stable but relatively low defence spending as a share of GDP in the early years of his premiership (continuing a pre-1997 trend, averaging ~2.5 per cent during his tenure), who left office with no new nuclear power stations completed under Labour, and who presided over the massive expansion of EU free movement after the 2004 enlargement (by opting against transitional controls). He championed globalisation with evangelical zeal, amid accelerating the de-industrialisation that hollowed out communities from the Red Wall to forgotten coastal towns. Working-class wages stagnated in some sectors, social cohesion frayed, and Britain became dangerously dependent on imported energy and imported labour.Recall, it was Blair’s government that created the Judicial Appointments Commission, abolished the Law Lords as the highest domestic court, and established the Supreme Court — a constitutional shift that critics rightly argue shifted power away from elected Parliament toward an unaccountable judiciary. That change still shapes Britain today. Blair helped midwife the regulatory state, the cultural shifts, and the broader policy environment, including the net zero obsession that has left Britain energy-poor and uncompetitive.In a country that has sleepwalked so far down this path that Blair himself now sounds like the voice of moderation, we see exactly how deranged the debate has become. The Overton Window didn’t just shift — it marched into fantasy. Trump saw the madness clearly and consistently from the start. Blair is arriving fashionably late, with the self-assurance of a man who still believes he should direct the escape plan. British patriots should take no lectures from the man who did so much to create this mess. Blair wants a viable, centre-ground Labour Party because the alternative is the death of his entire legacy project. We want something more fundamental: an independent United Kingdom that finally rejects the entire post-Blair settlement — EU-style regulation, open borders, judicial supremacy, and net zero dogma. The solution is not a “reset” from the original architect of decline, many of these trends. Britain needs to extinguish the fire: secure its energy from all practical sources, including North Sea oil and gas and a major nuclear build-out, control its borders, restore parliamentary sovereignty, and pursue growth without apology. Sovereignty, security, and prosperity grounded in the national interest — not the airy internationalism and elite consensus that Blair embodied. The old sorcerer can warn of the flames consuming his creation. We should note the confirmation, thank him for the inadvertent honesty, and ensure neither he nor his ideological heirs are ever allowed near the levers of power again. Britain doesn’t need renovation advice from the man who lit the match. It needs to clear the rubble and rebuild on solid, sovereign foundations.