Labour Parties are often wrongly dismissed as suffering from the politics of envy. As parties that are merely there to defend the down-trodden simply because social justice happens to feature so prominently on their agenda. And that anybody who moves on in life and makes a success of his future is instantly dismissed as a speculator, a crook, an unprincipled careerist or a merchant of greed.

No matter what one may think of Tony Blair’s conduct of foreign affairs, as well as the generous mega consultancies he has landed since stepping down from the Premiership – which could or could not be, somehow interlinked, as some may be inclined to hint or suggest – one has to admit that he left his imprint on the British and the international scene on two main counts.

For having turned the Labour Party from a party of losers – after having suffered four consecutive defeats – into a winning progressive movement thanks to the three consecutive successes at the polls that he notched. As well as for having acted as the ultimate modernizer by throwing overboard jaundiced views and pre-conceived and prejudiced ideas and positions that spelt the undoing of many a social democratic movement over past years.

His memoirs might be as someone described them – a chaotically organised book in which topics are raised in the most surprising of places while others have dismissed it as a sort of hand book for political leaders – but one can only afford to ignore his winning formula at his own political risk.

Tony Blair put aspirational politics centre stage.

He made himself the eternal warrior against complacency.

He set out to radically transform a party that had almost come to believe that it couldn’t win, that for some divine or satanic reason, Labour wasn’t allowed an election victory no matter what it did.

He is honest enough with his readers to admit that all this is complete baloney.

“We had lost because we were out of touch with the modern voter in the modern world,” he exclaims in his introduction.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories.

If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning.

Reviewing some of his party’s past performances in Opposition he admitted that while admiring enormously the professionalism of many, some of the tactics were too opportunistic and too facile and, more than that, they sowed seeds that sprouted in ways they did not foresee and with consequences that imperilled them.

One definite plus for Tony Blair was that his philosophy was clearly different from that of a traditional Labour politician.

He was middle class, and his politics were in many ways middle class too.

His programme was every bit as much geared by the aspirations of the up and coming as the anxieties of the down and out.

He didn’t want class war.

He didn’t like division or discord.

He had no patience with tribal party politics, with its exaggerated differences, rancorous disputes and irrational prejudices.

Leading his party to victory was only step one of his chain of successes. He actually reshaped it and gave it a chance to be a true party of government.

Over time he came to see practical, common sense progressive politics as indispensable to effect political change, as opposed to just talking about it.

Blair was often critical of the intellectual types who tried to steer Labour to the Left because in his opinion in a sense they wanted to celebrate the working class, not make them middle class when middle class was precisely what your average worker wanted himself or his kids to be.

When Labour Parties lose out they often do it because they end up losing touch. As in the UK, they often fail to spot how society had changed.

In calling for a complete, top to bottom reorientation of his party’s programme and policies, Blair often felt that the party and the voters were in two different places, and so the party had to shift against its will.

His own feeling was that the voters are right and “we” should change not because we have to, but because we want to.

As he argued – It may sound a subtle difference, but it is fundamental.

For him, Labour had to be radically reformed, and not by an adjustment or a shift of a few degrees, but in a manner that changed profoundly its modus operandi, its thinking, its programme and above all its attitudes.

His strong belief was that there were no compromises.

To his mind the party had lost because it had failed to modernize sufficiently and they then had to do so, not by shades but “by bursts of vivid colour”.

He used the public to change the party.

In his own words, the difference between plain Labour and modernized Labour was the difference between the seed that sprouted but never took real root, and the seed that yielded 30, 60, a hundredfold.

As for the next step of continuing to keep winning, he felt that they needed to create a core of ideas, attitudes and policy that was solid, sustainable and strong.

Whenever he tried to see Labour as an ordinary, non-political member of the public saw it, he ended up concluding that he had many friends outside politics who thought the Tories were tired and should be put out. “And what did they think of us? They thought we were for the poor; for the downtrodden; for the union men; for the accused and for the disposed.”

With these ingredients one can have a strong party of protest but not of government.

Referring to the Kinnock and John Smith days, he acknowledged that they had of course broadened, deepened and become more popular, but it felt to him – and more importantly to the public – like a negotiation between them and their past.

“We were talking in an upbeat way, but there was a tinge of reluctance about it, a reverence for the old days that smacked of denial about how bad it had been.”

New Labour succeeded because it was not just a slogan… it was an attitude of mind.

It conveyed genuine conviction and also that it represented a clear move into the modern world.

If it eventually got derailed is a subject up for discussion but it was strong enough to push Labour to three merited consecutive victories at the polls.

It is pointless changing policies without changing attitudes and vice versa.

The most important thing is to establish a new link between the party and the people regardless of their political orientation and beliefs.

While values matter, the days of dogma are long gone.

Blair wanted Labour’s people to be ambitious and compassionate at the same time, and feel neither guilty about the first nor anxious about the second.

“He was of the opinion that they should be motivated and fascinated by the prospect of being agents of political change.”

There is nothing absolutely wrong in being surrounded by people striving for happiness and fulfilment also in their chosen careers, in their personal life and in their enjoyment of art and culture.

For him New Labour was all about understanding this social evolution. It wasn’t all about changing the basic values or purpose of progressive politics; on the contrary it was about retrieving them from the deadweight of political and cultural dogma.

Even more importantly, not only did he seek to prove that he was normal and that people could talk normally about the things people like to chat about, but what astonished him, however, was that from then on, people sublimely uninterested in politics would feel that he was accessible to them.

The biggest challenge of any Labour Party is to recover Labour values from outdated tradition and dogma and reconnect the party to the modern world.

I have deliberately quoted from Blair’s own writing to be as faithful as can be and not to be accused of lifting his opinions out of context in a manner that might have distorted his strong views.

[email protected]

www.leobrincat.com