Minister rejects Blair intervention, accusing ex-PM of retreading old arguments – UK politics live

Good morning. Labour is in the midst of ‘phoney war’ leadership contest. The formal bit has not started yet, but Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting are already actively engaged, Angela Rayner is taking an interest, and Keir Starmer is defending his legacy with renewed vigour. The last thing anyone expected was for Tony Blair to join in. But he has, sort of, with a 5,700-word essay, published last night on his thinktank’s website , setting out where the former PM thinks his part is going wrong (on most things, it seems) and what he thinks it should do next. Blair, of course, won’t be a candidate in the leadership contest, but ideas matter in politics and this essay is chock-full of them. Here is Jessica Elgot ’s story on what he says. She says Blair has accused Starmer, Burnham and Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk by abandoning the centre ground, warning that the party’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” means it is likely to lose the next election. And here is Peter Walker ’s analysis. Peter says the Blair essay is the work of “a man who worries deeply that the party he once led, plus the UK more widely, is stuck in a loop of insular political debate, not even beginning to get to grips with what he portrays as the century-defining challenge – and opportunity – of AI”. But Peter also points out that many in Labour are likely to regard Blair’s “call for a move to the ‘radical centre’ as somewhere between vague and meaningless”. …