Tony Blair’s essay on Labour failings gets full marks for being unhelpful

Intervention by former PM almost feels designed to inflict maximum annoyance on his party

• Tony Blair says Labour must abandon net zero, support Trump and move firmly to the right

Did Tony Blair ever mention he was quite good at winning elections? If you happened to miss it, then his 5,700-word opus on where Labour, Keir Starmer and the UK more generally have gone wrong is here to remind you. Several times.

“I led the Labour party for 13 years and through three general elections,” goes the second sentence. Further on, Blair laments that when the party tries to puzzle out how to win a second term, the one thing ruled out was “learning from the only time in the party’s 120-year history it has ever done so”.