Tony Blair gazes into a mirror and finds Keir Starmer seeking approval

Is Labour leader finally prepared to declare the party’s most successful prime minister is the model to follow, asks John Rentoul?

Tony Blair and Keir Starmer at the Future of Britain Conference in London (PA)

It was a very modern blessing. Keir Starmer, now fully inducted into the higher mysteries of Blairism, was anointed with the seal of Sir Tony’s approval.

The ceremony was New Labour in style, taking the form of an “In Conversation With” between two men in suits and no ties in a smart London conference centre. It was as if Tony Blair was looking at a younger version of himself in a mirror.

Blair praised his reflection for having done an “amazing job” in bringing the Labour Party from the brink of extinction to the brink of government, and asked soft questions about whether Starmer agreed that technology was important.

Starmer repaid the compliment by imitating early-years Blair. He candidly admitted that “we’re having a row at the moment about tough choices”, turning the backlash against his refusal to lift the two-child benefit limit into a boast that “we have had to be really ruthless and tough”.

Not only that, but he went further, as Blair often did: “In the next stage we’ve got to be even tougher and more disciplined.” The message to many of the people who voted for him to be leader less than three years ago was brutally clear: you have been fooled; I was a Blairite all along.

I’m not sure he was. Very few people knew what he really thought when he ran for the Labour leadership. We know a lot more about what he thinks now. That he is prepared to stamp ruthlessly on tender consciences when he thinks it will help him maximise the Labour vote.

But did he always believe, for example, that Labour would have to tie itself to Conservative spending plans? Or has he worked out, step by painful step, that the policies on which he was elected leader were bad for the party’s electoral prospects?

Did he think in 2020 that he would end up accepting the two-child limit and saying “we’ve got to be even tougher”? I doubt it. Even now, there is a fuzziness beyond the pretended clarity: does Starmer intend to lift the two-child limit when resources allow, or will it never be a priority for him?

But here he was, taunting the doubters in the party who want him to “be more radical”, “have more vision”, “go bigger”, “go bolder” by accepting the laying on of hands from the teacher who tried to tell the party that being radical didn’t mean spending more money, and who repeated the lesson today.

Some commentators thought it was unwise of Starmer to adopt so many of the Blair mannerisms in his Observer article at the weekend. His riposte has been to copy Blair’s mannerisms in person and tell his critics that it is worse than they thought ... he actually believes in this stuff.

After all, Starmer has been on what the Master might call ‘a journey’ over the past three years, in which he has had to be Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair rolled into one.

Blair doubters will shake their heads, complaining that the prime minister from different times long ago is now “toxic,” and that Starmer should strike out boldly as his own person. But Starmer’s appearance on Blair’s stage was his answer to that.

Starmer recognises that Blair has transformed his reputation in recent years; that his institute is the source of some of the best ideas for government and opposition. Not only is Blair the glue that holds the centre of British politics together, after a long spell in the wilderness, but for many voters, his endorsement conveys a simple message: Keir Starmer is the mirror image of the most successful Labour prime minister. You may safely vote for him.