Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including Tony Blair’s speech on the future of the Labour party
Blair’s five-point plan for how Labour can recover
Blair’s speech and Q&A - Summary and analysis
Jeremy Corbyn’s economic programme - Summary
Afternoon summary
4.33pm BST
Must read: @MaryCreaghMP on the Labour crisis: "We are like Millwall FC: no one likes us, but we don't care." http://t.co/7gtM6PF5zB
4.22pm BST
The SNP MP Mark McDonald has a response to Tony Blair’s comment about nationalism being “caveman” politics.
As Tony Blair compares the SNP to cavemen, I have prepared an official response. pic.twitter.com/TUahUpWiv0
4.12pm BST
One of the nice things about this job is that I get sent a lot of new politics books. If they’re good, and worth recommending to readers, I always try to give them a plug here in the blog. Normally I wait until I can link them to a story running in the news, but as the summer holiday looms - after today, I won’t be writing a daily blog again until the start of September - I realise there is a pile of books on my desk that I have not got round to mentioning.
These aren’t necessarily the best books I’ve read this year (although Good Times, Bad Times is exceptionally good). But they’re all one that I would recommend. So, for anyone looking for something to read, you could try:
Taxes and benefits narrowed income inequality in the UK more than in archetypal egalitarian countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark. As Figure 2.9 comparing the UK and Sweden shows, inequality ends up much higher in the UK than in Sweden, because it starts so much higher, despite the UK’s greater redistributive effort.
Sturgeonism, therefore, had to be much more than just Salmondism with a social conscience; it needed time to become something deeper, compelling and genuinely tranformative, finally making good on so many fine words and erudite speeches. ‘She’s pragmatic,’ reflected a colleague, ‘deeply pragmatic.’ Indeed Sturgeon’s politics, both practical and ideological, reflected wider shifts within both the SNP and Scottish politics more generally, which had led her and others towards a very different concept of both independence and the Union.
Few politicians can be quite as spectacularly disingenuous as David Cameron when he wants to be.
Patriarchy in parliament throws up the second puzzle. The apparent aristocratic social status of peers in the Lords might create the impression of rigid and old-fashioned hierarchy and, more specifically, patriarchy. In contrast, the apparently more modern Commons may conjure assumptions of equality and fairness between members. I certainly went into parliament with these assumptions. But observations of everyday talk and relationships within the two Houses reveals the opposite: while the Lords have an egalitarian and co-operative ethos, and women thrive in the upper House, the competitive and aggressive Commons is a far less comfortable place for most women.
Michael Green, who was head of Carlton at the time and a member of my bridge club, stopped me in the street as I happened to run into him during the Tory leadership campaign and said: ‘You are going to back David Cameron, aren’t you? So I looked a bit doubtful and then, as if to clinch the argument, he said: ‘You know he can be a real shit when he wants to!’ I told that to David and he was quite amused.
4.00pm BST
If a hastily-deleted BBC tweet is anything to go by, Laura Kuenssberg is the new BBC political editor.
BBC news exec tweeted that Laura Kuenssberg is new BBC political editor, then deleted it. LK apparently not been told...
3.48pm BST
Yvette Cooper’s team have been highlighting a poll of almost 300 Labour councillors suggesting that Cooper is on course to win the leadership contest (narrowly).
The survey shows Andy Burnham ahead on first preferences, but Cooper beating Burnham in the final round 52% to 48%.
3.34pm BST
Mary Creagh, who wanted to contest the Labour leadership election but, unlike Jeremy Corbyn, did not get enough support from colleagues to get onto the ballot paper, has written an article for the New Statesman saying the party is in a “horrible place”.
She says, as in 2010, four things have gone wrong: the leader stood down immediately; the leadership contest is lengthy and exhausting; a leftwinger has been included for balance, even though the electorate is moving to the centre right; and centre ground candidates are being branded Blairite or Tory.
Labour is not yet in the place where we can say with confidence: “The only way is up.” Early findings from the “lessons learned” report commissioned by Harriet suggest that voters think that Labour simply does not understand their lives. We are in danger of becoming the political equivalent of Millwall Football Club. Their chant? “No one likes us, we don’t care.”
3.17pm BST
This is from the Mirror’s Jason Beattie.
Shadow Cabinet minister on surge of support for Corbyn: "This is anti-politics within the Labour Party. They are selecting opposition"
3.00pm BST
Roy Hattersley, the Labour former deputy leader, told the World at One that Jeremy Corbyn was a “24-hour sensation” and that he was not going go win the Labour leadership.
I quite like Mr Corbyn and support some of his ideas but he certainly couldn’t win a general election and if he did win a general election, I don’t think he’d run a very good government but then he’s not going to win the Labour leadership. This is a 24-hour sensation, nothing more than that ...
[He appeals to] young people who haven’t thought about it, I don’t want to patronise them, but they have not gone through the difficulties that we have gone through in the last 30, 40 years. He is a lively candidate, he seems to be offering an easy prescription, and he is not facing the reality or the difficulties that a new Labour government would have to face.
2.23pm BST
Turning away from Labour for a moment, Number 10 has revealed that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, attended cabinet today “at the invitation of the prime minister”, even though Johnson only normally attends political cabinet. This was a normal cabinet, although it did meet at Chequers, not Downing Street.
Perhaps Cameron is trying to repair relations with Johnson in the light of reports that Johnson feels “humiliated” by the way he has been treated since the election, particularly by Theresa May over water cannon.
2.02pm BST
The full YouGov polling figure for the Labour leadership election are here, on the YouGov website (pdf).
There is also a good commentary on the YouGov figures from Peter Kellner, the YouGov president. He says in 2010 YouGov were spot on when they called the result of that leadership contest.
As a rule of thumb, if Corbyn wins around 40% in round one, then it is touch-and-go whether he wins the overall contest; every point above 40% he gets in round one makes his victory more likely.
This runs counter to the view that if Corbyn can’t win on the first count, he can’t win at all, because nobody who backs Burnham, Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall will give him their second preferences. This is not so. In our survey, 26% of Burnham’s supporters give Corbyn their second preferences; among Cooper’s supporters the figure is 22%. Only Kendall’s supporters seem overwhelmingly averse to Corbyn: he receives only 6% of her second preferences. Moreover, a fair number of Burnham, Cooper and Kendall supporters either won’t cast a second preference or are undecided.
Only 27% of Labour supporters view “understands what it takes to win an election” as quality needed by the next leader.
On this measure - albeit on a small subsample - Jeremy Corybn - comes last.
1.49pm BST
Here’s a Guardian video with Jeremy Corbyn responding to Tony Blair’s criticism of him.
1.44pm BST
On Newsnight last night John McTernan, a former aide to Tony Blair, said those Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn, so that he could be included in the leadership election, even though they did not intend to vote for him were “morons”. He added: “They need their heads felt.”
One of those MPs was Margaret Beckett, the former foreign secretary. On the World at One she was asked if, in the light of the poll suggesting Corbyn is on course to win, she regretted her decision. She replied:
To a certain extent, to be honest, yes I do.
If Jeremy had been a long way behind, I don’t think the thought of nominating him would have crossed my mind. I had no intention of making him my nomination. But, then when it looked as if he might almost be able to stand but then not be able to, I was concerned that people would feel they had been deprived of the opportunity for that point of view to be aired. And I do think it is and will be healthy for the party to thrash out this dialogue about austerity, or not austerity, or what it means, etc etc. So that was the reason that I gave the nomination. But, yes, I’m beginning to wish that I hadn’t, I’ll be quite honest about it.
1.27pm BST
Mhairi Black, the SNP MP, has hit back at Tony Blair on behalf of her party following his comments about the SNP and nationalism earlier. Here’s an extract from her statement.
Tony Blair’s legacy still haunts and damages Labour today, and led them into the sorry position of not even voting against the Tories’ welfare cuts and budget bills this week - leaving the SNP as the real and effective opposition to the Tory government.
On any reading of his record, Tony Blair was the one with the primitive policy - dragging the country into an illegal war in Iraq, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and causing massive instability to the region, the ramifications of which we continue to live with.
1.04pm BST
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech/policy document is entitled The Economy in 2020 (pdf). It is a manifesto for large-scale redistribution, through more progressive taxes and a crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance, and traditional, Keynesian public investment.
Here are the main points.
The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future.
How do we do this?
Paying tax is not a burden. It is the subscription we pay to live in a civilised society.
A collective payment we all make for the collective goods we all benefit from: schools, hospitals, libraries, street lights, pensions, the list is endless.
As I said on the Sunday Politics, if the deficit has been closed by 2020 and the economy is growing, then Labour should not run a current budget deficit – but we should borrow to invest in our future prosperity.
The Northern Powerhouse is largely southern hot air:
It devolves only already slashed budgets, leaving the real levers centralised and unused.
Wealth creation is a collective process between workers, public investment and services, and, yes, often innovative and creative individuals.
12.22pm BST
Here is the full text of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech this morning (pdf).
And here is a summary of his argument from Corbyn’s campaign.
12.11pm BST
Here are some more of the key points from Jeremy Corbyn’s “doorstep” - his interview with journalists on the street outside the venue where he gave his speech.
There was no coverage of the speech itself, because film crews were not allowed in, but I will post excerpts from it soon.
Well, I think Tony Blair’s big problem is that we are still awaiting the Chilcot report to come out ... Yes, we did win the 1997 election. We lost support consistently after that, and he led us into a disastrous illegal war.
I would have thought he could manage something more serious than those kind of rather silly remarks.
It is not particularly radical to do a lot of what Germany has been doing for a very long time.
The people that make decisions in constituency parties are those that knock on doors, are those that do put the Labour message over one to one, day to day, to other voters. Surely they are people with some knowledge and some experience and some perception.
I don't think I've ever seen so many cameras at a Jeremy Corbyn speech #jezzapack pic.twitter.com/444cVqvAK1
11.52am BST
My colleague Patrick Wintour has filed a story on Jeremy Corbyn’s speech. Here’s how it starts.
Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn vowed in his first major economic speech on Tuesday that if elected prime minister he would not cut the defecit on the backs of the poor but raise taxes on the rich, clamp down on corporate tax evasion and use up to £93bn corporate tax reliefs to create a national investment bank.
Corbyn - who a YouGov opinion poll said was on course to win the party’s leadership election by a margin of six6 points ion the final round - avoided setting out specific personal tax rises, but said the wealthy would pay a little more, with the bulk of extra Treasury receipts coming from higher corporate tax revenues.
11.43am BST
Jeremy Corbyn is doing another doorstep in London outside the venue where he gave his speech.
He says the problem at the last election was that Labour was not offering enough of an alternative to the Tories. They were offering austerity-lite.
11.40am BST
Here’s a Guardian video with an extract from Tony Blair’s Q&A.
11.34am BST
On the Today programme this morning Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said the Labour party would end up as a “pressure group” if Jeremy Corbyn became leader. He said:
I think the danger is that the Labour party, one of the great governing parties of the 20th and early 21st century, that did enormously important things for Britain and Britain in the world, would be on a trajectory to becoming a pressure group, would not have that broad reach into all parts of the United Kingdom ...
There are many people in the Labour party who can cope with the effects of another Tory government but there are many people in our communities who will be hit really hard by the assault on working tax credits, by taking away maintenance grants for poorer students to go to university and we can’t overindulge ourselves.
Tristram Hunt has a very good knowledge of history, very good books on Marx, very interesting. Perhaps he should think about the whole longer social process. Surely the job of Labour is to represent many of the worst off in our society, and try and rebalance our society and make it a more inclusive country. I’m sure he would agree with that.
11.14am BST
Jeremy Corbyn has responded to Tony Blair’s criticism of him.
He said people would judge Blair when the Chilcot report came out.
Corbyn's response to Blair: "I think Tony Blair's big problem is we're still waiting for the Chilcot Report to come out"
10.57am BST
In 2010 Tony Blair did not intervene in the Labour leadership contest. David Miliband, his preferred candidate, was expected to win, and Blair must have known that an intervention would have been counter-productive. When Lord Mandelson backed David Miliband, Miliband did not welcome it.
Blair did not endorse a candidate today either.
Blair, asked if he'd endorse any leadership candidate, says 'it's not appropriate...and possibly not even helpful for them'
If your heart is with Corbyn, get a transplant.
Blair on the prospect of a Corbyn leadership: 'It's like going back to Star Trek or something. Back to the old days'
Blair warns he won't give if Corbyn wins: "Even after this leadership election there's going to be a debate in the Labour party"
Nationalism is not a new phenomenon. When they talk about it being new politics, it is the oldest politics in the world. It’s the politics of the first caveman council, when the caveman came out from a council where there were difficult decisions and pointed with his club across the forest and said, ‘They’re the problem, over there, that’s the problem’. It’s blaming someone else.
Blair takes on SNP over literacy rates going backwards, and health 'outcomes' getting worse.
Blair: "The tories are going to destroy lives. If there was a Labour govt it wouldn't be happening" #blair2015
Tony Blair: We should have a root and branch review of party organisation #blair2015
Blair on 'the great unity thing..unity doesn't really work if you hv a whole set of diff positions + say just hold hands + pretend we agree'
Blair clear call to his party to fight the Left: "'Unity' does not work if you're all together in the bus going over the edge of the cliff"
Should Britain still join the Euro one day? “Depends on the economics” says Blair. Not exactly an emphatic denial #Blair15
Tony Blair: EU has "seriously mishandled" the Greek debt crisis - is a problem of Greek debt sustainability. "Greece isn't like Germany."
Blair does intervene in deputy race: says cd be important to have a woman.
Blair on Deputy Leader - should be a woman and someone who "takes us away from machine politics". Deputy contest should get more coverage.
Asked if proportional representation is a good idea, Tony Blair says: 'no.'
...because 'a disproportionate amount of power ends up in the hands of a small party.'
Tony Blair: The best communication comes from knowing not just the big vision and tactics but the strategic policy in between #blair2015
Blair on oratory: best comms come not just from words but from getting the big picture right first
Tony Blair says the reason someone like Bill Clinton was a great communicator was that he had "worked it out" in terms of strategy
10.20am BST
And you might want to know why Iraq did not come up.
Blair has been speaking & taking question for over an hour now. And nobody has even mentioned the word 'Iraq'. Journos banned from asking Qs
10.20am BST
I’ll post a summary with the highlights from the Q&A shortly, but this line is particularly fun.
Blair finishes by pointing out he is actually younger than Jeremy Corbyn. "I'm back - as the younger generation."
10.02am BST
Tony Blair’s point about it being a mistake to assume there is a conflict between the pursuit of power and adherence to principle (see 9.48am) echoes an argument made by my colleague Rafael Behr in his Guardian column today. But Rafael explained it better than Blair did. Here is the key extract.
This is a significant cultural difference between the two major tribes in British politics. Conservatives see governing as a vocation, intrinsically the right thing to do. Failure in elections is a betrayal of the party’s purpose. For Tories there is an obvious correlation between what is good and what works. Labour tends to measure virtue and effectiveness on separate scales, making it possible, especially on the left fringe, to see failure as righteous and victory as betrayal. Marginalising that tendency was Tony Blair’s achievement; rehabilitating it is Miliband’s legacy.
9.48am BST
Here are the key extracts from Tony Blair’s opening speech. It would not be a proper political speech without a five-point plan, and Blair had one for Labour’s recovery.
However the large millstone is that perennially, at times congenitally, we confuse values with the manner of their application in a changing world. This gives us a weakness when it comes to policy which perpetually disorients us and makes us mistake defending outdated policy with defending timeless values.
We then misunderstand the difference between radical leftism, which is often in fact quite reactionary and radical social democracy which is all about ensuring that the values are put to work in the most effective way not for the world of yesterday but for today and the future.
We won not because we did what we thought was wrong as a matter of principle but right as a matter of politics; but when we realised that what is right as a matter of policy is right as a matter of principle.
Labour shouldn’t despair. We can win again. We can win again next time. But only if our comfort zone is the future and our values are our guide and not our distraction.
So we should use defeat as an opportunity. We have to rebuild. But approached in the right way this is exciting not depressing. How?
1 - We get thinking – about policy, real policy not one liners which make a point (useful though those can be in a campaign). Technology and its implications for everything from the NHS through to Government itself, is the single most important dimension. But across the board, from infrastructure to housing to tax reform to welfare, we should be thinking through new solutions framed against how people live and work now.
9.32am BST
Here are some of the line that I’ve missed while the live feed has been down.
Possibly the Blair line that will grab the headlines most: "People who say their heart is with Corbyn, get a transplant".
Blair takes on SNP over literacy rates going backwards, and health 'outcomes' getting worse.
Blair: 'Labour Party is the only party capable of uniting the UK.'
Blair: PR works in 'devolved' setting but not nationally cos gives too much power to small parties. That used to mean LDs, now cites UKIP
Blair clear call to his party to fight the Left: "'Unity' does not work if you're all together in the bus going over the edge of the cliff"
Blair on the prospect of a Corbyn leadership: 'It's like going back to Star Trek or something. Back to the old days'
Blair: "Being anti-immigrant is just foolish" #blair2015
"In the world today, being anti-immigration is stupid." #blair2015
Tony Blair: "The answer to some guy who's unemployed in one of the seaside resorts...is not stopping Polish people coming to this country"
9.27am BST
The Progress live feed keeps packing up. Which, given that it is a Blairite organisation and that Blair has just been highlighting the importance of new technology (see 9.01am), is somewhat ironic.
9.25am BST
Blair says the Tories are doing things Labour does not like.
Labour has to attack them, but also have a platform for government.
9.16am BST
The live feed crashed a few minutes ago, but it is back up.
Q: Ukip only got one MP, although they got more than 3m votes. There is a real problem there, isn’t there?
9.13am BST
Q: Do you agree with Tristram Hunt’s claim that Labour could just disappear, like Woolworths?
Blair says that he does not think that will happen. But of course parties can disappear, he says.
9.05am BST
Q: Is the Labour party ready to hear your message?
I think so, says Blair.
9.03am BST
Blair says he does not believe the claims about Labour being out of power for ever. That reminds him of what people used to say about Labour, old Economist covers, he says.
He says politics does not work like that.
9.01am BST
Blair says technology is transforming the world.
There is not a single company that is not thinking about this. Some companies are going out of business as a result.
8.59am BST
Q: Did you make these points to Ed Miliband?
Blair says he has “great admiration” for how Miliband stuck to his guns. He came to have a lot of admiration for him.
Anyone who fought the 1983 campaign for the Labour party is Labour through and through.
8.56am BST
Blair says at the election people did not vote Labour because they did not think it understood what the modern world was about.
He does not understand the logic of stepping right away from the modern world, he says.
8.54am BST
The text of Blair’s speech is now here, on the Progress website.
8.51am BST
Q: What do you say to people in the Labour who are being branded Tories because they support modernisation?
Blair says Labour needs to adapt. People who criticise people in the party on those grounds are engaging in abuse because they cannot win the argument.
8.48am BST
Blair is now taking questions.
He is “in conversation” with Matt Forde, a former Labour organiser who is now a talkSPORT presenter.
.@mattforde bringing the discussion with @tonyblairoffice to a close #Blair2015 pic.twitter.com/yDuMJGsbUZ
8.47am BST
Labour should not despair, he says.
It can win again. It can win again next time, but only if its comfort zone is the future, and its values are a guide, not a distraction.
8.46am BST
Blair says Ukip and the SNP have clouded Labour’s view.
The problems facing Scotland will not be solved by independence.
8.45am BST
Blair says defeat offers an opportunity.
First, the party should think about policy - not just one-liners that get you through a debate, though those can be useful in a campaign.
8.42am BST
Blair says people on the left sometimes confuse values with policy.
That leads to people defending outdated policy.
8.38am BST
Blair says he became leader of the Labour party 21 years ago yesterday.
Since then, a lot has happened. Labour has discovered winning successfully. And it has discovered losing successfully.
8.36am BST
Tony Blair arrives on stage now. He is getting a warm round of applause. There is some shrieking too.
8.35am BST
John Woodcock, the Labour MP and Progress chair, is introducing Tony Blair.
He says Blair won because, under his leadership, the party decided to face the modern world. It applied its timeless values to the modern world.
8.31am BST
Tony Blair is speaking at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in London.
He is being introduced now.
8.25am BST
Here is a live feed of the speech.
8.22am BST
Even just after Labour’s election defeat, it would have been hard to imagine a time when Jeremy Corbyn might have been a more influential figure in the Labour party than Tony Blair.
Yet today, with Corbyn on course to win the leadership contest, according to one poll, we may have reached the point. Here’s the Guardian’s story about that poll, and here’s an extract.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has rejected a poll conducted by YouGov for the Times showing Jeremy Corbyn on course to win the Labour leadership election, with a 17-point lead ahead of the other candidates on first preference votes.
Cooper was the only Labour leadership hopeful so far to speak out against the findings of the YouGov poll, which is the first to be published since the leadership contest began and claims to be based on a sample of Labour members, registered supporters and union supporters. As well as a win for Corbyn (43%), the poll suggests Andy Burnham (26%) would come second, Cooper (20%) third and Liz Kendall (11%) fourth.
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