Blair's Labour and Johnson's Brexit
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2020
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David and Helen catch up on the state of British politics, from Blair's advice to the Labour party on its 120th birthday to growing divisions in Johnson's Tory party. Is there really a liberal progressive coalition in Britain? Can Brexit deliver both free trade and levelling up? And what does Cummings really want? Plus we talk about Helen's lecture on Britain, the EU and geopolitics: Listen here → http://bit.ly/3a25Bya
On the 120th anniversary of the Labour Party, Tony Blair gave a speech encouraging the Labour party to 1) Move away from identity politics 2) Rebuild a progressive-liberal coalition and 3) Work out a plausible account of the future.
- What is Blair’s interpretation of history?
- Blair never reimagines the political system itself.
- A lot of the more compelling visions of the future are coming from the parts of the Labour party that Blair disparages.
Blair did not substantially discuss Brexit, but Brexit is the most pressing future question
- Can the government really reconfigure the economy? Or is the government at the mercy of forces it cannot control?
The UK will have to simultaneously negotiate trade deals with the US and the EU in a moment in which trade is becoming a more geopolitical question.
- China has changed things—this is now part of the lens through which the US is thinking about both trade and its relationship with the EU.
- For the UK, using security as a bargaining chip is a risky strategy.
- How much leverage does Macron have in the trade negotiations? He’s sounding a lot like De Gaulle, who said no to the UK application to join the EEC.
- The overall geopolitical context is less advantageous to Europe, including the UK, than it was in the 1960s.
Mentioned in this Episode:
- Helen’s Chatham House lecture
- Tony Blair’s recent speech
- Our episode with Paul Mason on the future
- Our episode with Esther Duflo
- Our most recent episode on French politics
- Macron’s interview with the Economist
- Adam Tooze on the US vs. China
If you’re in Cambridge next Wednesday, join us for a live recording the morning after the Super Tuesday primaries. Tickets available here.
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. We're going to get back |
| 0:13.8 | talking about British politics today from Blair to Johnson to Brexit and beyond. |
| 0:24.8 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books and the LRB |
| 0:30.1 | now has a beautiful new website to mark its 40th anniversary. Just go to lrb.co.uk and you |
| 0:38.4 | will discover a treasure trove of articles from the last 40 years and all the latest writing, |
| 0:44.7 | including Adam Schatz on the death of Solomani. If you take out a subscription you will get |
| 0:50.6 | all this and so much more. The Print Magazine, the lrb app and unlimited access to that archive |
| 0:57.8 | all for just £1 an issue. To subscribe visit lrb.me forward slash talk. |
| 1:12.8 | Today it is me and Helen we're in a slightly different location so there might be a bit of background |
| 1:18.0 | noise. We apologise for that. We've been talking about Europe for the last few weeks but |
| 1:23.7 | British politics has been moving on and we're going to cover a few things. Starting with the speech |
| 1:30.0 | that Tony Blair gave last week to celebrate the 120th birthday of the Labour Party I believe the |
| 1:36.4 | birthday is today that they were recording. It was a typical Tony Blair speech and it was really |
| 1:42.1 | annoying and it was also quite interesting and he said that the Labour Party needs to do three |
| 1:48.8 | things if it's going to get back in the game. The one that got all the coverage was it needs to not |
| 1:55.2 | go down the cul-de-sac of identity politics. So we are not going to go down the cul-de-sac of |
| 2:00.3 | talking about Tony Blair, one identity politics. We're going to talk about the other two which |
| 2:06.9 | didn't get nearly as much coverage. So the other two things that Labour needs to do are get back |
| 2:14.8 | into some kind of progressive liberal coalition. The Blair project has always been to some extent |
| 2:21.3 | to reunite the Liberal Party and the Labour Party and for our American listeners we have to be |
| 2:27.5 | clear here that Liberal doesn't mean US Liberal it means the British Liberal Party. By chance |
| 2:34.7 | yesterday a bump in someone in the street who happened to be listening to our Michael Ignatius |
... |
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