Should Labour heed Tony Blair?
Political Fix
Financial Times
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tony Blair’s lengthy – and excoriating – 5,600-word essay on the future of the Labour Party and Britain has set Westminster alight this week. The former prime minister's critique has sparked a lively debate, and triggered robust responses from Labour leadership hopefuls Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting. But is Blair right in some of his criticism? Host Lucy Fisher unpacks the article with FT colleagues Robert Shrimsley, Anna Gross and Stephen Bush. They also examine Rupert Lowe, the personality behind the far-right party Restore Britain, and whether it can harm Reform UK by splitting the rightwing vote.
Follow: Lucy @LOS_Fisher or @lucyfisher.ft.com
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Political Fix was presented by Lucy Fisher and produced by Persis Love. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. The broadcast engineers are Andrew Georgiades and Petros Gioumpasis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Too much focus on personality and not enough on policy. |
| 0:05.6 | That's Tony Blair's verdict on where Labor is going wrong. |
| 0:09.1 | Welcome to political fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. |
| 0:13.1 | Coming up, is Blair delivering home truths, or is he out of touch? |
| 0:17.5 | We'll be delving into his magnum opus five and a half thousand word essay. Thus, could the far |
| 0:22.5 | right restore Britain, led by Rupert Lowe, threaten the future of Reform UK? Here to discuss |
| 0:27.7 | at all are our chief political commentator Robert Schrimsley. Hi Robert. Hi, Lucy. Political correspondent |
| 0:33.2 | Anna Gross, hi Anna. Hi, Lisa. And Inside Politics columnist Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen. Hi, Lucy. |
| 0:42.9 | Well, it was threatening to be a deathly quiet, half-term week of parliamentary recess. |
| 0:48.0 | And as you can hear, I'm just getting over a cold. So I was expecting it to be dull. So firstly, |
| 0:53.5 | thank you to Tony Blair for sparking a very lively debate about the future of the Labour Party and the country. |
| 1:00.6 | It's a hefty piece spanning quite a few themes, the AI revolution, the fast-changing global order, |
| 1:07.6 | and of course the Labour Leadership Contest and the road ahead for the party. |
| 1:11.9 | Robert, pick out some of your top lines from this essay. |
| 1:15.8 | So I think for me there are a couple of points that really jumped out. |
| 1:20.4 | The first is, I think, a really important one, and one I strongly agree with, |
| 1:23.5 | which is that he said both the Labour Party and British politics in general |
| 1:27.2 | need to approach what we're trying to do from the basis of what is the policy, which is that he said both the Labour Party and British politics in general need to approach |
| 1:28.3 | what we're trying to do from the basis of what is the policy, what is the program that you |
| 1:33.1 | want to bring forward, what is your analysis of the country and what is it you need to fix, |
| 1:37.5 | rather than who will have the most cuts through on social media or who's the best communicator, |
| 1:42.2 | though those things do matter. And I thought it was quite useful for him to be making this point at the moment as |
... |
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