This speech, which I had the good fortune to attend, showcased both the strengths & weaknesses of Blair's analysis. If the Labour Party is ever to dig itself out of its current predicament, it needs to take both seriously. Here are some takeaways. [THREAD]
1. First, he's right about the scale of the challenge. Blair is one of only two people born in the last 120 years to win an election for Labour. He is the only Labour leader to win two (let alone three) full terms in a row. The party has spent 2/3 of its existence in Opposition.
2. As Blair notes, "The Labour Party is not a pressure group". It is not a fashion accessory, that looks nice with its members' values. If it believes in its principles & wants to carry them out - if it wants to serve the people for whom it stands - it has to win political power. 
3. Labour, Blair insisted, must always have a moral purpose: it is a "cause", not just a party. Govt is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But that must not degenerate into "a narcissistic belief in its righteousness" or the "shouty denunciation of anyone who disagrees".
4. As Blair pointed out, "moderation" is not a good in itself, especially if it is just a watered-down version of someone else's agenda. "Centrism" cannot just occupy the path of least resistance between extremes set by other people; it must have a radical programme of its own.
5. There was a warning, too, for the leadership contenders. Any candidate must appeal to their activists & enthuse the base. But a party that has to say different things to its members & to the public is "finished". Labour must be honest with its members about the need for change
6. But change to what? Blair identifies as a "radical" and a "progressive", but to what goal are we progressing? If "radicalism" means cutting to the "root" ("radex"), what are our "root-values"? If Labour is a "cause", what should that cause be? Here Blair was less convincing.
7. Blair's vision of the future tends to centre on "technology": "It will change everything & therefore everything should change". That may be true (though Wilson was saying this in the '60s). But how we respond must depend on our goals & on how we prioritise goods like equality.
8. Without a clear sense of purpose, technocracy easily degenerates into a bloodless managerialism. Blairism itself became less radical as it became more technocratic. "Modernisation", "radicalism" & "reform" sometimes felt like ends in themselves, rather than *means* to an end.
9. The Corbyn insurgency was partly a response to a loss of purpose by Blair's inheritors: in that sense, Blairism created its own gravediggers. Yet Corbynism's faith in its own righteousness, like Blair's faith in "technology", often became a way of dodging hard choices.
10. That left both New Labour & Corbynism vulnerable to a politics that was financially constrained & pulled between competing priorities. Corbynism tended to pretend those constraints didn't exist; second-generation "Blairites" struggled to find an inspiring vision of the future
11. Yet Blair remains Labour's most acute strategic thinker & the most successful election-winner in its history. On public services, homelessness, the relief of poverty, foreign aid, gay rights, education, redistribution & more, his govts were the most progressive of my lifetime
12.Instead of waving the bell, book & candle at him, Lab needs a serious debate about what Blair got right, what he got wrong & what lessons it can learn. It shd approach that in a spirit of "critical humility": mindful not just of Blair's flaws but of its own failures since 2007
13. Approached both critically & self-critically, Labour has a lot to learn from the successes & failures of the Blair era. Yet even academic history has been slow to engage with the subject. A serious conversation about New Labour is now desperately, dangerously overdue. [ENDS]
