Tony Blair has warned the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “close the streets” of the populist right by maintaining tough controls on immigration.
The former prime minister said the new government should take into account parties such as Nigel Farage’s Reform and deal with people’s grievances while staying on the ground to hold together Labour’s electoral coalition.
However, he said he believed it should be celebrated for the good that immigration has done for the country, adding that the “crazy” approach of the Conservative Party to this issue had damaged the economy, writes The Guardian, reports Gazeta Express.
In his first interview since Labor won power last week, Blair also asked Starmer to “be realistic” about how difficult it could be to meet his climate targets, and he predicted that the UK would eventually join a “regional grouping” with European neighbors to compete on the world stage.
The Tony Blair Institute will hold its Future of Britain conference in London on Tuesday, at which Blair will also argue that the adoption of artificial intelligence in the public sector could deliver £12bn of savings a year by the end of this term.
He commented on how to deal with the rise of the radical right which would strike a nerve within the new Labor government after UK Reform won five seats in last week’s election and took 14% of the vote.
Blair told the Guardian: “Progressives have to think about the answers, but you have to understand what the populist does. The populist usually does not invent a grievance, they exploit the grievance. If you want to close their avenues for increased support, you need to deal with the complaint. That’s why Keir is absolutely right when he says you need to have controls on immigration.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate the good that immigration can do, because it does a very good thing for this country, but you have to have controls.”
Starmer has just diverted tens of millions of pounds from Rwanda’s scheme to set up a new Border Security Command as part of plans to tackle illegal migration.
That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate the good that immigration can do, because it does a very good thing for this country, but you have to have controls.”
Starmer has just diverted tens of millions of pounds from Rwanda’s scheme to set up a new Border Security Command as part of plans to tackle illegal migration.
Blair said the government also needed to take law and order “really seriously” and be “really careful” about cultural issues being exploited by the right, saying: “Labour has a coherent [electoral] coalition, provided you put things in the center”.
The former prime minister, who campaigned to remain in the EU referendum, said he understood Starmer’s caution towards a closer relationship with Europe after the party’s election disaster in 2019. “You have to take this carefully.” , Blair said. “I completely understand the reason for the caution. You just have to do it step by step.”
While he could not predict whether the UK would ever join the single market or the customs union, he said: “The one thing I am absolutely certain of is that Britain will have to be part of the political family in its continent. Now what form this takes, I don’t know. But the absolutely essential thing for a country like Britain to understand, because we have become very internal as a country, is that within the next two decades you will have three giants in the world – America, China, maybe India. And the only alternative that all the other countries will have is to be in regional groupings that give you collectively what you won’t have individually.”
He said the decision, as a result of Brexit, to end immigration from Europe had been “the craziest thing”, as it meant exchanging young working people with high levels of immigration from Asia and Africa.
Blair, who said he stayed up until 1am on Thursday night to watch the news of Labour’s election victory, said he was in regular contact with Starmer. “I don’t really offer advice, but if he wants to talk about things, we talk about things,” he said.
