Tony Blair is strong on diagnosis, deluded on prescription: Britain’s ills can’t be fixed by him | Larry Elliott

The former PM’s essay rightly calls for a coherent economic plan, but then sets too much store by AI – and a worldview stuck in the past Tony Blair is right. Labour has made some big and avoidable mistakes since it came to power nearly two years ago. Keir Starmer had a strategy for winning the election but lacked a coherent plan for what his government would do next. Fair cop. Blair is also correct when he says that unless Britain tackles some long-term structural issues, it is in danger of being relegated from the “premier league of nations”. Achieving higher levels of sustainable growth is one challenge. Welfare reform is another. And as the former prime minister notes, reversing Brexit is not a solution to those problems. But, all that said, Blair’s 5,700-word essay published by his Institute for Global Change is a flawed analysis of what the country needs. It is one part nostalgia for a golden Blairite era that never was, one part belief that AI is the answer and one part failure to accept that the current crop of Labour politicians might be on to something. AI is a case in point. The UK government is trying to steer a middle way – a very Blairite concept – in its