Blair says Labour government ‘playing with fire’ over Britain’s future

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a stark warning to the Labour Party on Tuesday, arguing the party under Keir Starmer risks electoral decline and national stagnation unless it embraces what he called a “Radical Centre” agenda.

In a lengthy essay published on Tuesday, Blair said Labour entered government in 2024 as an “acceptable default option” after years of Conservative turmoil but failed to develop “a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world.”

“The government is governing from an essentially traditional Labour ‘soft left’ position,” Blair wrote, adding that the party risks being “sliced to the left and right of itself.”

Blair argued Britain faces “two epochal changes” — a shifting global balance of power and an artificial intelligence revolution that “will change everything. I mean everything.”

He criticized policies he said have weakened business confidence, including higher employer taxes and accelerated net-zero measures, while calling for planning reform, cheaper energy, and expanded AI adoption.

“Britain is in a mess precisely because in recent years it has done the opposite” of putting policy before politics, Blair wrote. Without major reform, he warned, the country risks “a long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of nations.”