Tony Blair has praised the “amazing job” Keir Starmer has done in taking the Labour Party from the 2019 general election defeat to closing in on a return to power.
Blair, who swept Labour to power on the back of a landslide victory in 1997, said the party’s current leader had taken the party from the “brink of extinction” at an event in London organised by the former prime minister himself.
Four years ago under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour fell to its worst election result since 1935, but now routinely holds a double-digit poll lead over the Tories ahead of next year’s expected general election.
Opening his interview with Starmer on Tuesday, Blair said: “You know, you’ve done an amazing job.
“You’ve taken the Labour Party in 2019 ... it was on the brink of extinction, frankly. And you’ve taken it, I know you can’t say it’s on the brink of government, but I think it’s a pretty good prospect.”
Blair added that “1997 is very different from 2024”, chiefly because of the parlous state of the UK economy today.
While not mentioning Corbyn by name, Blair said at the end of the conversation: “The other difference between us is, I was lucky enough to have (modernising Labour leaders) Neil Kinnock and John Smith before me. You weren’t ... let’s put it like that.
“People should acknowledge what you have done since 2019 because I tell you, it was not easy.”
Starmer replied “we’re trying to do Kinnock, Smith and Blair in one run, and to do it in five years”, which has meant “we’ve had to be really ruthless and tough”.
Being “ruthless and tough” was likely a reference to his pledge to keep a controversial limit on benefit payments for children if Labour wins.
“We keep saying collectively as a party we have to take decisions and in the abstract everyone says, yes, that is right,” Starmer told the event.
“And then we get a tough decision – we have been in one of those for the last few days – they say: I don’t like that. Can we just not make that one. I am sure there is another tough decision somewhere else we can make.”
Starmer at the weekend said he would not change a policy introduced in 2017 by the governing Conservatives that means families only receive some types of benefit payments for the first two children in a family.
He said the economic turmoil during last year’s brief premiership of Liz Truss underlined the need for careful spending.
Truss was forced to resign after six weeks as prime minister after announcing a series of unfunded tax cuts that shattered Britain’s reputation for financial stability.
“If you want proof that unfunded commitments cause damage, which is then visited on working people, then you have a living example of that. So it is a fundamental,” Starmer said.