Blair warns Labour needs a fundamental reset before next election

Tony Blair has warned that Labour is in the “wrong political position” to win a second term and needs a fundamental reset before the next election, arguing that the party is governing without a “worked out, coherent plan” for a world reshaped by technology and geopolitics.

In a 5,700-word essay published on Tuesday, 26 May 2026, the former Labour prime minister said Sir Keir Starmer’s government was operating from a traditional Labour “soft left” position and was “playing with the future of the country.” Blair said the central problem was not Starmer’s personality or communications, but the absence of strategy. Without a new agenda, he wrote, Britain faces a “long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of nations.”

Blair said Labour won the July 2024 general election largely as an acceptable default after voters rejected the Conservatives, rather than through enthusiasm for Labour’s own programme. He argued that the party had failed to produce a properly thought-through analysis of how the world had changed after the Corbyn years, leaving it unprepared for the pace of artificial intelligence, global instability and economic competition.

The intervention landed as Labour struggled with the fallout from heavy losses in the early May 2026 local elections. Blair praised both Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting as significant figures, but warned against forcing Starmer out unless any leadership change begins with a serious policy debate. He said Labour needed more than a new face at the top; it needed a new direction.

Blair also took aim at a series of policy choices. He criticised the October 2024 rise in employer National Insurance from 13.8% to 15%, along with the reduction in the threshold from £9,100 to £5,000. He questioned the Employment Rights Bill, introduced on 10 October 2024 as the first phase of Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, and attacked the recent rise in the National Living Wage and wider minimum wage rates from 1 April 2026.

He also criticised higher welfare spending, urged reform of the state pension triple lock, called for tougher action to stop small boats, and said the government should not have stopped the US from using RAF bases in the UK during attacks on Iran. Reporting also said Andy Burnham was seeking a return to parliament in the Makerfield by-election on 18 June 2026, sharpening the sense of a party already under pressure to decide what Labour stands for next.