PM Ques - 2nd July 2025
The Which Blair? Project
Once upon a not-so-distant time, in a land of village cricket, post offices, pubs, and Sunday bells, there came a wizard. Not the bearded, benevolent kind — no, this one was slick, suited, and armed with soundbites. With an entranced public behind him and the dark arts of political enchantment, he cast a spell that swept away ancient liberties and governance, making way for a gleaming new order. Unfortunately, in this brave new world, there was no room for pubs, post offices… or churches.
The wizard, aided by his fellow conjurer and a legion of eager acolytes, deconstructed the so-called constitution and refitted public offices with goblins, long-legged beasties, and things that bump votes in the night. The great halls of Lords and Justice were emptied of their namesakes and restocked with careerists and yes-men — their loyalty not to the people or principle, but to the spell and its master.
Eventually, the wizard left the castle, but the enchantment lingered. Those who followed him — supposedly his political adversaries — brought no new magic, only donned the hats he’d left behind. The people, tragically, were not freed. They were simply administered by new managers of the same old curse.
Another wizard came along, just as sleek, to complete the work — and that’s when the fog started to lift.
Hotel California, Westminster edition
Tony Blair resigned 18 years ago. Gordon Brown was defeated in 2010. Yet the question persists: did Blair’s influence ever leave office? Or did it quietly embed itself in every corridor of power like political dry rot?
While hard to quantify, the legislative blizzard of the Blair-Brown years was vast — many would say excessive — centralising state control and disrupting the delicate balance of Britain’s patchwork constitution.
Special advisers flourished. Civil service reforms spread like spreadsheets. Quangos spawned like mushrooms after rain. Supranational entanglements thickened. The result? A sleek, obedient machinery of state that operated above and beyond electoral accountability.
And so, what emerged wasn’t "Third Way" centrism — it was authoritarian managerialism wrapped in the language of modernisation. The state was no longer the servant of the individual, but its arbiter. Prime Ministers became CEOs, not leaders. Governments inherited machines they couldn’t alter, only operate.
David Cameron? A capable manager. But never a Prime Minister in the full sense. He inherited Blair’s machinery and worked it like an intern rotating through departments.
Meanwhile, Labour ceased to be Labour. Ed Miliband offered more Blairism. Jeremy Corbyn spoke the language of old socialism, but couldn’t command the machine — it spat him out. The constitution, eccentric and irregular though it was, once made ministers accountable. Now we have quangocrats who answer to no one and everything else — Lords, law, the electorate — sidelined.
Automaton Government, Engage
The new machine was designed not to govern but to self-perpetuate. Brexit? A brief system error. Sovereignty? An ancient relic. The automaton defaulted to “managed global communitarianism” and rebooted without a hitch. The Bank of England, the OBR, the quangos, and international bodies don’t serve voters. They serve the system.
Cameron didn’t so much govern as curate. The so-called "uniparty" — a bipartisan mush where both sides promise the same — didn’t exist in theory. But the automaton they inherited made it so in practice.
The result? The Conservative Party was neutered. Labour lost its soul. The Greens turned from nature-lovers into planetary technocrats, paving farmland with solar arrays while the lambs fled.
In this vacuum, the people turned — not unreasonably — to demagogues. Farage and Corbyn, cut from different cloth, perhaps, but stitched with the same thread: promise everything, deliver nothing. Labour’s membership ballooned under Corbyn; Reform surges now. But real change? Not even close.
What now? Not more reform — repeal.
The damage is legislative, structural, cultural. We've regulated ourselves into paralysis. The great repeal must come. Strip back the laws. Scrap the quangos. Restore the constitution — eccentric, yes, but ours. Reinstate the hereditary peers, the woolsack, accountability. If not out of nostalgia, then out of necessity.
Only then can government be free to govern. Only then will voters choose not just who runs the machine — but whether we run the machine at all.
The governments of the 21st century have inherited machines they couldn't alter, only operate. So, what is the Prime Minister going to do about it, dig in, consolidate, or repeal? Will the Prime Minister restore parliamentary responsibility, accountability and the Constitution, or step aside and let a different government repeal and be in a position to truly govern again?