Hey Labour: Shut Up About Tony Blair

Hey Labour Party,

What's up? It's me. Yep, another supporter totally bummed out about the last election. I know you're going through a hard time right now, what with losing all of Scotland and having to figure out your role as a party of organised labour in a 21st Century where everything's gone all globalised and digital, but there is something we need to talk about.

No, I'm not going to try and tell you whom to elect as leader. Too many gigabytes have been spilled on that already. Maybe Liz Kendall has really great innovations to guide the party to a new era? Maybe Jeremy Corbyn's farts really do smell like wild roses and he pisses artisanal ginger beer? Whatever. They'll make their arguments and time will tell. But there is something you need to do in the meantime. You really, really need to stop talking about Tony Blair. Seriously. Just stop.

I know it's hard, especially when he's just popped up yet again braying like a caffeinated donkey all over the Guardian about the party's "annihilation" if Corbyn wins. But Blair is above all else a narcissist. As long as you keep responding, he'll keep coming back. He even managed to make that Guardian piece about himself: "Even if you hate me, please don't take Labour over the cliff edge". Gross.

But like a playground bully, if you stop giving him the attention, he'll probably just piss off back to consulting for Saudi petro-chemical companies. So, you know all those angry response op-eds that are about to spill out of Comment is Free, the New Statesman and all your social media feeds? Don't bother. You're going to have to be the bigger party here, Labour supporters. Just walk away.

Let's say someone has an idea you don't like about needing to embrace a market-driven economy or bringing down the deficit through austerity? Just say you think those are rubbish ideas. You aren't required to throw in the word "Blairite" as some sort of instantly recognisable epithet for vileness.

Conversely, let's say you believe the party needs to recapture the political centre-ground that David Cameron's PR drones have somehow managed to squirm him into? Just say so. You know that little urge you have to add, "like Tony Blair did", to the end of the sentence? Resist it. Just leave it out. It is possible to express ideas without referencing past leaders.

Because here's the thing, Labour – despite what Blair thinks, this isn't about him, it's about you. And it's sabotaging the party. A lot of the arguments you're having right now aren't actually political, they're Freudian. You're behaving like an adolescent still trying to deal with the trauma of realising his parents may not be absolutely perfect in every single way.

See, Daddy was meant to be perfect. Daddy won all the elections. Daddy was Cool Britannia. Daddy took Ken Clarke's ideas about credit-based economic growth and built loads of hospitals and made everyone feel rich.

But then, shock horror, Daddy wasn't perfect. Daddy did the bad war. Daddy let the bankers set us up for the credit crunch, then disappeared just as the shit hit the fan.

So, the child is faced with two options: kill Daddy, or set up ever more complex and fraught emotional structures to convince himself that Daddy was perfect after all and it's the rest of the world that's wrong. Sound familiar, Labour?

These are perfectly natural neurotic reactions, and this is all stuff you probably do have to process – but for god's sake stop playing this shit out on the national stage when there is actual politics to be getting on with.

Because, Labour, what you have to realise is that no one outside of your little circle gives a shit about your past-leadership traumas. When you shout "Blairite" at an opponent, it may give you that warm Oedipal glow and serve as an easy call to arms for your particular insular little tribe; but all any non-party member says to themselves is, "bloody hell, their only benchmark is still a guy who was elected 20 years ago. I'm not voting for that lot". It makes you look kind of pathetic.

Everyone knows that acting like a petulant adolescent shouting at his parents can give a little charge of adrenalin – and UK politics could definitely do with some adrenalin right now – but no one is going to let the angry adolescent into government.

What the people of this country actually need are some new ideas. Not a psycho-emotional battle over the meaning of past Labour leaders. The first step is to start discussing stuff without the emotional weight and dog-whistle politics of attaching the Blair-word onto them. You want to make the first baby-steps to getting back into government? Stop framing debates about the future in terms of your complexes about the past.

And, once again, the bonus is that this really is the only way to get Tony Blair to finally fuck off.

No one likes Tony Blair. Even Tony Blair doesn't like Tony Blair. For the past decade or so all Tony Blair has been is a political troll. He hangs around where he's not wanted, spouting his opinions just to get everyone else upset. Well, the first thing you learn on the internet, Labour, is don't feed the troll . Stop talking about him and maybe he will go away.

More Blair:

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