Lurking Behind the Election: Blair and His Technocratic Heirs

For destructiveness, no one comes close to Blair in damage done to Britain and specifically England. Every one of our political problems, especially the collapse in democratic trust and the disasters of uncontrolled immigration, are his to own. It’s true that all our PMs since have been appalling but Blair’s legacy is now ineradicable. The idea of an heir is truly terrifying – though acolytes like Cameron were keen to claim the title.

The mystery to me is why many still wonder what was behind his fanatical drive for the Iraq war; he’s now a ‘globalist’ with considerable behind-the-scenes power and accountable to no one. Iraq allowed him to build a world platform for himself, at a time when British politics was both boring him and showing signs that his Messianic self-belief was losing popularity. He’s arguably not a political figure at all but used politics to join the amorphous and shadowy international elite, now advising governments of any type and morality on ‘global change’. In essence, he’s cashed out his political experience in the U.K. on the world stage. That’s now the norm for Left-liberals in our polity, but the scale in his case is quite unprecedented.

A technocratic managerialist with no obvious values or roots – but now also wealthy beyond belief, for someone who’s never made, discovered or invented anything. His so-called political ideas – the centrist ‘third-way’ and ‘triangulation’ – are specious waffle, barely capable of being analysed. A good fit for the centrist managerial dads and our Left-liberal middle classes in how he uses Left-liberal pieties to hide his eagerness for enrichment and his essential nihilism. It should be remembered that he happily admits to having had no keen interest in politics or political ideas – especially the latter.

His political legacy is that anything is allowed, if you express the ‘right views’ and are against ‘the forces of conservatism’. And that values are performative, as are ideas. They are all just a means to power – operating on the largest scale. The role of politicians is to make the Overton window into a front-door spyhole, so that anyone and anything outside can be dismissed as ‘fruit-cake’, ‘far-Right’ and ‘racist’.

More recently, anything which poses alternatives is based on ‘misinformation’ and needs ‘fact-checking’ then censoring. The public, as simpletons, are in constant need of protection against demagogues and populists. By definition, the technocratic approach of Blair, Cameron, Starmer, Clegg, Davey et al. is so eminently reasonable that any challenge to it is always idiotic and often dangerous. They are the adults, the experts, and only a fool would question their position. Notice how Blair revelled in the Covid period, providing his expertise on virology, epidemiology and acute medicine without anyone questioning who he was to do so and – crucially – why. Similarly, why is a figure like Bill Gates involved in the drive to international control of all medical policy? Only the most gullible and credulous would answer: ‘pure philanthropy’.

And the answer of these technocratic elites to any growing public unease is to massively restrict freedom of speech, hiding their personal interests and prejudice behind legalism and worries for ‘public safety’. The figures espousing ‘kindness and reasonable evidence-based discussion’ are unelected, unaccountable and unchecked in their decisions, which always equate their own technocracy with those highly subjective ideals.

Some object to ‘centrist dads’, but it’s a meme that seems to work; I rather wish the word ‘sensible’ had been added. Above all, it’s the assumed faith – or rather its display: retail, boutique hotels, craft-ale pubs, rampant credentialism, the EU, artisan coffee or bread, ubiquitous selfish Lycra cyclists, Net-Zero bullshit, a fake expertise and localism that is both global and ruthless. Just see how quickly it manipulated the ‘global pandemic’ into the relentless drive for globalist solutions. Witness its draconian authoritarianism, which is now itching for the next big-thing public safety panic to add to imminent climate catastrophe, raging war and God-knows-what new pathogens.

Thank goodness the ‘grown-ups’ will soon be back in charge.

Paul Sutton can be found on Substack. His new book on woke issues The Poetry of Gin and Tea is out now.