Blair's baffled by the left because he doesn't see the bigger picture

Former PM doesn’t understand that angry activists are trying to frighten the elites who failed them in the past

So Tony Blair is puzzled about the rise of Jeremy Sanders and Bernie Corbyn as fiery leftwing candidates for high office. Excellent. The former centre-left prime minister isn’t puzzled enough, in my experience. Puzzlement might do him good; even prompt him to wonder if his own behaviour since leaving office has contributed in any way to voter disenchantment.
I say this more in hope than expectation, more in sorrow than in anger, as an admirer of Blair. A skilled and successful leader of a Britain more prosperous and content than now for a decade, he would not have got us into several of the troubles the country currently faces – in Europe and Scotland for example, though he managed one or two of his own.

But I never felt he stood back far enough to see the bigger picture. On a trip once I gave him a history book in the shaky belief that, if he ever bothered to open it, he might learn something. Fat chance. I can’t remember how often I’ve joked that Gordon Brown read books but Blair used them to keep the door open.

Instead of making himself part of the solution, Blair is now 62 and part of the problem

Related: Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and their new coalitions on the left

Related: I’ve felt the Bern. And Jeremy Corbyn, you’re no Senator Sanders | Jonathan Freedland

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