Here’s a political poser. If you were setting up a basically Blairite political party, with loads of Blairites in it, sustained by Blairite MPs who were fed up with being attacked for supporting Blair, driven to act by the anti-Blairite stance of the alternatives, and promoting ideas developed by Blair and policies which Blair still supports, who’d be the one person you’d like to feel confident would join you?

While you are puzzling this one out, allow me to put an argument to you. If there is going to be a new party, and it’s going to have the slightest chance of impact and success, then Tony Blair will have to be its leader. Or, at a very minimum, part of its collective leadership.

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