As the first victorious Labour general election campaign in 19 years entered its final week, the man who led the last one paid a royal visit to party headquarters. Almost nothing has leaked through the handsome brickwork of the opposition’s new base in Southwark over the past six weeks but, inevitably, Sir Tony Blair’s sermon on the virtues of his unlikely successor found its way into newsprint.
In 2019 the former prime minister risked a citizen’s arrest if he stepped foot on party property; in 2024 he posed for selfies and autographed manifestos. All but three years ago he doubted Sir Keir Starmer could win a parliamentary majority; now he praised him for rescuing Labour from “extinction”. What went unreported, however, was a fleeting moment
