Tony Blair has recently announced that he is returning to politics. Personally, I’m very excited. It’s a bit like hearing that Bobby Charlton is returning to the England team, if the England team was a morally corrupt political elite and Bobby Charlton was the least popular man ever. Much like with football, Tony Blair is known for being disappointing, wealthy beyond belief and starting fights that seem inexplicable and pointless. Unlike football, he and the Labour Party are no longer successful in the north of England, where UKIP remain solid in the polls, and yet Liverpool seem quite good.
It is possible that Tony Blair’s return could trigger some important debates about British politics. Jeremy Corbyn is 5’10, Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband are both 5’11. Tony Blair is 6’. Have the last three Labour leaders’ failure to break the six-foot barrier prevented them from seizing the political initiative? It certainly seems that way. On the other side of the dispatch box, David Cameron is 6’1 and Lord Salisbury was taller still. Height doesn’t seem to have been a problem for Teresa May, but then again she is still yet to win an election.
Perhaps the Labour party is therefore less like football, and a lot more like basketball. There is very little appetite for either in the UK at the moment, but it seems that height is a key attribute in both.
Aside from touring the country, shooting hoops in some key marginal constituencies in the name of a soft Brexit, there is very little that Tony Blair can do to convince voters that he still has anything to offer. But the party spin doctors that Jeremy Corbyn has kept gagged and locked in his cellar should take note. The day will no doubt come when the Labour Party goes looking for someone who may actually lead them to electoral victory. Third Way politics may be no more than a distant memory, but this is not the only thing that Blair brought to the table.
Quiet entreaties should be made to appoint four time Olympic gold medal winner in women’s basketball Lisa Leslie as Labour’s next leader. At 6’5,with a masters in business administration and a former contestant on The New Celebrity Apprentice USA (hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, not You-Know-Who), there doesn’t seem to be anyone better qualified for the job.
