Tony Blair has written a sharp warning to Britain’s Labour Party, but much of it could be mailed directly to the American Democratic Party.

His central point is simple: a party cannot win the future by retreating into the comfort zone of its own internal coalition. Labour, he argues, risks governing as “Just Labour” — familiar, cautious, soft-left, and insufficiently serious about growth, technology, national power, welfare reform, and the practical business of making government work.

That problem is not uniquely British.

American Democrats face a similar danger. They often speak as though the country is waiting for a purer version of progressive politics, when much of the country is asking for competence, economic seriousness, public order, border control, institutional reform, and some visible evidence that government can still deliver. Like Labour, Democrats have a tendency to confuse the concerns of their most engaged activists with the concerns of persuadable voters. Blair offers his idea on what a successful government does:

They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right…It is efficacy. It is the ability to get big things done. To have leaders who are not problem-managers but problem-solvers.

Tony Blair “The Labour Party is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country” Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

That is the lesson Democrats ought to absorb.

The future will not be won by defending every existing program, every institutional ally, or every cultural position that has become fashionable inside the party. Nor will it be won by simply denouncing Trumpism. Voters already know the defects of Trumpism. What they want to know is whether Democrats have a governing project equal to the moment. If given a chance to govern again will the Democrats be able to deliver on the issues important to the American people? I do not wish to revisit the review of the Ezra Klein book “Abundance” but it is, in my view, something that everyone should be looking at. Passing a bill is great, but when there is no follow-up there is just frustration within the electorate that leads to some bad results. I clipped the below from my review of the book.

“A difficulty that Biden and Harris had in trying to run on their record in 2024 was that few communities were yet seeing benefit from all this construction their policies were meant to spark. The infrastructure bill, for instance, included $7.5 billion to build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations; by March 2024-more than two years after the bill was passed-only seven new chargers were up and running”

Klein, Ezra, Thompson, Derek: Abundance pg. 213

Blair identifies two great forces reshaping politics: geopolitical competition and artificial intelligence. In America, those forces are even more central. China, industrial policy, defense capacity, energy, immigration, education, public safety, and the future of work are not side issues. They are the main event.

The Democratic Party’s peril is that it may mistake resistance for purpose. Resistance can win an election. It cannot govern a country for long.

Blair’s advocacy for the center of the political spectrum seems like an anachronism to many, but he makes as strong as a case as can be made today for occupying the political center ground.

The best political space from which this can be achieved is what I call the Radical Centre.

The centre – properly defined – is where you put policy first and politics last. So, you begin with the question: what is the right answer? And only once you have that do you engage in the political task of persuading people of it.

Tony Blair “The Labour Party is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country” Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

In the United States today the political center, in light of the massive gerrymandering of Congressional districts, can be a difficult place to live, as several GOP Senators (Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy) have found. It brings to mind the old Jim Hightower observation that “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” Despite that, and even though I recognize that the advice is not easily transferrable to the U.S., it is my strong belief that actual problem solving and being able to show folks that government is actually succeeding in key areas can create its own political momentum and space to live.

Blair’s warning to Labour is therefore a warning to Democrats as well: parties that put internal politics ahead of national strategy eventually lose both the argument and the country. The task is not to move left or right by reflex. The task is to make government work once more.