 The BBC has released a five-part documentary on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It's called Blair and Brown, The New Labour Revolution. The documentary is a fairly thawning affair. It's got extensive interviews with Brown and Blair and lots of people who worked with them, lots of their allies. I've only watched the first three episodes so far. I can't vouch for the final two, but so far everyone speaking has taken it as an absolute given that New Labour was a good thing that they had to come in, take over that party and defeat the left. There was no one giving an alternative perspective. Despite that though, there are still moments I found revealing. This is Tony Blair describing the reason he got into politics. I read Law which was a mistake because I found it very boring as an academic subject, but by my late twenties I was full on and flat out as a lawyer. I've never been to the House of Commons and I always remember going into the lobby, into this vast cavernous marble lobby and it was a very odd thing. Just the moment I stepped in I thought I've got to be here. That kind of moment of epiphany, if you like, that this is what I was going to do. Very strong. My precious vibe. Blair need to work under the beautiful roof of the House of Commons to feed his ego. Aaron, what did you make of that? I mean, the critique of Tony Blair is that he didn't believe in anything. The reason he got into politics wasn't to help people. It was to feed his own ego and there he is. Just saying outright, I've never been to the House of Commons before. I hadn't lobbied anyone before, presumably he'd never been there on a protest. He went inside, he saw this grandiose roof, presumably reminded him a bit of Bayley Owl in Oxford and he was like, I have to be here. This is my calling. My calling is to be in the heart of power in Britain. Looking at it from a sort of intellectual level, Ralph Milimand and Leo Panitch, who recently passed away, theorized parliamentary socialism in this country as having certain problems and they viewed the Labour Party as a limited vehicle for socialism because the Labour Party MPs viewed themselves as parliamentarians first and socialist seconds at best. I mean, Blair wasn't even that. Which is to say that they have a sense of duty and obligation to the British state before their party or before even the working class or their constituents. I think that video, Michael, conclusively and comprehensively sums that up and that's a great piece of primary documentary evidence for the Miliband hypothesis. Ralph, I should say, Michael, not Ed or David. As I say, the documentary didn't include many people critical of Tony Blair. I mean, I can't think of anyone who was outright critical of Tony Blair, allies and colleagues, but the egotism of the then Prime Minister was mentioned by Richard Wilson. He was Britain's top civil servant between 1998 and 2002. Yeah, nice to see you. Mrs. Thatcher knew that she was a remarkable figure, that she didn't dwell on it too much. There was a much bigger element of ego in Blair. Blair was always exploring who he was, about how far he could push the boundaries of his own achievement. And I think that was privately, inwardly, the centre of his ambition. That seems like a very self-obsessed. What am I going to say about that? Yes, I think he was. I think he was the centre of his universe. I think he was the centre of his universe. I mean, you can kind of see in that interview and Tony Blair's egotism, they talk elsewhere in the documentary, there's people who, you know, he thought he was the Messiah, Jesus-like quality. Sometimes it worked to great effect when it came to the Good Friday agreement. They were discussing that in episode two, I think. But it led to complete disaster. This idea of having a leader who is just obsessed with constantly maximising their own impact on the universe, you can kind of see the direct linkage between that attitude and the Iraq war and all of the biggest disasters of new labour, can't you? Well, I'd even go a bit further, Mike. I would say that there's really no legacy of new labour that's positive in the long term. Now, new labour did some very good things, particularly in its first term, devolution. I mean, that's a good legacy, but not if you like the union. I don't, but I presume most people do who are big fans of new labour. You've got the fact they introduced proportion representation for European elections, European Parliament that allows the rise of UKIP, arguably that sets the foundation for Brexit. So those are two big errors. You've got obviously the minimum wage, which is really positive. But other than that, massive investment into education and the NHS, which of course was fantastic, but it's been rolled back in the last 11 years. So then you haven't really got a long-term legacy. Like from 45 to 51 with labour, you have the welfare state, the NHS, we still have it today. Not perfect, not intact, but we still have it. You look at Margaret Thatcher, she completely transformed the national housing market. She completely changed the provision of things like energy, water, public transport. Those are really long-lasting, enduring legacies, but theirs isn't. And I think that's partly because of that sense that his own political representation mattered more than the project. And I think ultimately, that's why somebody like that, if you want to win and you want to change things for the long term and be remembered in 100 years time, somebody like that actually has real downfalls and downsides as a leader. So yes, of course, he won three elections. I mean, what's the long-term legacy of that really? Failed foreign policy, evolution, fine, minimum wage. That's kind of it. That is really kind of it. And Blairism is an orthodoxy in how it embraced financialization, the city of London, again, completely found out in 2008. And of course, it was better to have labour in charge doing that stuff between 97 and 2010 in the Tories. I don't think anybody on the left dispute that part of the foreign policy stuff. But the idea that he changed Britain forever, he's a titan like Churchill or Atley or Thatcher. It's nonsense. It's not remotely true. You can't even really compare him to Wilson and Roy Jenkins, because some of the stuff they did around liberal values in the 60s, death penalty, divorce, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's more of a legacy there even. So even though he won three times, he's quite an insubstantial politician, Michael. And I think that's because his priority was always how Tony Blair represented here, rather than what's in the long-term interest of the political project I'm attached to. And you're going to get that politicians who don't put their party first or don't have a certain project in mind. He hated the Labour Party. The Labour Party was a vehicle for Tony Blair. And ultimately, that meant they lost many members, many votes, and even the political legacy, like I've said, wasn't very substantial. As I said, I don't think the documentary is incredibly well done, but it is interesting how long they talk to Tony Blair for and how little you hear about what he actually wants to do beyond saying, I want to modernize the country. It's very, very abstract to what end, in what way.