Well, everyone knows that Tony Blair and the Pope issued encyclicals in the last week or two. The Pope’s was entitled Magnifica Humanitas, a terrible title: seeming to wind us back before the Fall when fig leaves were unnecessary and snakes were cancelled. No ‘original sin’ for this Pope. But by analogy I suppose Blair’s encyclical should have been called Labor Imbecilis.

Magnificent Humanity? 

Feeble Labour!

The actual title of Blair’s encyclical is ‘The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country’, and it was published on May 26th 2026. His argument is very simple, so I shall summarise it. 

• Labour came into power by accident (because the Conservatives were poor) and had no strategy
• Politics is too political. Too many Lefty fools, too many Righty thugs.
• Let us speak from, to, out of, into the “radical centre”.
• And, since we are central, we need a strategy, policy, purpose on two fronts. 
  1. We need to increase Europe’s defence.
  2. We need to respond to AI by accepting it.

Just a small digression, as there’s no point having a separate piece on my next point. There are two positions on Artificial Intelligence. I shall call these Yee-hah! and Oh-oh! 

1. Oh-oh! Resist it, worry about it, fear it, throw oneself in front of it like a Suffragette. 
2. Yee-hah! Embrace it. Clamber on to the Juggernaut. Ride the Steer.

You know these two positions. 

1 = Oh-oh! = the Pope (and the Guardian, The Rest is Politics and Ian Hislop)

2 = Yee-hah! = Tony Blair (and George Osborne and Jacob Rees-Mogg)

Which are also evidenced institutionally in American universities:

1 = Oh-oh! = the Berkeley School of Law (which has recently declared that students should not use LLM/AI for brainstorming, summarising documents, summarising laws or correcting grammatical mistakes)

2 = Yee-hah! = the University of Chicago (which has recently declared that it has ‘partnered’ – who is ‘top’ and who is ‘bottom’ in this arrangement? – with Anthropic to roll out the unlimited Claude for everyone)

The EU is Oh-oh! while the USA is Yee-hah!

Broadly speaking, the mainstream commentariat Left, channelling its inner EU, of course, but also A. Campbell, R. Stewart, is Oh-oh! about AI, while the Right, channelling its inner USA, is Yee-hah! 

Back to Blair. Isn’t it interesting that the Pope and Blair both issued encyclicals, and that they divided neatly on the subject of AI? (N.B. Blair’s old friend Campbell is on the side of the Pope of the Icy Church, not the side of the Vicar of St Albion.)

What is really fundamental to Blair’s encyclical is how the old hypocrite explicitly and repeatedly disavows politics. Yes, you heard that right.

He disavows politics, but he emphasises a need for power and for policy. 

Power + policy – politics = Blair’s position.

Let me deal with the three elements of this in turn.

Let me deal with the “no politics” first. No politics. Why? Because Blair thinks we have gone wrong because everyone has got too political. He means Farage, and probably Cameron, and he means Corbyn, and probably Brown. He blames everything that has gone wrong in politics since 2016 on – er, politics. Which is a bit ironic. But by “politics” he means the sort of politics he no longer likes now he is retired. He says Labour got “political” with Corbyn. The Conservatives got “political” with Brexit, Rwanda, Lettuces etc. But Blair wants policy. Policy should come from what he calls the “radical centre”. By this Blair means that he wants growth, not various “commitments” to idealistic spending politics. This accords with McFadden’s note to Mandelson that all of Labour is wondering whom to tax next. Blair wants Labour to avoid New Red silliness, but also to avoid Blue Labour, and head back to the “radical centre”. Why? Because: “The centre is the place where policy comes first and politics second. You work out the correct analysis, then the correct answer, and shape your political strategy around it.”

So let’s talk about policy. Policy without politicians, because Blair doesn’t trust politicians. He says: “The politics of the future may be better understood by those presently outside politics.” Blair wants strategy. He wants purpose. He wants policy. He wants an idea. Blair notices that democracies prevent politicians from engaging in ‘long-term strategic thinking’. Aye. I think Blair, in his old age, is turning into a bit of a Cummings Rationalist. He says we need politicians who are “problem-solvers”. B minus, Blair. Politicians are problem-settlers, not problem-solvers. (Once again, let me remind the reader that Bertrand de Jouvenel said only engineers and experts can solve problems; politics comes in when problems cannot be solved, and must be settled.) 

What is the policy? Make Money. Get Energy. Appease America. Strengthen Europe. Defend the State. Talk to China. Don’t fall behind with AI. 

The interesting thing about Blair’s policy is that it is empty unless we consider that it is really a policy about power: having more of it, being where it is, using it. 

So, finally, power. Blair gets a bit philosophical and tells us politics has always been about power. Let’s face it: his policy about AI is just a policy about power; and his policy about G2/3, China, America etc. is just a policy about power. His friendly analysis of Trump – and this is the unacceptable bit for Campbell – is that Trump is unconventional, and is required because everyone is tired of conventional politicians failing to “deliver real change”. (That “deliver” metaphor I always complain of again.) He admires politicians like Trump for not being knocked about by media winds: they have a certain sort of inner resistance, “ballast”. Aye well. Blair’s doctrine about great politics: “If you want to play you have to be sat at the table.” Which is fine, except it makes it sound as if someone else (China, America) sat you at the table. 

Blair sees that the UK is a state and we have to, as Machiavelli put it, mantenere lo stato, maintain the state, i.e., defend it: which means, to begin with, throw out foreigners, execute traitors, exile possible usurpers, make sure government is not overly corrupt or feckless or weak. So he has no patience for an isolationist reactionary Right or a dim progressive Left. They are too “political” for Blair. He even has a catchphrase. Keir Starmer gave us “island of strangers”. Blair gives us “island of irrelevance”. This old John of Gaunt says that this blessed isle, this ancient plot should not be an island of irrelevance. And by relevance he really just means power.

The EU is not powerful enough. This, I think, is why he dismisses the EU. It ain’t America or AI or China, so it is nothing but a drag on power. “Just as Brexit was never the answer to Britain’s challenges back in 2016, reversing it isn’t the answer to the country’s far worse situation in 2026.” And Labour spending is no solution either. This is the true heart of the Labor Imbecilis cry. Blair says no serious country can spend more on incapacity and disability than defence. “No serious country can do that.” The NHS should prevent rather than cure. Do “whatever it takes”, and he even puts it in inverted commas, to stop illegal immigration. 

What we have to recognise is that Blair, as much as any other politician, is incredibly preoccupied with legacy, and this encyclical is a way of burnishing his. He is saying, ‘I had power’, and ‘I had power because I understand government’. We have to forgive Blair his illusions. He was a good politician, no doubt, but this does not mean he understands anything: it just means he was adept in the great game of subjecting other humans to his will. He is coming out of the closet a bit and admitting this, though he is still trying to conceal it by wittering on about “policy” and “purpose” and whatnot: where he is inevitably 1) going to lose (Iraq, Gordon Brown, Foxes, Supreme Court etc.) and 2) going to sound very out of date. And he does “politics” down, which is a bit harsh on politics from such an adept politician. 

Out of date? Even Campbell has suggested Blair wrote as if Brexit/Covid/Civil-Unrest-Over-Immigration has never happened.

Finally, isn’t it odd – did you notice? – that every commentator referred to the encyclical of Blair in terms of its word length. It was 5,700 words long, said everyone (except Campbell who remembered it wrongly and said 5,600 words long). I wondered why the number seemed to be significant. Five thousand seven hundred words. The numbers mesmerised the commentariat. A small example of groupthink, or mass formation: as soon as someone counted the words, and mentioned how many they were, everyone felt obliged to mention it. Which is odd. I don’t see what the number of words had to do with anything. 

Oh, an absolute last point. When Blair said that “The politics of the future may be better understood by those presently outside politics” I like to think that he had happened across Alexander’s Paradox of Politics: which, you may remember, is (or one bit if it is) that only people outside politics have the requisite detachment to understand politics. The bit that Blair forgot, or remembered and did not say, is that only people inside politics have the requisite involvement to understand it. Now, follow the logic, and see that the judgement has to be that no one understands politics. Let me write it out:

Only people outside politics can understand politics.

Only people inside politics can understand politics.

Therefore, no one can understand politics.

Blair is a sort of retired insider. But like all retired politicians he likes talking about politics: mixing up fighting-old-battles and setting-the-world-to-rights. It is the sort of thing elderly gentlemen are meant to do in the smoking room of a club but nowadays men like to do on podcasts. Blair, not being a podcaster like Balls and Campbell, has used the medium I also favour: the written word. So good for him. But remember: his doctrine is really just an empty one, about using power to have more power. Which I suppose is useful, in that it reminds us of the importance of power. But it is not saying much.

What we should take away from this encyclical is Labour is an imbecile.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.