Reactions 61. Tony Blair and his institute alarm me, and they should alarm you too.

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Most campaigners have had a keen interest in politics for as long as they can remember; many joined trade unions at a young age, were members of debating societies, or read the newspapers every day to keep up with new developments. I wasn’t like this at all. Sometimes I wonder if that’s because I grew up in Jersey, an island with its own peculiar microcosm, a place that often feels cut off from the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because of the people I spent time with, who also weren’t talking about politics very much. At other times I think it might be because of basic naivety.

I’m quite a simple person in a lot of ways; I say what I think, I’m quite rigid about what I think is right or wrong, and I’ve always valued concrete facts - the sort of information which is irrefutably true. That’s probably why I was drawn to medicine. In medical training, I found relief in the logic underpinning the science, the continual learning, and the human connection which I enjoyed very much. I valued the politics of the everyday; I wanted to make a difference in my community, and for my patients. I could see how many people were struggling and I wanted to make a difference. But in terms of politics on the national or world stage, I just didn’t find it very interesting. It looked to me like a lot of people yelling at each other and vying for power, both of which I found to be a huge turn-off.

Things changed for me when the junior doctor contract dispute happened in 2015/2016. I feel a bit ashamed to admit this, but I was genuinely shocked by the tactics used by politicians to frame the situation, and ultimately to impose a contract upon junior doctors in England which was deemed by the government’s own equality assessment to disproportionately impact women in a negative way. Hang on a second, I thought (probably a full 15 years after everyone else had reached this stage in their personal development), what else are politicians misrepresenting in order to further their political goals?

When the penny finally dropped for me, it dropped very hard, and I couldn’t look away. Suddenly I was seeing injustice and political skullduggery everywhere, and my indignance about all of this eventually propelled me away from medicine and into campaigning. But perhaps the thing that propelled me most of all was the knowledge that if I could reach the age of thirty with no real understanding of politics, or of the complex dynamics determining our national policies, then there were probably others like me too. I became convinced that if we could find those people, and then campaign together for the good stuff - decent healthcare, properly funded schools, safe housing for everyone - then we could change things. This is still what I think, and I also think that, right now, with a new government in place, we need to pay more attention than ever to what politicians are up to.

With the old government, the Conservatives, we became used to their tactics. Over fourteen long years, we watched them move through cabinets and reshuffles and successive leaders. We watched their patterns of behaviour play out; watched as their stars rose within the party, watched them make terrible errors of judgement, watched their hubris as they took one donation too many from an unwise source, or formed close alliances with those who would throw them under the bus when the political mood changed. We watched a succession of (mostly) private school kids fall back on the assumptions and the errors baked into them by their privilege, and we were horrified and astounded at the callousness and ruthlessness of their behaviour. A whole world of old school ties and old school ties.

That world fell away and they receded from view in July this year. With the astounding collapse in their popularity since 2019, the very future of the Conservative Party now feels uncertain. But I think that *we* could now make wild errors of judgement too, if we ignore the new world of political influence which is emerging. That power is being rapidly consolidated in the hallways of Westminster, in the offices of think tanks, and in one place in particular – a place that seems to be generating a lot of energy and influence very quickly. That place is the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).