Juggling With Eggs6d ago

One of those moments where you look back at your previous voting record during the #Blair years (never voted #Labour during this era) and the protests you went on, including the big 1 million anti-war march on London…and think yup, zero regrets.

The man was a neoliberal Thatcher wannabe then and now just wants the UK to live up #Trump and the techbros collective arsehole.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/26/tony-blair-labour-abandon-net-zero-support-donald-trump

Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump

In highly unusual intervention, ex-PM says his party’s ‘almost infinite capacity for self-delusion’ makes it likely to lose next election

The Guardian
Show threadThe Casual Critic5d ago

@JugglingWithEggs what continues to baffle me is why the media keep trotting this man and his opinions out every time he opens his mouth.

I know he has a whole machinery behind him. But it is also known that he is objectively extremely unpopular, across the spectrum. We might as well all Liz Truss what she thinks (or that lettuce).

Anyway, agree with everything you've said.

Show threadThe Casual Critic5d ago
@JugglingWithEggs my yardstick is that if someone is happy to deport immigrants "because that's what the people want" but they're not also happy to nationalise water, for which there is enormous support, then it's not really about listening to the people. It's using a carefully constructed myth of the people to launder a politics of reactionary stasis.
Show threadJae
@thecasualcritic @JugglingWithEggs @afewbugs I can’t recall who coined it, but I like the term “authentocracy”: the invocation of some supposed group of “authentic” voters, somewhere <waved hands vaguely> over there (“the white working class”; “Red Wall voters”), to justify the implementation of reactionary policies by elite politicians
May 27 at 8:23pmWeb
Show threadcatch5d ago

@considermycat @thecasualcritic @JugglingWithEggs @afewbugs might be Joe Kennedy, at least he has a book with that title. Haven't read the book but used to follow him on twitter for a stretch.

I associate 'Authentocrat' more with the working class affect of the reactionary labour politician - Owen Smith and 'Frothy coffee', Streeting saying that rejecting corporate sponsorship by McDonald's is snobby. John Prescott.

Not really with Blair though because he never pretended not to be quite posh.

Then the specific 'we must be racist because the working class (but usually retired petit bourgeois) is', would call that ventriloquism.

But there is only a fine line between them and one can easily bleed into the other.

Show threadJae5d ago
@catch56 @thecasualcritic @JugglingWithEggs @afewbugs Thank you, yes. True, I would not see Blair himself as an “authentocrat”. It’s more that his politics *generated* authentocracy, as politicians steeped in New Labour sought to position themselves as more “real” than Blair, especially as the latter’s reputation oxidised after 2001. Andy “my favourite biscuit is beer with chips and gravy” Burnham being another classic example
Show threadcatch5d ago
@considermycat @thecasualcritic @JugglingWithEggs @afewbugs yeah also his 'I will continue Shabana Mahmood's immigration policies' although I think that was only conveniently briefed on his behalf so far.