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I don't see this as a circular argument at all. Knowing where you have come from, is the basis for moving forward.
I think citing Labour's tribal rewriting of history as its major problem while arguing for a return to Blairism because red wall voters don't care about the Iraq War is quite circular, and most certainly not moving forward.
Brexit taught a lot of voters that Mandelson was wrong, they did have somewhere to go, and now they're window shopping all over the place. That's quite a fundamental shift from the Blair years.
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Iraq War
I was actively avoiding trying to play Blairite Bingo – but Ok.
Blair did next to fuck all to rebuild after the destructive anti-statism of Thatcher and Major years and ended up propelling many areas of Thatcherite / neoliberal policy.
It is interesting looking back, and seeing that Blair chiefly maintained popularity through a) public spending (which in some ways was commendable, if not slap dash and superficial in some regions; eg Tyneside regeneration) and b) spouting the racist and anti-working-class rhetoric that they thought middle england wanted to hear, all the while continuing to dig the ground from underneath the most deprived in British society.
Increased privatisation of key services and continued "shrinking the state", the introduction of tuition fees (then tripling them), complete failure to effectively shape housing policy in the wake of Thatchers "Right to Buy revolution" which is tied to increased landlordism and precariousness in the (increased) rental sector, inability to deal with regional social or employment issues giving rise to overt anti-immigrant sentiment which the Blair government leant into, heavily.
Hopefully I shouldn't need to tell you why these are all bad things that increased social and cultural divides across the country, and affected deprived areas disproportionately.
One of the most clappable successes of Blair's tenure was greater regionally devolved powers, and even that was a fully unrealised project (that Blair himself wasn't convinced by).
I'm not blind to the successes of the Blair years, but to claim it's something to return to or take-away from in building a viable, progressive opposition ignores the reality of Blairs politics and any political shifts that have occured in the last decade.
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neu
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@deleted
I don't see this as a circular argument at all. Knowing where you have come from, is the basis for moving forward.
While Labour continues its weird retelling of the past, it's compromised. It needs to understand where and why it lost votes and readdress these points with a clear and consistent vision for the future of the British people under a Labour govt.
As an aside, I do not believe that the collapse of the Labour vote in the red wall has much to do with the Iraq War.