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Sure, but to claim it has to be moved away from ignores what people have actually voted for in the past 40 years.
andyfallsoff-
No, it really doesn't ignore that.
What's the point of a Labour party with a socially conservative and fiscally centre/conservative agenda? There is a previously Labour voting block out there that has now realised it can get that from the party with Conservative writ large in it's actual name. The fact that Tory fiscal policy has been forced centre this past year(s) along with other superficially progressive agendas means Labour is obsolete if it wants to squeeze onto the centre ground. The votes aren't going to come from the aging Tory vote from 2019.
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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.