Last month, the leader of the British Labour Party shared a platform with a former Labour leader.

That would have been surprising enough if it had been his immediate predecessor and former boss, with whom some significant matters of ideological difference and personal animosity have arisen since they parted ways.

But it was rather more shocking than that. Keir Starmer had chosen to sit on stage in a cozy conversation with the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, a man whose participation in the invasion of another country’s sovereign territory set the standard for twenty-first-century warmongering and established the model of fake truths that have come to dominate international politics.

Yes, Sir Keir and Sir Tony chummed up and chatted airily at an event organized by Mr. Blair’s own foundation.

At the same time, Mr. Starmer has been confronting criticism from figures on the left of his party for refusing to pledge to reverse Conservative reforms to the welfare system, which had included the capping of benefits for families with more than two children.

He's also faced a recent backlash from colleagues unhappy with his decision to water down his own ambitious environmental plans.

One political correspondent for the BBC even observed how Mr. Starmer’s messaging at July’s event had so strikingly overlapped with Mr. Blair’s.

This may be calculated to appeal to moderate voters across the country, but it certainly doesn’t inspire those in his own party who believe his shift to the center-right is transforming Labour into Conservative Lite.

The optics of him relaxing and joking on stage with Tony Blair also won’t help to dispel his increasingly prevalent image as another politician who favors style over substance and lacks the resilience to commit to concrete and radical policy decisions.

The sight of Tony Blair in the news again will doubtless also remind voters that the Tories don’t hold a monopoly on dishonesty.

Of course, Sir Keir is trying to recapture the enthusiasm, energy, and momentum, which propelled Mr. Blair to a landslide election victory in 1997, a mandate for the significant social and constitutional reforms of his first administration.

Related News

Is the British independent reviewer of extremism a Zionist asset?

News from Nowhere: Final Fantasies

But few British people these days remember Tony Blair for those achievements or think fondly of him at all. Any credit for his government’s domestic policies now tends to go to his Chancellor and successor, Gordon Brown – probably quite rightly so.

To many, Blair’s simply the leader who took the nation into an ill-considered, immoral, and unlawful war based on lies, the master fabricator who invented the myth of weapons of mass destruction, the statesman whose actions legitimized state military aggression and trampled upon the rule of international law – the true butcher of Baghdad.

If you want someone to blame for the state of global geopolitics today, then you don’t need to look much further than Tony Blair and his interventionist foreign policy agenda, and, of course, close at hand his friend, ally, and soulmate George Walker Bush.

Sir Keir might do well to recall when he next receives an invitation from Sir Tony that it’s not only left-wingers in his party who should always think carefully about those with whom they’re willing to share a stage.

Mr. Starmer shouldn’t need to try to big himself up by chumming up with any of his predecessors. His greatest problem isn’t his politics but his lack of confidence.

He and his colleagues still seem to spend most of their time bleating on about the failings of the Tories rather than declaring their pride in their own policies. This makes them sound like an entrenched opposition instead of a government in waiting.

They appear to fail to understand that if they don’t show that they believe in themselves, then no one else will believe in them.

When the Deputy Chairman of the British Conservative Party deploys expletive-laden language to express his views about asylum-seekers, it’s of course very tempting for Labour to stick to simply defining itself as being very different from the so-called “nasty party”.

But if you want to show the electorate that you deserve a mandate to run the country, you really need to be able to say more than “vote for us because we’re at least not them."

Despite its history this century, the UK Labour Party needs desperately to stop defining itself negatively, to stop declaring merely what it is not, to stop declaiming its insipid mantra: “We’re not the nasty Tories. Nothing’s our fault but we’re sorry for everything. We regret supporting Corbyn; we supporting Blair. Could someone – anyone – please forgive us now?”