Tony Blair can, apparently, sound slightly wistful when he describes how he once had a cloak-and-dagger meeting with Andy Burnham, who wanted to talk to him about standing for the party leadership. Before anyone gets too excited, however, this wasn’t in the past few months, during which Burnham succeeded in landing the job. The story dates back to 2010. That was when he was a callow member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet and understandably wary of his boss discovering not only his ambition to take over if Labour lost the looming general election, but also from whom he wanted advice.

Much has changed since then, not least Burnham himself. His journey out of Westminster and back again – which in his telling has become an almost spiritual pilgrimage of personal redemption – enabled him to shed the New Labour baggage that proved so cumbersome during his previous, and unsuccessful, runs for the leadership. In common with Brown, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer – all of whom tried with varying degrees of success to distance themselves from Blair – Labour’s latest leader now also wants to keep Blair at arm’s length, and certainly far away from his party conference in Liverpool this week.

Their secret meeting long ago nonetheless underlines how often, since he left Downing Street in 2007, Blair has had a residual and sometimes illicit allure for those aspiring to fill his shoes. Part of that is because – with the exception of Starmer – those who came after him failed to win a single general election, let alone three. But it is also that this leader from the past still has a possibly unmatched ability to raise our sights, away from whatever the media tells us is most urgent, towards the colossal compound crisis now casting its shadow across the world and over Britain’s future.

Blair does not, of course, always........

© The Guardian