Could he help the party to “re-connect”?

There’s an interesting piece by Tim Shipman in the Mail that Tony Blair is taking an interest in domestic policies again.

Blair, it will be recalled, is one of only three leaders in the party’s entire history to have led LAB to overall majorities in general elections

The report says that many of the party’s new intake of MPs want to hear from the man who stormed to landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 and then led post-Iraq Labour to a comfortable majority in in 2005. It’s being said that five years is too long for him to have remained in the wilderness.

Shipman concludes:“I am told Mr Blair has begun attending a few more private events with MPs he likes and whose views he shares. It all seems part of a reintroduction to the Labour Party, which could see him play a role come the next election.

Blairites remain bitter at the way their hero was driven out of the party. One frontbencher told me recently, when asked if Ed Miliband would survive: ‘We only sack leaders who have won three elections.”

That last phrase is particularly biting. Blair was forced in September 2006 by the Brown gang to say he’d stand aside. He went the following June.

I wrote at the time that it was madness for the party to push out their thrice election winner and replace him by Brown. Maybe he could come back in some form. I think he’d give PM Dave a run for his money.

@MikeSmithsonOGH