Forget any notion of me being a Milibabe (actually no, please don’t - he is so sassy on Twitter at the moment) for I am in fact... a ‘Blair Babe’.

Controversial, I know. But hear me out.

I was born in 1997, when the general hope was that ‘things can only get better’ and the Labour Party went from strength to strength, finally in a position to do something, to change things, to help people. And they did. They did, not just because they could, but because the party’s relationship with the public was built on trust, hope, the notion of a better future and progress. I’m a Blair Babe because my childhood was shaped by a winning Labour Party.

I feel this strange sense of nostalgia whenever I think of 1997. A dreamy vignette, Blair rocking up to 10 Downing Street with a guitar on his back, floppy hair, this bright young thing who people saw as being both ‘one of them’ and yet somehow superior. An image of a leader – able to master that duality of being both a figure of authority and a man of the people. Able to sense the feeling of the nation, to capture it, mirror and echo it, and to appeal to a cross-section of society: a rainbow coalition of city workers, students, the bourgeoisie, the old. And things were good.

Fast forward 20 years.

When one recalls Blair now, a startlingly different image is brought to mind – one of a pointless war and sofa governments. An image of a Presidential Prime Minister. Think of Labour today, and the leader Jeremy Corbyn – passive, pathetic, stubborn and egotistic. And Labour has lost its way, the path to election glory hazy through the lens of the beer goggles worn by the likes of Momentum, as if drunk and blinded – not by the Sunshine of Socialism, but by the foggy clouds of Corbyn and his clique.

Now we live in a political era considered unthinkable in 1997. Brexit. Trump. Theresa May’s coronation a month or so away and the Conservatives’ insistence that they are the party ‘for the many, not the few’ (I mean, really?!) – and progress seems distant. The very notion of progressive politics is silenced in an era of declining free speech and the pushing of isolationist agendas. In desperation, we turn to Labour, willing for a solution to be presented to us, a panacea curing all societal ills. Instead we get Diane Abbott stumbling and blundering her way through radio interviews, Jeremy Corbyn announcing more bank holidays (which, to be honest Jezza, would be nice) – and it’s not enough to convince us to vote Labour.

“I’m a Blair Babe because my childhood was shaped by a winning Labour Party”

So why bother? Why not retreat? Admit defeat? Why not just sit back and watch the inevitable unfold in front of our eyes like that really funny meme of a cartoon dog in a burning building. You must know the one – and even if you don’t, you’re living it.

Although it would be so easy to give up – we shouldn’t. Why? Because, as Keir Hardie once put it, “through good report and through ill, pursue the even tenor of its way, until the sunshine of Socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land.” Keir Hardie’s Sunshine of Socialism speech, reflected upon the twenty years since the establishment of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford. I came across an old copy a few weeks back, and these two passages have, for some reason, been echoing in my head ever since:

“I shall not weary you by repeating the tale of how public opinion has changed during those twenty-one years. But, as an example, I may recall the fact that in those days, and for many years thereafter, it was tenaciously upheld by the public authorities, here and elsewhere, that it was an offence against laws of nature and ruinous to the State for public authorities to provide food for starving children, or independent aid for the aged poor. They interfered with the ‘freedom of the individual’. As for such proposals as an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to work, and municipal houses, any serious mention of such classed a man as a fool.

“The Independent Labour Party has pioneered progress in this country, is breaking down sex barriers and class barriers, is giving a lead to the great women’s movement as well as to the great working-class movement... but we are only at the beginning... The ILP in the future, through good report and through ill, pursue the even tenor of its way, until the sunshine of Socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land.”

In some ways, such issues are still relevant today, whether in relation to the Snooper’s Charter and the ‘freedom of the individual’, the fight to raise the minimum wage, the right to secure jobs, care for the elderly, or providing for one’s family in an age of working families relying upon food banks. To give up on the left now is to be classed a ‘fool’. Blair once told us that ‘Britain deserves better’ – and we do.

The Labour Party is doomed unless Corbyn resigns

I am a Blair Babe – born and raised in an era when the Labour Party was in a position to be “breaking down sex barriers and class barriers” as well as ones of race and inequality. The answer doesn’t lie in Blairite policy necessarily, but in a leader capable of unifying, inspiring, winning and implementing change. Only then will the “sunshine of socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land.”

Until then, we must keep on fighting – for progress, for social justice, for what is right – knowing that, one day, we will bask in the warmth of that glorious sunshine. It may not be today, it will almost certainly not be in a month’s time, but the sun will break through... one day. I hope