James O’Brien slams Tony Blair for parroting Trump’s billionaire backers

LBC presenter James O’Brien has slammed Tony Blair for parroting Trump’s billionaire backers after the former Labour leader wrote a highly critical essay about the current Labour government and the direction it is taking.

Blair, who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2007, winning three general elections, wrote a highly critical essay of the current direction of the Labour Party, saying that it had ‘no coherent plan’ for the country and had also introduced policies that held back businesses.

He criticised measures including new workers’ rights laws, the phasing out of the British oil and gas industry and the above-inflation uplift to the minimum wage.

Amid talk of a leadership challenge to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Blair warned that changing the Prime Minister was irrelevant if it doesn’t start with a policy debate.

“Trying to force the prime minister out, before we know what policy direction we’re bringing in, is not a serious way of conducting ourselves”, he said.

Blair also called on the government to maintain its close ties with Donald Trump’s America even when it’s “difficult or unpopular”.

However, O’Brien is among those who have criticised Blair’s intervention, acknowledging that it is almost impossible NOT to care about what Labour’s most successful leader has to say – but that he “can’t tell you why you should care.”

He said on his show: “It’s just a broad insistence that what he says matters because of who he is.

“Because what he is saying, and I say this cautiously, what he’s saying is insane!

“What he’s saying could’ve been written pretty much verbatim by one of Donald Trump’s billionaire backers, which brings us to a bloke called Larry Ellison, who owns Oracle and who is one of Donald Trump’s biggest billionaire backers, and who guess what? Funds the Tony Blair Institute to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

He also slammed Blair as ‘disgusting’ for joining Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.