Enjoying @Andrew_Adonis talking about his new biography of Ernest Bevin - with Tony Blair & @BBCRajiniV
Tony Blair saying ‘When you hear how Bevin mobilised working people for the war effort you just wish he’d been here for the COVID crisis! He’d have really gripped this thing’

@Andrew_Adonis repeating Francis Williams 1950s assessment ‘Bevin could easily have been Britain’s Stalin except that he was a Democrat’ and points out that Bevin was more hard-line than Churchill in the 1930s on opposing Dictators

. @Andrew_Adonis doesn’t shy away from difficult questions saying he called the book ‘Labour’s Churchill’ partly because Bevin was problematically an Imperialist and asking Tony Blair if Labour would have been more successful since by working more closely with Trade Unions

Tony Blair’s response - To be absolutely blunt Ernest Bevin and Len McCluskey is emblematic of the problem. Ernie Bevin represented working people but he’d never have tried to take over the policy making from the Government..

Blair says ‘to be frank’ the Trade Unions always saw him as trying to distance Labour from them - but his main concern was needing a modern Trade Unionism taking in the private sector ‘Bevin would have been all over the gig economy and trying to organise that’

. @Andrew_Adonis also frank saying one of the most depressing parts of his research was that Bevin had a consistent strain of antisemitism - and both alienated Israel and missed the chance to push for a two state solution in Palestine ‘It’s not a proud chapter’

Asked (inevitably) how would Bevin have handled Brexit @Andrew_Adonis notes Bevin opposed the European Coal & Steel Community ‘The Durham Miners won’t wear it’ but notes he was also a committed internationalist & ruthless pragmatist so it’s hard to predict what he’d have thought

Blair says ‘I’m more Bevin than Bevan in Labour. Though you need both’ but says Bevin was also a great unifier and could work across the Labour movement and beyond

A great question to Tony Blair ‘Why is Bevin not better know? Is it because of Labour’s traditional relationship with it’s former Leaders..?’
Blair says ‘one of the great things about the Labour Party is always having a romantic attachment to those who say what it wants to hear’

. @Andrew_Adonis rights notes one of the reasons Bevin is not better know is simply that ‘He was unlucky in that he gets confused with Nye Bevan!’ Many people thing that were the same person and vaguely remember ‘Bevan’ but good news is history is constantly being reassessed