If you’re wondering what Tony Blair is up to, the answer may lie with Keir Starmer

Starmer needs to make a big policy offer soon if he is to stop Blair’s private fears becoming reality, writes Andrew Grice

The private concern in Labour’s high command is that Blair’s move sends a signal that he doesn’t think Keir Starmer can win power (PA)

“What on earth is Tony Blair up to?” one member of the shadow cabinet asked me. Labour figures wonder whether, despite his insistence he is not launching a new party, Blair’s new drive for a “radical but sensible strong centre” is a precursor to a movement like Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche. They wonder whether it is a genuine attempt to put flesh on Labour’s bare policy bones or a vanity project for a 69-year-old politician still fizzing with energy and ideas.

On the face of it, a relatively inexperienced Labour top team could do with his advice. Blair told his Future of Britain ideas conference in London yesterday it was “really shocking” how much he had learnt since leaving office in 2007.

Politics “is the only business in the world in which you take a really, really important position and you give it to someone with no qualifications,” he said.