How Blair ignored WI warnings on 'capital P politics'

TONY Blair ignored warnings to avoid “capital P politics” in his infamous address to the Women's Institute, according to newly released government files.

- GAVIN CORDON

The speech at Wembley Arena to an audience of 10,000 turned into a fiasco as the prime minister was heckled and slow-handclapped by WI members, furious he had used their conference as a platform for what they considered to be a “party political broadcast”.

The reaction was widely seen as evidence that New Labour had lost touch with the Middle England voters it had wooed so successfully in the party’s 1997 general election landslide.

Files released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, show that while officials cautioned the prime minister to steer clear of party politics, key advisers said the speech needed to be more political.

A week before he was due to give his address in June 2000, Julian Braithwaite from the No 10 press office went to meet the WI leadership to see what they were expecting.

“They would like you to set out your vision of communities in the future; as they put it, the sort of Britain you want your children to grow up in,” he wrote in a note to Mr Blair.