Evening Standard comment: Three wise PMs who are right to speak out now; Late trains and late lines; John Humphrys’ last show

Three former prime ministers are making the news this week. What do Tony Blair, David Cameron and Sir John Major have in common?

They are the only people alive who have led political parties to real victories in general elections. Between them they won majorities five times. No one else in the country has done it even once. So their advice is worth hearing.

Not that you’d know it from the way their old parties are behaving.

It’s as if Labour and the Conservatives were taking part in a lunatic race to do the exact opposite of the nation-healing, coalition-building, future-thinking centre-ground strategies which their former leaders showed worked so well.

Now both parties are being dominated by their activist extremes in a way which makes the prospect of either of them winning a majority look remote.

As a result, Sir John finds himself sending lawyers to the Supreme Court to argue against the suspension of Parliament by his successor-but-four.

Mr Cameron is using his memoirs to explain gently why he tried to make the Conservative Party appeal to the modern world.

• Read more

Blair: Jeremy Corbyn mustn't risk mixing Brexit with general election

And Mr Blair tells the Evening Standard today in an interview: “I think Labour’s got a challenge whenever the election is.”

He’s blunt about the party today.

“I don’t hide the disagreements, the profound disagreements I’ve got with aspects of how the Labour Party has been led in these past few years.”

Mr Blair is particularly scornful of Jeremy Corbyn’s position on Brexit, which, if it can be understood at all, would apparently leave him neutral in the biggest decision of all about Britain’s future, but only after theoretically winning a general election in order to negotiate a new Brexit deal which his government would then put to a referendum in order mostly not to support it. “Now I would find that difficult on the doorstep to argue,” Mr Blair says with understatement.

Will either party listen to such wise advice from their former leaders? In their current state, obviously not. But a different audience is ready to pay attention and it’s one that still counts: the voters. As our new Ipsos/MORI poll shows today, the Liberal Democrats are now running neck and neck with Labour and Conservative support is not enough to guarantee an election win. They could both do with a bit of the old magic that used to win majorities.

Late trains and late lines

The Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, says today that he is cross about late trains.

So are we all, although what he thinks he can do about them from an office in Whitehall is unclear.

• Read more

Grant Shapps: Rail firms should not be paid when trains run late

The whole point of the important Williams review into the railways is supposed to be less direct intervention from Government, although with bleak irony its publication also seems to be running a bit late.

Unfortunately, something else is late too, and that’s London’s Crossrail project, over which Mr Shapps’s department is supposed to have joint control.

It was meant to open last year but today we report that the work is still struggling and hopes that it would open early in 2021 are fading.

It is still an amazing project and will be brilliant when it finally arrives. But that makes the wait more frustrating.

As Mr Shapps says, a late train is annoying. But waiting for an entire railway to arrive is worse.

Humphrys’ last show

Good journalists ask tough questions which people sometimes don’t like.

One of them is John Humphrys, who signed off from the Today programme this morning after 32 years.

• Read more

Humphrys pays touching tribute to listeners in final Today programme

Another is the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who has yet again come under unfair assault on Twitter for doing her job.

Mr Humphrys will be missed — except, perhaps, by those brave enough to turn up and face him in the studio at 8.10am.

We wish him well — and a much-deserved lie-in in the mornings.

Read more

Read more Blair: Jeremy Corbyn mustn't risk mixing Brexit with general election