When Alan Rusbridger became editor of the Guardian in 1995, comparisons were drawn between him and another ascendant figure on the left: Tony Blair. Both men, born in 1953, reinvented their respective institutions. They helped drag the left into the 21st century and away from its “special talent for turning in on itself”, as Rusbridger put it to me.
Their careers took different paths: Blair gambled his reputation on fighting alongside the US government and lost, Rusbridger gambled his on taking it on and won. But despite these differences, the pair now agree on one thing: the left is turning in on itself again.
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