Kenneth Branagh is said to have played 35 Shakespearean parts, albeit back in the day. Seeing him speaking in verse these days is something of an event, all the more so when he is making a return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after more than 30 years to take on, for the first time, Shakespeare’s magician, deposed duke and tyrant occupier. Even the king turned up for it some days ago.

Branagh’s Prospero initially follows in the vein of his fast and feverish King Lear, performed in the West End in 2023. He seems to be speeding through the part rather than inhabiting it, too puckish, almost larky, rather underwhelming. It is the show itself that casts its spell through its enchanting sights, sounds and ensemble accomplishments. Richard Eyre, directing his first Shakespeare play at Stratford, does a stupendous job of bringing an overt sense of performance to the production.

He casts Prospero as a conductor on this isle of sweet airs and noise and he conjures the opening storm from a music stand, orchestrating the action as a back-screen opens up to a magnificent vista of gurgling waves, the circular stage listing, the sound of drums, lightning and thunder creating a very theatrical sense of crash, bang and wallop. Prospero is bringing on a storm that will return his usurping brother to him, for vengeance, but he is also hailing in a polished cabaret or circus act, of which he is master.

Everyone plays their part: Ariel (Amara Okereke) looks like a trapeze artist, acrobatically afloat, a delight for her beautiful movement and song, and there is unspoken love in the chemistry between Prospero and Ariel. The scenes featuring Caliban (Ashley Zhangazha), Stephano (Guy Henry) and Trinculo (Keir Charles) as they plot rebellion, wink toward a music hall comedy sketch. It seems significant that Caliban is not monstrous or grotesque in any way but resembles an indentured slave. He is earnest, noble, putting on his comic act but tragic beneath.

Sound and music is central as a whole, with bongo drums both energising and symbolic of a land that Prospero has colonised whose indigenous sounds are insuppressible. Shakespeare’s songs sound new here, with a near-rap by Caliban and Prospero occasionally speaking in singsong lilts. Bob Crowley’s set design is enthralling too, almost Disney-like with its sparkly, floaty elements, casting spells over us with its visual thrills and beautifully choreographed movement. The back-screen is vital for conjuring Prospero’s illusions and there is something of the children’s magic show to it all.

Branagh’s diction bears clarity and ease, as ever, but not quite enough depth. He is vital and bounds around, a possessive dad as he stalks the sides of the stage while his daughter Miranda (Ruby Stokes) flirts with Ferdinand (Fred Woodley Evans), but far from John Gielgud’s elderman (in Peter Greenaway’s film). His levity is alluring but seems lightweight. So does the showmanship of the production in the first half, to some degree, busy in dazzling us with its magic rather than mining to the core of this profoundest of plays.

But as Branagh slows down too, the production takes on deeper, more plaintive shades and you feel the emotional hit when Prospero declares that the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance. Caliban is wordlessly habilitated back into his rightful role as ruler of the island in this ending and it gives power to Prospero’s transformation. You feel the magician becoming more human and humane; abjuring tyranny as liberating for the oppressor as it is for the oppressed.

Tony Blair has accused Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk by abandoning the centre ground, warning that the party’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” means it is likely to lose the next election.

In a scathing 5,700-word attack on the prime minister and his would-be successors published on Tuesday night, Blair argued for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon restrictions on oil and gas and smooth relations with Donald Trump.

His essay, a highly unusual intervention for a past Labour prime minister, is likely to draw a furious response from across the party, where Blair’s legacy remains highly contentious. On Tuesday, one senior source accused him of abandoning social democratic values to embrace an agenda that had “no answers”.

But Blair also suggested it was a mistake for others in the party to seek to remove Starmer as prime minister, saying: “The Labour party is playing with fire; or, more accurately with its future, and that of the country. Whether there is a leadership change or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t start with a policy debate.

“Trying to force the prime minister out, before we know what policy direction we’re bringing in, is not a serious way of conducting ourselves.”

Blair attacked Burnham and his fellow leadership contender Wes Streeting – who has often been cast as a Blairite but rejects the label – for ideas on tax and spending that he said had been rejected by serious governments. He said it was a “perennial delusion” that the party should move left while losing seats to the right, saying it was “dangerous to do it in government”.

While Labour is likely to lose many more seats to Reform than the Greens in a general election, most analysts of the recent local elections suggest that it loses four times as many votes to the Greens, splitting the left-leaning vote.

Blair also criticised Starmer’s approach to the US war with Iran, despite most polls showing it was popular with the public – saying it was vital the US could trust the UK as an ally. He criticised cuts to international aid, which he said had weakened Britain’s influence, and said Starmer was trying to negotiate with Europe from a position of weakness.

The former prime minister named Angela Rayner’s employment rights bill and Ed Miliband’s net zero drive as key mistakes, alongside the phasing out of oil and gas licenses and Rachel Reeves’ decision to raise the minimum wage and national insurance and change the status of non-doms. All of the policies had given “headwinds, not tailwinds to British business”, he wrote.

The government should now remove all obstacles to AI-related business growths, radically increase planning reform, reverse its North Sea energy policy and make fundamental changes to the welfare system, Blair argued, as well as seeking to repair relations with Trump’s White House.

“Without an agenda of this nature, radical but sensible, Britain will continue its long slide towards relegation from the Premier League of Nations,” he said.

A senior Labour source said: “Tony has evidently not been near a working-class Brit for decades but he’s clearly been away with the tech bro fantasists.

“Reheated Blairism has absolutely no answers to our national decline since the vultures were let loose. There was a time he would have stood up for social democratic values, but this shows just how far he has fallen.”

Blair said Starmer’s key issue was not a lack of charisma or communication but of grounding. “This is the defining problem of the government. Too often they seem to totter in the breeze. To lack ballast.”

The party should have ditched promises like the workers rights reforms and commitments on oil and gas licenses in the early days of government, blaming the fiscal situation, Blair said, arguing that it would have won the goodwill of business. He also attacked the ending of the two child limit, saying it was clear that welfare was in need of major reform.

But he was deeply critical of solutions proffered by those who seek to replace Starmer, saying Streeting’s modernising wing was “appearing to advocate rejoining the EU” as well as changes to capital gains that had been “rejected by successive governments for good reason”.

And he criticised Burnham’s alternative to adopt the “far-left critique about nothing good coming out of the last ‘40 years’ of ‘neoliberalism’, which presumably includes the last Labour government”.

Blair said it had been clear since the election that Starmer had been elected because of the distaste for the Conservative government, rather than on Labour’s offer, and that the party had no guiding vision from which its policies and politics could flow.

“The government is governing from an essentially traditional Labour ‘soft left’ position, parked firmly in the party’s comfort zone,” he said. “The government’s principal problem isn’t Keir’s personality. Or a failure to communicate ‘our achievements’. Or a need to assert more strongly Labour’s ‘values’.

“It is because we don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world and are in the wrong political position from which we can devise one and win a second term.”

Blair – who was one of the strongest voices opposed to Brexit and a key player in calls for a new referendum – said he now believed that seeking to negotiate a new deal with Europe was nonsensical when Britain was in a weak position.

“Just as Brexit was never the answer to Britain’s challenges back in 2016, reversing it isn’t the answer to the country’s far worse situation in 2026.” He said any serious negotiation should only start when Britain is “at the farthest end of European competitiveness. At present, we’re not.”

He said that the UK’s position was immeasurably weaker than two decades ago – when the UK was a key US ally, a leader in Europe and a major player in the developing world because of international aid. “All are now in doubt or gone,” he said.

“What’s done is done. None of these things can simply be reversed. But to repair our standing, all require leadership and commitment.”