Blair’s secret ‘new Labour’ talks with soccer mogul
‘This Election will be a disaster for the party’
TONY BLAIR has held secret discussions with a Labour donor who has called for a new breakaway political party, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The former Prime Minister travelled to Hull last month for a meeting with Dr Assem Allam, who has offered to fund moderate Labour MPs who want to leave Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and set up a new ‘centrist’ party.
Last night, Mr Blair said he had met Mr Allam to discuss his new centre-Left think-tank, The Tony Blair Institute For Global Change, and insisted there had been no discussions about a new party.
But a source said: ‘ Assem and Blair discussed whether the Labour Party can be saved.’
Former Labour donors alienated by Corbyn’s leadership have privately expressed the hope that Mr Blair’s think- tank will help to develop policy ideas for a new party if the Corbynistas remain in charge after defeat on June 8.
It comes as this newspaper has been told that Labour’s Election strategists have effectively ‘thrown in the towel’ in parts of their Northern heartlands – abandoning marginal seats and retreating to defend previously ‘safe’ seats in the face of Mrs May’s threatened landslide.
Dr Allam, the multi-millionaire owner of Hull City Football Club, declined to give any details about the meeting with Mr Blair. He said that since the Left-wing takeover of Labour, he had discussed forming a new party with ‘very senior’ figures i n the movement. But Dr Allam added: ‘The time to do that was before the General Election was called. The Election is going to prove disastrous.
‘We are looking at the end for the Labour Party. It is a very clever move by Mrs May, a complete sur- prise, which will change the political map completely.’
Dr Allam, who donated more than £700,000 to Labour under Ed Miliband, added: ‘Everyone I discussed this with said, “not now, don’t rock the boat, let’s see what happens with Corbyn”. Well now it’s too late. The whole party will disintegrate after the Election and we are heading for ten years of Tory rule.’ The meeting between Dr Allam and Mr Blair took place on April 3, just two weeks before Mrs May announced the snap Election.
With Mrs May enjoying doubledigit leads in the polls, Labour sources say party strategists have effectively abandoned seats such as Wakefield – where former party frontbencher Mary Creagh sits just 2,613 votes ahead of the Tories – in order to try to save previously safe seats which piled up large Ukip votes in 2015 – votes that are largely heading ‘home’ to the Tories.
These include ex Labour Minister Caroline Flint’s 8,885 majority in South Yorkshire’s Don Valley and former Labour Chief Whip Rosie Winterton’s lead of just over 10,000 in Doncaster Central.
A Labour spokesman last night insisted the party was still ‘fighting for every seat and for every vote’.
Mary Creagh insisted that Tory manifesto pledges to withdraw universal winter fuel payments and impose new social care charges were a ‘ shot in the arm’ to the Labour campaign.
She said: ‘Even among the Tory faithful in Wakefield, we’ve had people coming up and saying: we’re going to switch to Labour now.’
A spokesman for Mr Blair said: ‘The meeting was expressly to discuss Mr Blair’s institute.
‘Mr Blair did not talk about forming a new party. Mr Allam has also made this clear. Mr Blair has no idea about any other discussions with other people.
‘If you therefore seek to imply Mr Blair was asking for or seeking support for a new party, that is completely false.
‘He’s voting Labour and has said that on numerous occasions.’