Archbishop appears to criticise Labour leadership
TONY BLAIR and Jeremy Corbyn resumed their years-long feud yesterday as the former Prime Minister said Labour was now a “different party” that may never be “taken back” by so-called moderates.
Mr Blair sparked anger among supporters of Mr Corbyn, who was outlining Labour’s plans for the water industry in Leicester yesterday, after saying that he feared the party was “lost”.
He was backed by his former Home Secretary and ex-Sheffield MP Lord Blunkett, who warned that the party faced “irrelevance” unless there was a rethink of the “Corbyn project”.
The “Blairite” attack prompted Jon Lansman, founder of the Corbynite Momentum movement to say on Twitter that Labour would “never” return to the former PM’s policies and he “was never in the right party”.
Mr Corbyn has long been a vociferous critic of Mr Blair and voted against his former leader’s decision to wage war in Iraq in 2003.
Mr Blair told the BBC: “I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for over 40 years. You do feel a strong loyalty and attachment, but at the same time it’s a different party. The question is, can it be taken back?”
“This is a different type of Labour Party. Can it be taken back? I don’t know.”
The former PM’s comments come after Labour activists in Enfield North passed a vote of no confidence in Joan Ryan, a Minister in the Blair administration who now chairs Labour Friends of Israel. The move against Ms Ryan was seen as the latest attempt to initiate the deselection of Mr Corbyn’s critics and comes amid the furious row over antiSemitism engulfing the party, which Mr Blair said had been “ghastly” and a “matter of great sadness”.
The ex-PM said he could not have imagined the row taking place in the way it did “in the Labour Party I joined, all the way through to this moment”.
“I can’t imagine that we have had three to four months debating over something where we have profoundly insulted the Jewish community in our country,” he said.
Lord Blunkett – a Labour MP for 28 years and a minister for most of Mr Blair’s administration – said he was not sure if he would back the party even if he knew his vote would make the difference between Mr Corbyn becoming Prime Minister or not.
Asked what he would do in these circumstances, the Labour peer told BBC Radio 4’s programme: “It would entirely depend on whether my good friends in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Commons hadn’t been deselected and were there to ensure that the sane, rational policies of a Labour Party for the future were going to be implemented.”.
When told that Mr Blair sees him as an “existential threat” to the party, Mr Corbyn said: “I’ve been in the Labour Party all my life. I am a socialist. I am determined to see a fairer and more equal society for everybody.
“That’s what the Labour Party exists for. “
Asked on the visit to the Abbey Pump station whether he should heed the words of the three-time election winner, Labour leader Mr Corbyn said: “I’ve fought one election as leader of the party and we had the biggest swing to Labour during that campaign since 1945.
“I simply say this to all Labour party members and all Labour party supporters – if you want to get rid of this Tory government, if you want to live in a society that is fairer, that is more equal, that is more just, then vote Labour and support Labour.”
But Mr Corbyn’s claims appeared to be off the mark, with analysis of the 2017 election by the Press Association showing that the swing to Labour from the Conservatives was two per cent, compared to 10 per cent in Mr Blair’s 1997 landslide election victory. However, last year’s snap vote did also see the largest rise in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, from 30.4 per cent in 2015 to 40.0 per cent, a rise of 9.6 percentage points, something a party spokesman said had “deprived the Tories of their majority”.
Mr Corbyn also said “nobody should be attacked for whatever their faith is” when he was asked about the protection of Jewish MPs from deselection.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell will today campaign in Anna Soubry’s Broxtowe seat in Nottinghamshire, held by the Tory with a majority of 863. THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury yesterday waded into the anti-Semitism row engulfing Labour by taking an apparent swipe at the party’s leadership.
During a discussion with the Chief Rabbi, the Most Rev Justin Welby said it was “excellent” that MPs and peers in the party had accepted the international definition of anti-Semitism “without any riders or caveats of any kind”.
The move by the Parliamentary Labour Party was in contrast to the ruling National Executive Committee’s decision to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) description with an additional statement saying the move would not prevent criticism of Israel.
Mr Welby said the Jewish community had gone through a very demanding few months and hit out at the “unspeakable” trolling of Jews on social media.
Visiting Ephraim Mirvis at his home to mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, Mr Welby said: “You’ve gone through in the last few months a very demanding, stressful time in some ways, over the last few years, I think, with the increase in anti-Jewish attacks across the country, on synagogues, on cemeteries, on individuals and the unspeakable trolling through social media.”
The Chief Rabbi said the Jewish community was in a worse position than 12 months ago because at that time it had hope but the position now has “deteriorated”.
He added: “What we’ve found particularly upsetting is that after three years of inaction during which we have waited for the Labour Party to show they are actually serious about tackling anti-Semitism, now we have found during the past summer they haven’t even known where the starting blocks are, how do you define it.”
Mr Welby replied: “Personally, I’m very pleased that the Parliamentary Labour Party has accepted IHRA without any riders or caveats of any kind at all. I think that is excellent news.”
Labour MPs and peers voted by 205 to eight to adopt IHRA in full.