‘Glorified protesters’: Blair rips Corbyn’s ‘far-left cult’
LONDON: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful election winner, yesterday urged moderates in the party to grab back control from leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose brand of “quasi-revolutionary socialism” had failed.
Outgoing Labour leader Corbyn has called for a period of reflection on Thursday’s election defeat, Labour’s worst result since 1935, though a battle is now underway for control of the party with Mr Corbyn’s hard-left loyalists unwilling to let go.
“The takeover of the Labour Party by the far left turned it into a glorified protest movement with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government,” said Mr Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007.
“The result has brought shame on us.”
In a stark message to Remainers, Mr Blair drew a line under years of trying to reverse Brexit. “We have lost,” he said.
Mr Blair said that few would now bet against a decade of Conservative rule, and that unless Labour changed course it faced the threat of never winning power again.
“The choice for Labour is to renew itself as the serious, progressive, non Conservative competitor for power in British politics, or retreat from such an ambition, in which case over time it will be replaced,” Mr Blair said.
He chided Mr Corbyn for leading Labour to defeat with a set of ideas that voters had no interest in.
“He personified politically an idea,
a brand, of quasi-revolutionary socialism, mixing far left economic policy with deep hostility to Western foreign policy,” he said.
“(This) never has appealed to traditional Labour voters.”