And if that’s not bad enough . . . Blair hints he wants a comeback
TONY Blair today indicates he is planning a dramatic return to frontline politics to prevent Britain becoming a ‘one-party state’.
In an extraordinary interview with Esquire magazine, the 63-year-old former prime minister acknowledges he is deeply unpopular in Britain in the wake of the Iraq war.
But he says he is ‘very motivated’ to try to save the brand of centre-Left politics which saw him win three elections, but which has now been abandoned by Labour.
He drops a tantalising hint that he is gearing up for a return, saying: ‘I don’t know if there’s a role for me. There’s a limit to what I want to say about my own position at this moment.
‘All I can say is that this is where politics is at. Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question.’
In a withering attack on Jeremy Corbyn, he brands him a member of the ‘ultra- Left’ which ‘believes that the action on the street is as important as the action in Parliament’.
He says the Labour leadership is ‘very, very remote from the way that broad mass of people really think’ and accuses it of engaging in ‘a mixture of fantasy and error’.
Mr Blair says the decline of the party means that ‘in the UK at the moment you’ve got a one party state’. He adds: ‘Frankly, it’s a tragedy if the choice before the country is a Conservative government going for a hard Brexit and an ultra-left Labour Party that believes in a set of policies that takes us back to the Sixties.’
But he suggests the centre-ground politics of New Labour will return, saying: ‘I think it’s too soon to say the centre has been defeated. Ultimately… I think it will succeed again. The centre ground is in retreat.
‘This is our challenge. We’ve got to rise to that challenge.’
Mr Blair first sparked speculation that he is planning a return last month when he announced he was winding up his controversial business advising dictators and foreign corporations, which has made him tens of millions of pounds since he left office in 2007.
Asked about his money, he admits he has ‘done well’, but suggests he has given £10million of his fortune to charity.