Corbyn’s Labour ‘a different party’ and may be ‘lost’ to moderates, Blair says

Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn talks to volunteers at the Abbey Pumping Station in Leicester after Tony Blair voiced concern at the direction he is taking the party (Aaron Chown/PA) Credit: PA Wire/PA Images

Tony Blair has attacked Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and questioned whether it can be “taken back” by moderates.

The former prime minister sparked anger among supporters of the current left-wing leader by saying that under his stewardship it had become a “different party” and he hopes it is not “lost”.

It 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”.

However, Lord Blunkett, a former home Secretary and leading figure of the Blair era, warned that the party faced “irrelevance” unless there was a rethink of the “Corbyn project”.

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.

Mr Corbyn was in Leicester on Friday to outline Labour’s plans for the water industry.

When told that Mr Blair sees him as an “existential threat” to the party he 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, the current Labour leader 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.”

Analysis of the 2017 election by the Press Association has showed that the swing to Labour from the Conservatives was 2%, compared to 10% in the 1997 landslide.

However, last year’s snap vote did also see the largest rise in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, from 30.4% in 2015 to 40.0%, a rise of 9.6 percentage points, something a party spokesman said had “deprived Theresa May’s Tories of their majority”.

Jeremy Corbyn defended his record as party leader Credit: Aaron Chown/PA

Mr Blair said: “There’s lots of people associated with me who feel that the Labour Party’s lost, that the game’s over. I’m kind of hoping they’re not right.”

The former PM said the row over anti-Semitism that has engulfed the party is “ghastly” and a “matter of great sadness”.

He 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 Today 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.”