Tony Blair Warns UK’s Labour Party Against Leftism: Concern Over Socialist Dominating Leadership Race

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned the U.K’s Labour Party against adopting an "old-fashioned leftist platform" of tax-and-spend policies. He wanted the party to be pragmatic if it wants to win over the voters.

It was defeated in the May elections by David Cameron’s Conservative Party and is now busy with the process of choosing a new leader who can lead the party to victory in the next election. Unlike other Labour leaders, Blair is credited with leading the party successfully in three consecutive polls. The Labour party holds a special place in Britain's politics for its record of governing the country in long stretches of the 20th century.

Blair strongly warned the Labour rank and file against the risk of favouring any socialist idealist as it may alienate the voters further, as what happened in the 1980s when the party was crushed by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who moved Britain's economy to the right. Blair urged the party to "move on — but for heaven's sake don't move back” and advised it to "win from the centre.”

Internal Crisis

However, the leadership race seems to be pushing the Labour Party into a serous internal crisis in the matter of having a new leader with the right profile. Upsetting the plans to install a centrist, the emergence of an old-school socialist lawmaker, who never held any government office, as the top contender has worried party chiefs.

Thus, 66-year-old "Old Labour" stalwart Jeremy Corbyn is in limelight with his strong anti-austerity stand. He has emerged as the second favourite, just behind Andy Burnham. Other contenders seeking the seat of Ed Miliband, who quit the leadership after party’s defeat, are Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. Corby is attracting Labour loyalists with his charge that his party rivals are only offering "austerity light" and have no alternative to resist the Conservative spending cuts. He wanted more public investment in infrastructure and higher taxes on big companies and the rich.

Selling Nostalgia

According to Victoria Honeyman, a politics lecturer at the University of Leeds, Labour loyalists who are seeking the return of the party to its traditional moorings are getting a “grandma and apple pie” appeal from Corbyn. Meanwhile, Euro sceptical UKIP party’s leader Nigel Farage said Jeremy Corbyn should be the next leader of the Labour, supporting the left-swinger as capable of taking the party back to its roots.

“Well at least Jeremy Corbyn’s a socialist and that is what the party is supposed to be,” he said. Responding to Farage’ support, Corbyn tore into the UKIP leader and said, “Nigel, your whole life and career has been about banking, has about been cutting working-class rights and living standards, and you put yourself up as some kind of populist.”

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