A victory for Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race could lead to the break-up of the party, one of its biggest donors has warned.
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“Tony Blair” is the way the London Telegraph headlined Blair’s hysterical speech today against Glass-Steagall supporter Corbyn, who is leading current polls of the Labour Party by 15-17 points among four candidates for Party leader.
Labour leadership contender Liz Kendall has hit back at claims that the party is too “challenging” for either of the two women in the contest to cope with.
Mr Corbyn apparently only entered as an alternative to Liz Kendal, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham to add a bit of a difference.
“This is what I call the theory that the electorate is stupid, that somehow they haven’t noticed that Margaret Thatcher was somewhat to the right of (defeated Labour prime minister) Jim Callaghan”.
“Yes, move on, but don’t for heaven’s sake move back”, Mr Blair urged party supporters at an event in London Wednesday. This led Nicola Sturgeon to comment that indeed David Cameron is not lord of all he surveys and will not if the SNP have anything to do with it always get his way.
“Charlie made a great contribution to the last Labour government and I would have thought he would have learned that one of the reasons we achieved so much was because there was a record number of women around the top table”.
Pressed on whether Mr Blair’s message should be listened to, given that he won three elections, Mr Corbyn said: “I have been listening to Tony Blair for a very long time”.
But most Labour leaders agree with Blair that voters have become economically more conservative and must be persuaded they can trust Labour to balance the books. “I want to win power for Labour in order to give it away because Liverpool knows best what skills, jobs, companies, schools, public services, Sure Start [it] needs to continue being this unbelievable, creative, vibrant dynamic city”.
Mr Blair derided the veteran backbencher as the “Tory preference” and said the party could not regain power if it was simply a “platform for protest” against cuts.
The clearest proof of all that the man has no credibility whatever to talk about the Labour leadership contenst is the desperate rubbish he spouted in a feeble effort to attack and undermine the groundswell of support rising behind Jeremy Corbyn. “That is something we can pull behind”, she said. To use that kind of language is just abuse.
On economic policy, Corbyn is far to the left of his Labour colleagues and makes Bernie Sanders look like a moderate.
Prescott told the former prime minister to “calm down” after Blair warned that people who said their heart was with Jeremy Corbyn should “get a transplant“.
Aside from Corbyn’s uncompromising socialist stances on internal British issues, his support of pro-Palestinian causes is the subject of some controversy, most recently after the resurfacing of a 2009 video showing him speaking of his “pleasure and honor” at hosting members of Hezbollah in parliament and his regret that “friends from Hamas” were prevented by Israel from arriving.
Describing why she was running, she said: “I’m in politics because I want to see a more equal country…”
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Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Ummuna said the party was “still grieving” and that he would not serve under Mr Corbyn, as did Emma Reynolds, the Shadow Communities Secretary.
