TONY BLAIR’S latest comeback has baffled East Enders as the former Labour Leader made a small concession to reality but quickly returned to form.
Having previously sided with rebel Labour MPs who warned that Jeremy Corbyn was a vote-loser who would bring electoral disaster to Labour, Blair has now admitted that Corbyn could lead Labour to victory – and become Prime Minister. However, Blair has warned the electorate that electing Corbyn would not be “wise”.
While many of the rebel MPs have admitted they were wrong on Corbyn, Blair told the Newsnight TV programme that “it’s a surer route to power to fight from the centre”. This is astonishing: virtually no one in the country believes that, say, Liz Kendall would have led Labour to victory.
Blair followed on by saying that a Corbyn victory on the 2017 Labour Manifesto would be damaging for the country. Tony Blair, of course, concentrated on bringing harm not only to his own country, but also other people’s.
He spent some of his time shovelling public subsidy into the private sector (PFI deals in the NHS, allowing private companies to take over postal services) and creating much of the deprivation which Corbyn had to try to put right (lack of housing, closed hospitals).
Alongside this he took some positive moves to devolve power to Scotland and Wales and to dilute the power of unelected members of the House of Lords – but countered this by not finishing the job and handing other chunks of power over to US-style directly elected mayors whom it is hard for electors to hold to account.
And in his spare time he was part of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq which stoked the present crisis in the Middle East and left the Palestinian people still waiting for justice.
Blair had to step down as Leader of the Labour Party once it became clear that the faith voters had put in his intentions in 1997 was dwindling to vanishing point and rather than become an electoral asset he had become Labour’s “(B)liar-bility”. Corbyn has shown Labour the way back to electoral fortune. Yesterday’s man ought to leave him to it.
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