Tony Blair (file image) today slammed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for trying to win power by offering fantasy freebies to the electorate
Tony Blair today slammed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for trying to win power by offering fantasy freebies to the electorate.
The three-time election winner said he admired Mr Corbyn’s ability to stir up enthusiasm among supporters.
But he said simply offering ‘this for free, that for free’ without a response to how the world is changing did not offer a path to victory.
Mr Blair, who quit No 10 a decade ago, told Politico that Mr Corbyn’s planned giveaways were not ‘progressive’ and would not help communities left behind by globalisation.
He said: ‘You can go for what are very good-sounding things like, we’re going to abolish tuition fees, or we’re going to give you this for free, or that for free.
‘Okay, so that’s one way you can go, and it definitely, in today’s world, and in particular, in the absence of a vigorous change-making center, that’s very attractive.
‘But I don’t think it’s answer, and I’m not sure it would win an election.
‘Maybe it would, but even if it did, it would worry me. Because in the end, I think a lot of these solutions aren’t really progressive.
‘And they don’t correspond to what the problem of the modern world is, which is the problem of accelerating change. And so, the solutions that kind of look back to the ‘60s or ‘70s, they get a round of applause.’
Mr Blair, who has been a fierce critic of Mr Corbyn’s leadership, said Labour could not rely on ‘identity politics’ to build a coalition out of different minority groups.
Jermey Corbyn (pictured last night at the Labour conference diversity night) cannot win by offering freebies to minority groups in the hope of building a coalition, Mr Blair has warned
He said: ‘The question that I—the things that I would be looking at, if I was back in government today, is the relationship—what are you going to do about the communities left behind?
‘So, education becomes of fundamental importance; infrastructure; tax reform; making sure your welfare systems are properly up to date and correspond with the way that people live their lives.
‘(It must deal) particularly I think with very specific measures for that small but very ingrained part of the population that just gets left behind, generation after generation.
‘And then I’d put an enormous focus on technology.’