It’s not entirely surprising that Tony Blair fancied one last chance to plead with his party not to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader. And it’s not particularly surprising that his piece in today’s Observer is attracting exactly the sort of reaction he expected.
But what is surprising is not just the former Prime Minister’s rather sarcastic tone – he says that ‘someone else said to me: “If you’re writing something again, don’t blah on about winning elections; it really offends them.” It would actually be quite funny if it weren’t tragic.’ – but that he’s not really pleading with his party not to elect Jeremy Corbyn at all.
Of course, he’s quite clear that he thinks this would be a bad plan, writing that all the evidence from polling and focus groups shows that ‘Labour lost because it was considered anti-business and too left’, and he points out without any mincing of his words that ‘Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and I have collectively around 150 years of Labour party membership.
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