Blair angry over surge in support for Corbyn ahead of Labour leadership vote

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has warned that Labour risks possible “annihilation” if Jeremy Corbyn wins the party leadership race.

In an article posted for the Guardian, Blair said the party is walking "over the cliff's edge" and could lose its 100-year history if Corbyn comes at the helm. He appealed Labour members and activists to set aside their differences and save the party by rejecting Corbyn’s candidacy.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left, right or center of the party, whether you used to support me or hate me. But please understand the danger we are in. The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below”, Blair wrote.

Blair who served the country from 1997 to 2007 and led the Labour Party for more than 13 years has made several pleas against Corbyn in recent weeks. “If Corbyn becomes leader, it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation”.

'Tony Blair can say what he likes but the fact of the matter is Labour has sold out the finance capitalism which is now in a huge process of failure. I prophesied now that the next stage of crash in our economic system is coming within the next few months. Blair whose mind basically is condition by the thought that he stands something that is an efficient market, it isn’t; a fair market, it isn’t and a just market, it isn’t. He stands for the exiting structure which is a failure. They do not heed and understand that Jeremy Corbyn represents forces of the potential revolution. It is a question whether Corbyn was successful in defining those new policies. The new policy has to be control of the banks and their lending going out in all those wrong places, into existing asset prices, into housing and not into spreading the productive economy", Rodney Shakespeare, a London-based political commentator told Press TV.

A spokesman for Corbyn has also dismissed the latest warning saying the Blairite faction is disconcerted by their abrupt loss of power. “It is the biggest non-revolutionary upturning of the social order in modern British politics and Blairite have a duty to remain loyal to the Labour party as the left has always done”, Michael Meacher, a former minister and supporter of Corbyn, said

Recently, Corbyn himself dismissed Blair remarks about his campaign as “silly”.

"Blair is certainly putting curtain on his own mistakes but he is missing one point that the present situation is a failure of what Blair stands for. Therefore, there has to be major policies and that at the moment is colossal rejection of Blair and what’s going on in the Conservatives. The Conservatives did not get elected fairly, they only got elected because electorates were panicked about the Scottish nationalism. So Blair does not understand that his failure gave rise to a revolution. He can try and distract people from his own mistakes which is his foreign policy as an agent of Zionism and an agent of all those forces who want to smash up every single Middle East country. Blair doesn’t understand that a revolution is underway". Shakespeare said.  

Blair’s latest plea comes in the wake of a massive last minute surge in new Labour members signing up to vote for the leadership contest starting on Friday. Corbyn’s anti-austerity message and his endorsement by major unions such as UNITE and UNISON have particularly attracted tens of thousands of activists to the Labour camp.

According to some trade unions, number of members have doubled from 70,000 to 120,000 and signed-up supporters to 190,000. The party’s website reportedly crashed at one point on Wednesday amid surge in people attempting to sign up for the vote. Some reports say more than 610,000 people applied for a vote in the Labour leadership contest after a last-minute frenzy registration. 

Corbyn has so far maintained his lead over his contenders. Recent opinion polls suggest he would secure more than 50% of votes that means Corbyn might not need to count on the second preferences of voters.

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