Blairites declare UK Labour party unelectable
By
Robert Stevens and Chris Marsden
28 April 2017
Labour’s right wing is now openly campaigning for a defeat for the party in the June 8 snap general election.
Yesterday, the old war criminal himself, Tony Blair, went on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV and refused to endorse Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, stating that Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May would win the election.
The issue was not to run a “conventional partisan election” that relegated Britain’s exit from the European Union to one issue among many, he asserted. The task was to build a parliamentary opposition across party lines to a Brexit that takes “membership of the single market and the customs union off the table.” On this basis, Blair urged voters to consider also backing Liberal Democrats and anti-Brexit Tories.
In the Labour Party and in the media, Blair’s followers are taking up the theme of Labour’s un-electability under Corbyn with less reserve than even their political mentor. A striking feature of this offensive is how it centres on denunciations of any and all calls for social equality.
On Wednesday, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee asked, “How can Labour survive this Tory tidal wave?”
She cited a Tuesday morning meeting at the Smith Institute where Labour MPs heard a “presentation by Deborah Mattinson, of Britain Thinks, and Nick Pecorelli, of The Campaign Company—leading pollsters and focus groupers who have followed Labour’s fortunes over decades.”
These “leading pollsters,” Toynbee declared in apocalyptic tones, had explained that Labour was doomed because “[t]he class and culture divide between Labour leaders and its putative voters yawns too wide to bridge.”
Mattinson and Pecorelli had explained “[t]he…