Tony Blair openly criticized Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party in an article for the The Spectator magazine, saying that Corbyn leading the party was a "tragedy." This is the first time since Corbyn has assumed leadership that Blair has commented on the issue.
Blair said the party was "in danger of not asking the right questions, never mind failing to get the right answers. All of it is about applying values with an open mind; not boasting of our values as a way of avoiding the hard thinking the changing world insists upon," while admitting that he had made mistakes, but had led a "radical" and "reforming" government, reported The Guardian.
The former Prime Minister also opined that the current state of the party was because leaders were avoiding "hard thinking."
"All wings of the Labour Party which support the notion of the Labour Party as a party aspiring to govern, rather than as a fringe protest movement, agree on the tragedy of the Labour Party's current position. Many - especially in today's Labour Party - felt we lost our way in Government. I feel we found it. But I accept in the process we failed to convince enough people that the true progressives are always the modernizers, not because they discard principle but because they have the courage to adhere to it when confronted with reality," he continued, reports The Telegraph.
Blair said that he had faced a lot of resistance in the party, but since 1997 the party had displayed "dramatic" results - notably "transformative" school reforms, record NHS satisfaction rates and falling crime.
"My essential argument - and indeed with my own party today - is that this approach is not now redundant with time. It is even more critical. The pace of change is not slowing; it is accelerating. We have to understand it and prepare for it. Infrastructure, housing, social exclusion - all these challenges require more modernizing and less ideological thinking," Blair concluded, according to The Mirror.
