Blair warns UK s Labour not to lurch left in leadership race

Ms Kendall has refused to quit the race, despite pressure for her to stand aside and neuter the threat from Mr Corbyn by allowing her backers to switch to Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham.

The study also forecast that if Ms Kendall and Ms Cooper were eliminated and second preferences redistributed under the alternative vote system, Mr Corbyn would beat Mr Burnham by 53% to 47% in the final round.

Mr Burnham admitted to indulging “once or twice” at university while Ms Cooper said she had tried cannabis as a student.

“It’s not going to happen”.

A spokesman for Ms Cooper said: “This doesn’t reflect our internal data and significantly understates the huge number of members and supporters giving Yvette their first preference”.

“But more than that, we’re in this to win”.

Ms Kendall took it to be an attack on the contribution the women had made to the party, and said it was a “gross insult”.

Lord Falconer, who shared a flat with Tony Blair and served in his and Gordon Brown’s cabinets, claimed Mr Burnham was the only candidate who could build a “bold new radical programme for Labour” that could win back voters in Scotland, England and Wales and the only potential leader who could appeal to people who voted for the Tories, the SNP or Ukip in 2015.

She said: “Labour delivers for unbelievable cities like Liverpool when we are a passionate, practical-minded party that wins power in order to change people’s lives”.

Several senior Labour figures had suggested ways to have a victory against Mr Corbyn but ex-deputy PM Lord Prescott urged the party to “calm down“. He said adopting an “old-fashioned leftist platform” of tax-and-spend policies would alienate voters just as it did during the 1980s, when Labour floundered as Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher moved Britain’s economy to the right.

“The last five years have left us with a awful legacy to overcome with the existence of the Labour Party as an effective electoral force now at stake”.

Suck up to big business, fawn on Washington and make cosy deals with the monopoly media and life can be very comfortable indeed, except when you have to take time out from lucrative consultations with Middle Eastern despots to tick off your party for remembering its principles.

“And I don’t want us going back to being that sort of party”.

“T he Labour Party persuaded itself that the reason why the country had voted for Margaret Thatcher was because they wanted a really left-wing Labour Party”, he said.

Another “former special advisor”, John McTernan, called MPs who nominated Corbyn for Labour leader in Commons, “morons”.

“It was a complete mess. Disability hate crime is growing, maternity discrimination has increased, homophobic bullying isn’t being challenged, antisemitism and islamophobia have increased”, she said.

Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos MORI, said: “First impressions count, and this poll shows the next few months will be crucial for Labour’s leadership candidates to mould their image in the public’s mind, for better or for worse”.

This assertion that Blair would rather the Tories remain in power than see a left-wing Labour leadership triumph in 2020 tells us all we need to know about the man: Tony Blair is an enemy of the labour movement.

“He won elections with it – the white heat of technology – let’s have the white light of the digital age”.