Tony Blair slams ‘reactionary’ Labour leadership candidate Corbyn

Ms Kendall is seen as the candidate on the right in the four-way contest but she argues Labour delivers results when it is a “passionate, practical-minded party that wins power in order to change people’s lives”.

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt warned that a victory for Mr Corbyn could reduce Labour to the status of a pressure group rather than a potential government.

Ken Livingstone has defended Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral appeal, saying the left-winger could be prime minister.

“When people say my heart says I should really be with that (leftwing) politics – well, get a transplant, because that’s just dumb”, a tanned Blair said in rare public comments on the issue to a packed meeting of several hundred Labour supporters in central London.

The poll of 1,054 people eligible to vote in the contest showed support for Corbyn at 43 percent, with the party’s health spokesman Andy Burnham on 26 percent and its home affairs spokeswoman Yvette Cooper on 20 percent.

“After the 1979 election the Labour Party persuaded itself of something absolutely extraordinary”, Mr Blair said. Cooper also said that Labour was not quick enough to condemn rising levels of anti-Semitism in the UK, which took place during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza last summer.

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

The peer denied it would be a “disaster” if Mr Corbyn won, although he did not think he would be successful.

Of course, policies should always, always, come before personality and I in no way think that this debate should include less policy based discussion – I’d actually like more.

In his interview, Prescott was even more critical of John McTernan, a former aide to Blair in No 10 and Jim Murphy’s chief of staff when Murphy was Scottish Labour leader.

“We need to regain economic credibility”, Blair said.

“We shouldn’t judge everything to do with Israel through the prism of whatever Benjamin Netanyahu is saying from one day to the next – Israel’s politics is much wider than that”, Corbyn said, who added that he has been on nine visits to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza during his 32 years in parliament.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes said those who nominated Mr Corbyn despite disagreeing with him should be “searching their consciences right now”. According to Mr Blair, Labour can not win again from a “traditional leftist platform”.

While still vilified by many for leading Britain into the Iraq war from 2003, Blair is Labour’s longest-serving prime minister and believes the party would not be electable if it picks Jeremy Corbyn as its next leader.

Labour doesn’t need to come up with alternatives.

Pressed by the other candidates to say whether he could ever vote No, Mr Corbyn said that “if Europe becomes a totally brutal organisation which treats member states in the way it has treated Greece”, then it would lose the support of many people.

“The SNP and UKIP have clouded our sense of direction because they seem to point away from the centre”, he said.

It comes after a row within Labour over the contest, with senior figures warning against a Mr Corbyn victory. I think we should be opposing the bill.

Deputy Political Editor Joey Jones said: “None of the more mainstream candidates have managed to break from the pack and there’s every likelihood that if the Corbyn surge is not suppressed they will round on the individual whose support is looking weakest and suggest that they do the decent thing”.