Labour warned not to drift to Left as votes cast

TONY Blair has warned the party not to drift to the Left as he used his memoirs to launch a scathing attack on Gordon Brown.

In his memoirs, published on the day the first votes were cast in the leadership election, the former Prime Minister warned that Labour faces defeat at the next election if it abandons his New Labour agenda.

Mr Blair’s book – A Journey – lays bare the rift between himself and Mr Brown during his time in power, as well as his concerns about his chancellor’s fitness to follow him into 10 Downing Street.

Describing Mr Brown as brilliant but “maddening”, Mr Blair blamed his successor for losing the last election by deviating from the New Labour message.

Mr Blair said he knew before leaving office that Mr Brown could well be a “disaster” as Prime Minister.

However, the candidates in the Labour leadership race last night attempted to draw a line under the divisions of the past which were laid bare in Tony Blair’s memoir.

In a televised hustings the five leadership candidates insisted Labour must focus on its future rather than the New Labour years which were dominated by internal warfare between the Blair and Brown camps.

Although he made no endorsement in his memoirs of any of the leadership candidates, Mr Blair’s comments will be seen as a mark of support for front-runner David Miliband over his brother Ed.

But David Miliband appeared uncomfortable with being the “heir to Blair” when that label was put to him during the leadership debate on Channel 4 News.

“I am my own person. I look forward to the day when Tony says he is a Milibandite rather than people asking me whether I’m a Blairite,” he said.

But he added: “Whoever becomes the party leader will become the heir to Gordon Brown’s leadership of the Labour Party.

“Few people would say I was the continuity candidate with Gordon.”

Mr Miliband, who received a boost in the form of the Daily Mirror’s endorsement yesterday, said both Mr Blair and Mr Brown had failed to “reinvigorate” the “Labour project”.

“There are new, big economic questions we have to confront about how we build a moral economy in which responsibility is felt all the way up and all the way down.

“There are new, big questions about how we strengthen community and the role of government, public services.”