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.

“Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost because it stopped being New Labour,” he wrote.

“This is not about Gordon Brown as an individual...Had he pursued New Labour policy, the personal issue would still have made victory tough, but it wouldn’t have been impossible. Departing from New Labour made it so.”

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

And he revealed that he advised David Miliband in 2007 that he might beat Mr Brown if he stood against him as a New Labour candidate for the succession.

In a warning to the party as it prepares to select a new leader, Mr Blair wrote: “The danger for Labour now is that we drift off, or even move decisively off, to the left. If we do, we will lose even bigger next time.”

In an apparent rebuke to candidates standing on a platform of opposition to spending cuts, Mr Blair warned: “If Labour simply defaults to a ‘Tory cutters, Lib Dem collaborators’ mantra, it may well benefit in the short-term.

“However, it will lose any possibility of being chosen as an alternative government.”

Page after page of the memoir catalogued disagreements with Mr Brown and the “relentless personal pressure” from the then chancellor for Mr Blair to quit.

In one of the most sensational passages, Mr Blair effectively accused Mr Brown of blackmail for threatening to trigger an investigation into the cash-for-honours affair if the PM did not back down in a row on pensions.

Barnsley East MP Michael Dugher, a former aide to Mr Brown, said it was “slightly unkind and unfair” to brand him as a “strange guy” who lacked emotional intelligence.