UK Labour Party needs total change after defeat: Blair

Bloomberg

The UK Labour Party’s recriminations over its catastrophic election defeat continued Wednesday as former leader Tony Blair urged it to undertake a wholesale change of approach.
At a private meeting of its surviving Members of Parliament, leader Jeremy Corbyn was heavily criticized for leading the party to its worst result since 1935. According to his office, he told them he was “very sorry” but that the election was “ultimately about Brexit.”
Blair, now the only person to lead Labour to an election victory in 45 years, told an audience in central London that the party cannot simply carry on with Corbyn’s policies under a new leader. He described Corbyn as personifying “quasi-revolutionary socialism” with voters seeing him as “fundamentally opposing what Britain and Western countries stand for.” “The choice for Labour is to renew itself as the serious, progressive, non-Conservative competitor for power in British politics, or retreat from such an ambition, in which case over time it will be replaced,” he said. “So, at one level, sure let’s have a period of ‘reflection,’ but any attempt to whitewash this defeat, pretend it is something other than it is, or the consequence of something other than the obvious, will cause irreparable damage to our relationship with the electorate.”
Labour leadership hopefuls were reluctant to side with Blair following his intervention, which was pre-released overnight. Yvette Cooper, who said she will decide over Christmas whether she will run for the leadership, tried to distance herself from the performance of Jeremy Corbyn but also the governments of Tony Blair.
“We cannot become a party that is concentrated in cities, with our support concentrated in diverse, young fast-moving areas while older voters in towns think we aren’t listening to them,” she told BBC Radio.