(Bloomberg) — The British Labour Party’s recriminations over its catastrophic election defeat will continue Wednesday when former leader Tony Blair urges it to undertake a wholesale change of approach.
At a private meeting of its surviving members of parliament on Tuesday evening, 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, will tell an audience in central London that the party cannot simply carry on with Corbyn’s policies under a new leader. “Labour needs not just a different driver, but a different bus,” he’ll say, according to advance extracts.
“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 will say. “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.”
Tuesday night’s meeting lasted more than two hours. One of the MPs present, Margaret Hodge, described the mood. “It was fury, despair, miserable,” she told reporters. She described Corbyn’s position as “denial and corporate amnesia.”
Wes Streeting, another of those present, said afterward that it was essential the party changed direction: “If we try to go for Corbynism without Corbyn, we’re just setting ourselves up for generations out of power.”
Corbyn was criticized not just for the election, but for his response to the defeat. Jess Phillips, one possible candidate to replace the leader, said she read out a message from Melanie Onn, a colleague who lost her seat, and who had heard nothing from the party since then. “She’d been let down by the leadership,” Phillips said. “There’s loads and loads of complaints about how nobody has been called.”
Last week’s election saw Labour finish the night with 59 fewer seats, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson won the biggest Conservative majority since 1987.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Edward Johnson
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.