Sir Tony Blair says he wants to see Andy Burnham in parliament
Sir Tony Blair said he wanted to see Andy Burnham in Parliament, but urged Labour MPs to “force people to say where they stand” before getting behind a change in leader.
Asked whether he would advise Labour MPs to back Wes Streeting or Mr Burnham, Sir Tony told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My advice is choose your direction first and make sure that before you have any leadership change, you make all the candidates set out in detail their policy, what the Government’s got right, what it’s got wrong, what we should do differently.”
He added: “I hope Andy wins Makerfield, I think he’s a great guy, I want to see him in Parliament.
“But you know, when he does this thing about 40 years of wasted… I mean, OK, and what, nothing good happened in that period of Thatcher with the business community, or New Labour?
“I don’t think he really means that, but what I’m saying, if you’re going to change leader, you’ve really got to force people to say where they stand, because otherwise you’ll be in what I think was always a problem for Keir – and I’ll be very honest about this, and I like him and I wish him well – but when we switched from that Corbyn agenda, there wasn’t enough explanation.
“Not as to why Corbyn was an election loser, that was pretty obvious, but why the whole agenda was wrong.
“You have to explain to people why it’s wrong if you want to lead the party in the future in a coherent way.”
The official candidates for the Makerfield by-election:
Jake Austin (Liberal Democrats), Andy Burnham (Labour), Dan Clarke (Libertarian Party), Alan “Howlin” Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony Party), Robert Kenyon (Reform UK), Robert Pownall (Protect The Wild), Rebecca Shepherd (Restore Britain), Sarah Wakefield (Greens), Peter Ward (Rejoin EU) and Michael Winstanley (Conservative)