LABOUR faces “possible annihilation” if it chooses Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, Tony Blair has warned, claiming the party is now confronting the biggest crisis in its 115-year history.
In an impassioned wake-up call to Labour, the former Prime Minister said: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left, right or centre of the party, whether you used to support me or hate me. But please understand the danger we are in.
“The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes ‘disunity’. It is a moment for a rugby tackle, if that were possible.”
He added: “If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader, it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation.”
But Michael Meacher, the former leftwing Minister and ardent Corbyn supporter, said after the “hijacking” of the party by the Blairites in the 1990s, Labour was “finally regaining its real principles and values”.
As “Corbynmania” arrives in Scotland tomorrow with a series of rallies, culminating at a sold-out event in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket, Mr Blair’s dramatic intervention raises the leadership stakes even higher, delineating starkly the contest between those for and those against Mr Corbyn.
Today, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – in what some might consider a Blairite blitz - will use a campaign speech to launch a full-on attack against the London MP, arguing what Labour needs is “new ideas not old ones”.
As registration closed, Labour HQ announced the final number of voters numbered an unexpectedly high 610,753; made up of 299,755 members, 189,703 affiliated supporters ie trade unionists and 121,295 people, who paid £3 to register as a “supporter”.
The high number of registered voters – 156,000 are thought to have applied in the last 24 hours - will do nothing to allay fears of entryism.
Ms Cooper and her fellow trailing candidates Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall wrote to Iain McNicol, Labour's General Secretary, expressing concerns about the integrity of the process.
Paul Sinclair, the ex-aide to Gordon Brown when Prime Minister, branded the contest "a complete and utter farce".
He said: "Ed Miliband's leadership was pretty disastrous, this is an even more disastrous legacy; the idea that you can sign up for £3 and vote for the leadership."
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