LABOUR leader Ed Miliband has been cautioned not to ignore Tony Blair's warning his party's response to the UK Government's controversial welfare reforms is outdated.
The former prime minister suggested in a magazine article Mr Miliband risked being left on the margins as a protest politician because he is harking back to arguments from the 1980s.
Mr Blair, the party's most successful leader, said in The New Statesman that Labour was in a "menacing" scenario, and suggested it was being outmanoeuvred by the Conservatives.
But the party dismissed his intervention, the strongest since he left office in 2007, saying "lessons" were being learned from where previous Labour governments had gone wrong. In what was seen as dig at Mr Blair, the statement highlighted the issue of immigration, for which the former Prime Minister has attracted much criticism from the Conservative right.
Mr Miliband later pointedly rejected the advice, saying: "Tony Blair's always got important things to say, and he's also the first to recognise this: that political parties need to move forwards, not backward.
"So I always take Tony Blair very seriously, but I think what the Labour Party's doing under my leadership is moving on and moving forward." But party insiders warned Mr Miliband could not afford to "dismiss" the advice from the last leader to take them to a general election victory. They questioned the haste with which the party had responded. One said: "He's Tony Blair, you cannot just dismiss what he says out of hand".
In his piece, Mr Blair warned his party that Britain had not shifted to the left in the awake of the 2008 financial crisis.
He added: "But what might happen is the left believes such a shift has occurred and behaves accordingly. The risk, which is highly visible in Britain, is that the country returns to a familiar left/right battle."
He warned in such a scenario the "Conservative Party is back clothing itself in the mantle of fiscal responsibility, buttressed by moves against 'benefit scroungers', immigrants squeezing out British workers and Labour profligacy.
"The Labour party is back as the party opposing 'Tory cuts', highlighting the cruel con-sequences of the Conservative policies on welfare and representing the disadvantaged and vulnerable." Mr Blair said Labour's "guiding principle" should be to seek answers, not become the "repository for people's anger".
And in a move interpreted as a criticism of Mr Miliband's lack of policy announcements, Mr Blair said the public wanted to "know where we're coming from because that is a clue as to where we would go, if elected".
Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said : "The only plan Labour have is more of what got us into this mess in the first place – more spending."
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