Tony Blair: Corbyn in power would be a 'dangerous experiment'

[Ken Burch]

23. I'm glad you're willing to give Corbyn a chance now. And I don't TOTALLY disagree with you.

Obviously people outside of Labour have to vote for the party if it's to win an election.

But that doesn't mean there's no way to get the votes of such people other than by getting as close to the Tories as possible on most issues(i.e., the Blairite approach).

It's also possible to win non-Labour voters over to Labour by actually making a convincing argument for real change. If Thatcher was able to do that in an era when the vast majority of the electorate were well to her left, Labour can do so now.

It's also possible to expand Labour support WITHOUT pandering to right-wing voters-by reaching out to voters outside of it who are close to Labour on the issues.

This would mean cutting into the votes currently taken by the Greens, by the SNP(many of the voters who swung from Labour to SNP in 2015 could be won back if Labour in Scotland finally disassociates itself with Blairite ideas, as it refused to do in the last Holyrood election)from Plaid Cymru in Wales and from those who vote UKIP primarily on "anti-establishment-shake things up" grounds) and by making a concerted and highly-organized effort to turn current non-voters into voters.

You talk of "principled opposition" with seeming disdain. Is there any reason to think Labour would have been more successful against Thatcher herself if the party had had FEWER principles? If they'd said "we don't care deeply about anything, we just want to elect a government that CALLS itself 'Labour'"? And if it had what good would that have done? If a Blair-like figure had led Labour in the Eighties, that person would have just privatized and cut services SLIGHTLY less, would still have crushed the miners, would still have passed the anti-worker laws, would still probably have brought in Section 28(the Labour right wasn't against homophobia in the Eighties).

I can say this because that is pretty much what the Australian Labor Party government, the government that inspired Blairism did in that era.

Yes, it would have been a Labour government IN NAME. But would it in any sense have been worth the trouble of electing?