Blair says Labour needs debate before selecting new leader as he criticises Burnham speech – UK politics live

In his Today interview, Tony Blair said Labour needed to work out its policy agenda before choosing a leader.

Asked what he would say to Labour members being asked to choose between Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting, Blair replied:

double quotation markMy 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.

While Blair praised Burnham in general terms, he also said the Greater Manchester mayor was wrong to argue, as he did in a speech last week, that government policies over the past 40 years have let voters down.

Blair said:

double quotation markI 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 … 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.