Stick to centre-ground, Blair urges
By politics.co.uk staff
Former prime minister Tony Blair has urged Labour’s new leader Ed Miliband to avoid taking the party to the left.
Comments from an Italian interview quoted by the Sun newspaper saw Mr Blair calling on the new leader of the opposition to stick to the centre-ground so effectively occupied in his own New Labour years.
“I hope that – as he said in his opening speech – he stays on the centre. I really hope he does,” Mr Blair said.
“We carried out a lot of changes in the party to create New Labour and I believe these changes are there to stay.”
Speculation in the final years of Mr Blair’s premiership frequently associated him with a preference for David Miliband rather than Gordon Brown as his successor.
But Mr Brown succeeded in taking over in 2007 and was prime minister for the remainder of New Labour’s third term in office.
David Miliband narrowly lost to his younger brother Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election completed last week and has now stepped down from frontline politics.
Mr Blair added of Ed Miliband: “Certainly I was closer to his brother but I wish him well.”
