Former PM lambasts parties and says upcoming election is ‘weirdest of my lifetime’

Tony Blair has said neither Labour nor the Conservatives are seen as fit to win the general election, accusing both parties of peddling “fantasies”.

The former prime minister, one of the architects of New Labour who was speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in London, said Britain’s biggest parties were engaged in “populism running riot” and it would end in tears.

Blair has repeatedly called for Brexit to be reversed and said the right thing would have been to hold a second referendum followed by a general election.

Boris Johnson plays for time with a cautious, tepid manifesto Read more

He described the poll on 12 December as “the weirdest of my lifetime”, adding: “The truth is: the public aren’t convinced either main party deserve to win this election outright. They’re peddling two sets of fantasies and both, as majority governments, pose a risk it would be unwise for the country to take.”

Blair, who guided Labour to three election victories, said people “rightly” did not trust Boris Johnson with a “blank cheque”. He said though Labour were promising a revolution, “the problem with revolutions is never how they begin but how they end”.

Blair, who as prime minister sought to occupy the centre ground and has long been at loggerheads with Jeremy Corbyn, said there were “solid, mainstream, independent-minded MPs and candidates in both parties” who merited support.

He added that the Liberal Democrats also had an important role to play in forcing a second referendum, suggesting the poll should be viewed as “650 mini-elections”.

Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit by 31 January but, on that issue at least, Blair concurred with Corbyn that it was not possible, warning that there was no chance of Britain’s future relationship with Europe being settled by the end of the transition period.

He said even a hard Brexit with a third-country free-trade agreement analogous to one that the EU has with Canada would be “horrible” to negotiate and could take years to conclude.

He identified no deal as being the likeliest outcome because of the Conservatives’ manifesto commitment not to extend the transition period beyond next year.

Blair described the country as being in a state of paralysis and said that despite what was going on elsewhere in the world, Britain had the “craziest” politics.

“Around the world, where political leaders are gathered, there is often a conversation about whose politics is crazier,” he said. “I agree that right now the competition is fierce. But I still believe British politics is unfortunately ahead of the pack.”

He accused the two main parties of appealing to extremes, leaving the remainder of the electorate, who did not subscribe to their ideas, “scratching their heads, changing their minds, floating and unsure”.

He added: “The unifying sentiment is a desire, bordering on the febrile, to end the mess, to wake from the nightmare.”

He said Brexit remained the country’s single most important decision since 1945 because it would necessarily impact on the economy and therefore every pledge the parties were making.

“We’re a mess,” Blair said. “The buoyancy of the world economy has kept us going up to now, but should that falter, we will be in deep trouble. Investment is down; jobs in certain sectors are already moving; our currency stays devalued sharply; and market sentiment swings between anxiety and alarm.

“And across a range of international issues which matter to us, we’re irrelevant – too preoccupied to spare overstretched bandwidth of attention. Our politics is utterly dysfunctional.”

Meanwhile at an event on Monday night, Michael Heseltine, the former Tory deputy prime minister, also failed to endorse his old party. He instead urged Tories to vote for the Liberal Democrats, apart from in areas where they could vote for former Tory independent rebels such as Dominic Grieve, Anne Milton and David Gauke.

• This article was amended on 26 November 2019. Due to an editing error an earlier version was incorrect to describe Michael Heseltine as having said he would be voting for the Liberal Democrats. As a member of the House of Lords, he is ineligible to vote in general elections, but he did urge other Tories to vote for the Lib Dems.