Tony Blair has refused to rule out a return to British politics, in an interview in which he predicts the centre ground will rise again within the Labour party.

The former prime minister said he was still trying to find a political role which would help the party become electable.



In an interview with Esquire magazine, he said the centre of British politics would rise again and he did not rule out a role in that rise.

“I don’t know if there’s a role for me,” he said. “There’s a limit to what I want to say about my own position at this moment. All I can say is that this is where politics is at. Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question.

“There’s been a huge reaction against the politics I represent. But I think it’s too soon to say the centre has been defeated. Ultimately I don’t think it will. I think it will succeed again. The centre ground is in retreat. This is our challenge. We’ve got to rise to that challenge.”

He reiterated his views on Jeremy Corbyn’s election and re-election as Labour’s leader over the course of a year, saying he had a set of policies that would take the UK back to the 1960s.

“Frankly, it’s a tragedy for British politics if the choice before the country is a Conservative government going for a hard Brexit and an ultra-left Labour party that believes in a set of policies that takes us back to the 1960s,” he said.



“In the UK at the moment you’ve got a one-party state.

When you put it all together (taking into account that the Conservative leader wasn’t elected), there’s something seriously wrong.”



His comments will anger many new party members who have blamed Blair’s quest for the centre ground for letting down working-class voters, union members and leading the UK into the Iraq war.

Blair was dismissive of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies, saying they don’t work. Photograph: David Gadd/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Blair has spent the nine years since his withdrawal from frontline politics developing an organisation that employs about 200 people and operates in more than 20 countries. Last month, he announced he would stand down to concentrate on not-for-profit organisations.

But in the UK, where he has been criticised for the ways in which he has earned his money and for his role in the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, his reputation is low.



July’s Chilcot report was damning about the decision-making on Iraq in Whitehall and the way in which intelligence was presented, but did not say that Blair lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Asked whether Corbyn could ever be taken seriously as a leader, Blair told the magazine that the problems within the party ran deeper than a single individual.



“This is not about Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “It’s about two different cultures in one organism. One culture is the culture of the Labour party as a party of government. And that, historically, is why Labour was formed: to win representation in parliament and ultimately to influence and to be the government of the country.

“The other culture is the ultra-left, which believes that the action on the street is as important as the action in parliament,” he said. “That culture has now taken the leadership of the Labour party. It’s a huge problem because they live in a world that is very, very remote from the way that the broad mass of people really think.

“The reason why the position of these guys is not one that will appeal to an electorate is not because they are too left, or because they are too principled. It’s because they are too wrong.

“The reason their policies shouldn’t be supported isn’t because they’re wildly radical, it’s because they are not. They don’t work. They are actually a form of conservatism. This is the point about them. What they are offering is a mixture of fantasy and error.”