‘Alice in Wonderland’ Jeremy Corbyn appeal warning

Tony Blair has warned Labour supporters to reject the “Alice in Wonderland” appeal of Jeremy Corbyn or risk driving the party into an abyss.

The former prime minister conceded appeals from himself and ex-leaders Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock appeared only to have emboldened those who have propelled the veteran MP from rank outsider to frontrunner to succeed Ed Miliband.

He accepted he had as yet failed to understand the “powerful” phenomenon behind the serial rebel’s popularity . But he mocked those behind it for embracing a “politics of parallel reality... in which reason is an irritation, evidence a distraction, emotional impact is king and the only thing that counts is feeling good about it all”.

With less than two weeks until the result of the election is announced, Corbyn remains the bookmakers’ overwhelming favourite to pull off a shock win over experienced former cabinet ministers Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper.

Stark warnings from Blair — who previously said people whose heart was with Corbyn should “get a transplant” — have done nothing to dent the left-winger’s shock lead and have been attacked as unhelpful by his mainstream rivals.

An angry Blair insisted however that it was important to speak out to prevent the party repeating past mistakes. All the evidence showed Labour lost the 2015 election because it was “anti-business and too left” and had no credible economic plan, he said.

“Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and I have collectively around 150 years of Labour party membership. We’re very different. We disagree on certain things. But on this we’re agreed,” he wrote. “Anyone listening? Nope. In fact, the opposite. It actually makes them more likely to support him.

“It is like a driver coming to a roadblock on a road they’ve never travelled before and three grizzled veterans say: ‘Don’t go any further, we have been up and down this road many times and we’re warning you there are falling rocks, mudslides, dangerous hairpin bends and then a sheer drop’.

“And the driver says: ‘Screw you, stop patronising me. I know what I’m doing.’

“In the Alice in Wonderland world this parallel reality has created, it is we who are backward looking for pointing out that the Corbyn programme is exactly what we fought and lost on 30 years ago, not him for having it.”