Having led the Labour Party to three successive election victories between 1997 and 2007, Blair said the Conservatives needed to “unite behind a clear vision” under a new leader, adding: “Whether they do that or not, it’s up to them.”
Asked which Tory leadership contender would be best at leading the party, Blair joked: “There’s no point in me condemning the poor candidate I would choose.”
Four hopefuls, former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, ex-Home Secretary James Cleverly, former Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugenhadt, who served as security minister in Rishi Sunak’s outgoing administration, are vying for the Tory crown, with the contest decided between the final two on Nov. 2.
Blair told Power Play podcast host Anne McElvoy that while Sunak’s defeated government attempted “perfectly sensible things” including on overhauling technology, “the real problem that he had in the end was that the Conservative party just became fundamentally disorderly.”
“The most important thing for any political party is you’ve got to have clarity of direction,” Blair added.
A nation of shared values
The ex-PM waded into the debate over remarks made by leadership contender Badenoch, who has called for a greater focus on integration for immigrants to the U.K, saying not all arrivals “automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border” as “their feet may be in the U.K, but their heads and hearts are still back in their country of origin.”