Credit to Müller - 50th Munich Security Conference 2014: Tony Blair: Tony Blair (Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Quartet Representative on the Middle East).
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to help "millions of effectively politically homeless people", naming current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a man of 'the far left'.
Blair is set to launch an organisation in the spring in response to worldwide forces that have lead to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. He intends to analyse why British voters chose Brexit and will produce hard policy responses to the anger felt about globalisation. Blair said that the campaign will not be intended to act as an anti-Brexit campaign, and will not solely focus on the UK, but will however look at worldwide populist factors that lead to Brexit and how the centre-left has weakened as a political force.
Mr Blair has stated that the public faces a choice between a government pursuing a 'hard Brexit' and an 'ultra-left' Labour party with outdated policies. He also said that the state of UK politics 'dismayed him'.
There have been questions regarding Tony Blair's return to mainstream politics, after previously winning three general elections for Labour between 1997 and 2007, and since has avoided the height of the public eye after his departure from Downing Street.
Rumours grew bigger after he announced he was closing most of his commercial operations to focus on philanthropic work.
Blair, however, was quick to address the speculations, and told the New Statesman, "what I'm doing is to spend more time not in the frontline of politics, because I have no intention of going back to the frontline of politics", but instead, he was "trying to create the space for a political debate about where modern Western democracies go and where the progressive forces particularly find their place."
He stated, "I'm dismayed by the state of Western politics, but also incredibly motivated by it. I think, in Britain today, you've got millions of effectively politically homeless people."
The former Labour leader said that he wouldn't come back into frontline politics, "because there's just too much hostility, and also there are elements of the media who would literally move to destroy mode if I tried to do that."
Credit to Chatham House
However, despite this, Mr Blair has held private talks with former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg over the past few weeks, in a somewhat attempt to gain support for his new organisation that, although Blair's claims state otherwise, is speculated to work as a counter to Brexit.
A Lib-Dem source suggested that Clegg welcomed Blair with open arms, quite the opposite to current Lib-Dem leader Tim Farron who rejected the offer of a face-to-face meeting with Blair.
(originally posted 24th November 2016 www.icov.co.uk)
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