Alastair Campbell, the former No 10 director of communications under Tony Blair, has said he no longer wishes to be a Labour member, warning that Jeremy Corbyn is poised to lose the next election against Boris Johnson and destroy the party “as a political force capable of winning power”
In his letter, Alistair Campbell, said that “Britain is in a moment of peril, the UK facing an existential crisis, a combination of Brexit and Boris Johnson reducing our country to a global laughing stock”.
He adds, that I see no sign that you and your office have grasped the seriousness of what is happening, let alone devised or begun to execute a strategy to respond and defeat it.
Whatever the denials, Johnson has embarked on a crash and burn strategy deliberately aimed at creating the circumstances for a general election – setting up the EU, parliament and the civil service, in a grotesque perversion of the truth, as the reasons he has no option but to call one.
Campbell said that the culture you have helped to create has made the party one that I feel no longer truly represents my values, or the hopes I have for Britain. I see no strategy in place that remotely meets the electoral or policy challenges ahead. On the contrary, in so far as I ascertain a strategy at all, it is one that looks more designed to lose.
Labour had no comment on Campbell’s letter. It comes after Peter Mandelson, another former Labour strategist under Blair, gave an interview over the weekend calling for a new party leader, although he said he would not leave the party.
“We are now in a situation where many people will react with horror against what Johnson plans to do – defying parliament to take Britain out of the EU without a deal to safeguard our trade and jobs – but have no faith in Corbyn’s desire or ability to block this,” Mandelson told Alain Elkann for La Stampa and other European newspapers.
“Corbyn is not the leader that Labour needs at this time. He cannot deliver. Even his supporters are realising this. We need an alternative who can stand up to Johnson and lead the country against the disaster which is in the making.”
