TIMES ONLINE: Tony Blair tries to shore up Gordon Brown’s flagging election campaign today with a warning that a vote for Nick Clegg is “not a serious thing”.
With five days to go, the former Prime Minister makes his first serious intervention since Labour’s slump in the polls. He tells The Times that the Liberal Democrats would be flaky partners in government and that a hung Parliament is a “thoroughly bad idea”.
To voters considering backing Mr Clegg, he says: “The fact that it might seem an interesting thing to do is not the right reason to put the keys of the country in their hands.”
Amid warnings from senior Labour figures that a poor showing next week will threaten the future of the party, Mr Blair pitched himself into battle for the minds of voters seduced by Mr Clegg.
He conceded that the Liberal Democrat leader had been clever in projecting his promise of a new kind of politics. But he accused Mr Clegg of peddling “the oldest politics in the book” in seeking to blame his rivals for all the country’s ills.
Mr Blair urges voters to remember they are electing a government on May 6, not expressing a feeling. He insists that Gordon Brown deserves another five years because of the “political character”, strength and resilience he has shown during the financial crisis.
Mr Clegg dismissed Mr Blair’s arrival on the campaign trail as a sign of desperation, accusing Labour of “wheeling out the golden oldies to try to help out Gordon Brown in his hour of need”. He said the Lib Dems were in a two-horse race with the Tories. Blair says a vote cast for Clegg is 'not serious*' >>> Rachel Sylvester, Alice Thomson, Roland Watson | Saturday, May 01, 2010
*And was a vote for you serious, Mr Blair? – © Mark
