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| Tony Blair says an anti-immigration platform would confuse Labour supporters. |
Tony Blair has urged the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, and the rest of the mainstream political class to take on and confront Ukip, saying it would only confuse Labour's own supporters if it now ran on an anti-immigration platform.
He also urged Miliband to stay put on the issue of an in/out EU referendum, saying that yielding to the pressure of Ukip had not done the Conservative party any good to date.
Behind the Ukip facade was something pretty nasty and unpleasant, Blair told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The former Labour leader said: "For the Labour party, if it tries to follow Ukip either on its anti-European platform or, even worse frankly, on its anti-immigrant platform, all that will happen is that it will confuse its own supporters and will not draw any greater support."
Miliband has repeatedly apologised for Labour's lenient approach to immigration in the past, saying it had not understood enough about the downsides of globalisation for working-class communities. Read on and comment » | Patrick Wintour, political editor | Tuesday, May 27, 2014
