Blair says Miliband was right to take on inequality – but Labour must return to the centre ground

As the post-mortem of Labour’s painful election defeat continues, Tony Blair has weighed in with an article in the Observer, insisting that Labour must be “for ambition and aspiration as well as compassion and care”:

“Hard-working families don’t just want us celebrating their hard work; they want to know that by hard work and effort they can rise up, achieve. They want to be better off and they need to know we don’t just tolerate that, we support it.”

Blair gives Miliband credit for pushing the issue of inequality – even though there is an “implied rebuke” to Blair’s own record:

“Ed was absolutely right to raise the issue of inequality and to say that Labour should focus anew on it. This will stand as his contribution to the party’s development. In so far as this was an implied rebuke to my politics, I accept it. But we still need ways relevant to today and tomorrow, not yesterday, to tackle it.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of Blair’s analysis though is in terms of how Labour organises and campaigns, when he stresses the importance of:

“How we build new constituencies of support, how we interact with them, how we open ourselves up to new energy and people: that is a task all in itself. This is the time for fundamental party renewal. Strategy and tactics must align.”

Or as Peter Mandelson just put it on Andrew Marr’s show this morning, the party needs a period of re-modernisation…