Labour must fill pro-EU chasm, says Blair’s former chief of staff

The Labour party will face competition from a more pro-European, progressive rival unless it fills the “yawning chasm” in the political centre ground after the election, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff has said.

Jonathan Powell, the former prime minister’s most trusted adviser, said that there was no pro-European party capable of commanding significant support and that “a different party” could fill the vacuum if Labour opted not to do so.

It comes after former Labour donors suggested that they may be willing to fund a new party should a group of MPs opt to create one. Blair has also said he has re-entered the political arena “to make the case for building a new coalition out from the centre”.

Powell said that there was no party representing people on the progressive, centre-left which was pro-European and opposed to Brexit.

“Whether there will be one in the future is another matter,” he said. “After the election I think people will look at what happened. Maybe Jeremy Corbyn will have a massive triumph, win lots of seats and people will reconsider the position.

“But say the opinion polls turn out to be right and the result is very bad, then I think there will have to be a postmortem where people will look at who is actually representing this space in the middle where the Labour party has gone left and a Tory party that has gone right. There is a great big gaping hole and someone is going to fill that space. Nature abhors a vacuum – who is it going to be?

“We will wait to see what happens in the election, but … there is a yawning chasm in the middle of politics at the moment that is not represented and the [Lib Dems] are incapable of filling that space. At some stage, someone is going to fill it. Whether it is the Labour party after the election or a different party, who knows?”

It comes with speculation already rife within the Labour party over what will happen in the immediate aftermath of an election defeat. Some critics of Corbyn are already preparing to accept the fact that he will remain leader, but most anticipate a huge outpouring of anger once polls close at 10pm on 8 June. There are already senior figures who have been vocal in wanting the party to move into a more pro-EU position.

Powell, who is overseeing the Brexit Exchange project designed to give businesses a voice in the Brexit talks, warned that German companies would not be lobbying on behalf of Britain against the will of chancellor Merkel.

He said the idea pushed by some Brexiters that Germany’s big manufacturers would push for the status quo in a future UK-EU trade deal was “complete nonsense”.

“German business will be very solid with Merkel,” he said. “You will not have BMW or others breaking ranks. In Germany, it is a much more corporatist country. It is such a successful, industrial selling machine that you won’t see a glimmer of light between them.”