Here's what Tony Blair has to say about about the Labour leadership race

Amid news of a shock poll that Jeremy Corbyn is on course to be the next Labour leader Tony Blair, has said the party cannot win from a "traditional leftist platform".

The man who won three elections for the party between 1997 and 2005 gave a speech to Progress - a New Labour pressure group - on Wednesday morning.

When taking questions from the audience afterwards, the former prime minister explained that he would not be voting for Corbyn because he is "the Tory preference".

However, according to a YouGov poll, the left-winger is the first choice (43 per cent) among those who are eligible to vote in the leadership election while Liz Kendall - seen by many as the Blairite candidate - is trailing in fourth place (11 per cent).

Here are some selected quotes from Blair's speech:

Twenty-one years ago yesterday I became leader of the Labour Party. A lot has happened since then. We discovered winning successively. And now we have re-discovered losing successively. Personally I prefer winning.

We won elections when we had an agenda that was driven by values, but informed by modernity; when we had strength and clarity of purpose; when we were reformers not just investors in public services; when we gave working people rights at work including the right to join a union, but refused unions a veto over policy; when we understood businesses created jobs not Governments; and where we were the change-makers, not the small ‘c’ conservatives of the left.

Other selected quotes on Corbyn:

It would not take the country forward, it would take the country back.

It's like going back to Star Trek or something. Back to the old days.

Blair, who now runs a consultancy business, also took on the SNP, explaining that the party in Holyrood was like "a government that's being allowed to behave like an opposition". Adding:

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