FORMER Labour Party leader Lord Kinnock urged a renewed fight against the ideologies of new Labour and Thatcherism at a packed gathering in Westminster on Monday night.

Lord Kinnock warmly endorsed the new anti-austerity book produced by Blair-era cabinet minister Peter Hain.

Labour activists should use Mr Hain’s “terrific” book as “a toolbox for action,” declared the peer.

Lord Kinnock condemned the widening inequality gap, with 1 per cent of the population now owning 48 per cent of the wealth — a position not seen since 1914.

And he added: “That is what the cumulative effect of new Labourism has been since the 1980s.

“That tide must be turned.”

Lord Kinnock himself faced much criticism for turning the party sharply to the right in his unsuccessful spell as party leader from 1983 to 1992.

Mr Hain was applauded when he hailed the Syriza election victory in Greece as he kicked off the Westminster launch of his book Back to the Future of Socialism.

“Wasn’t it a great blow against the austerity economics we have seen sweeping across the EU when the Greek people stood up yesterday and said No,” declared Mr Hain.

The Greek people have been in a straitjacket of austerity and cuts designed to get the debt down and cut the deficit.
“What happens? The debt goes up!

“Because this economics  doesn’t work.

“You do not get the deficit down and crack the problems of the national debt and borrowing except by investing in growth.”

Back to the Future of Socialism by Peter Hain is published by Policy Press.