SENIOR Labour Party figures have dismissed the bitter attack on Tony Blair by retiring East Lancashire Euro MP Michael Hindley.

He had accused the Labour leader and Prime Minister of being a Tory and alleged that over Kosovo, there was a "madness in his actions" which reflected the "fundamentally brittle and unstable Anthony Edem" who was in charge of the 1956 Suez disaster.

But a senior Labour spokesman said Mr Hindley's views reflected neither the mainstream of the party or the country.

And Hyndburn MP Greg Pope said this was the latest of a string of mistaken "gloom laden forecasts" from the left-winger. Mr Hindley, who stood down as a Labour candidate in the current European elections because he believed the party would not give him a chance of being voted back, made his comments in the far left magazine Labour Left Briefing. A spokesman for Labour's national executive said: "I am not particularly concerned about what Michael Hindley writes. His views are far from the mainstream of the Labour party or the mainstream of the British public.

Mr Pope, a government Whip, said: "This is typical stuff from Michael. He is desperate for Tony Blair and New Labour to fail and regularly issues gloom laden forecasts which turn out to be totally mistaken."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.