RETIRING Labour Euro-MP Michael Hindley has bitterly attacked Tony Blair and labelled him a madcap Tory for bombing the Serbs.

In an article for a far-left magazine he compares the Prime Minister to "unstable" Anthony Eden - the Conservative Premier who presided over the Suez crisis in 1956.

And he predicts that like Eden, the Prime Minister faces the "Armageddon" of being ousted in a Cabinet coup.

Writing for Labour Left Briefing, Mr Hindley - who has stood down in the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament - attacks the current party hierarchy and Mr Blair personally.

He said: "New Labour's control freakery, now well established and no longer able to be passed off as a paranoia of the left, has alienated vast swathes of the party and reports on the ground suggest indifferent non-cooperation is the best Blair plc can expect from its previously loyal 'stakeholders.'"

He says that in the past Labour has done well in Euro-elections in a protest vote against the Conservative governments but then goes on: "The Tories know they cannot muster an "against Blair" campaign - it's difficult to campaign against one of your own "

Mr Hindley warns: "In my home area of East Lancashire, long the heartlands of working class Tory voters, the Conservative Party in the last two local elections has made great gains in winning back seats directly from Labour which they lost in their dark days.

"They have done this by a combination of returnees and huge Labour abstentions. Blair has always intended jettisoning real Labour - policies and voters - but their vote is haemorrhaging more quickly than Blair plc expected, hence the manic drive for an alliance with the Lib-Dems."

The retiring MEP then says that the Kosovo crisis will be the decisive factor, saying senior European politicians are not convinced by Mr Blair or tearful photos of wife Cherie.

Mr Hindley says: "On the contrary, day by day Blair is seen as a dangerous liability.

"In his madcap 'I'm more bomb-happy than even the Yanks' posturing he is forcing the Europeans to contemplate not only European security minus the Americans, but minus the British too.

"Blair is reaching the breaking point.

"There is a madness in his actions which speaks not of a heroic Churchill in a real hour of peril, but of the superficially brilliant, but fundamentally unstable Anthony Eden at Suez.

"Blair can only go forward now to Armageddon.

"He cannot be the one who signs up for the inevitable compromise with Milosevic. Other lurking figures are ready for that."

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