Former British prime minister Tony Blair urged his Labour party on Wednesday to abandon "crazy revolutionary socialism" as it seeks a new leader after its worst election defeat since the 1930s.
Britain's shellshocked left entered a period of soul-searching and mourning in the wake of last Thursday's drubbing at the polls.
The electorate handed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative party a clear mandate after he promised to take Britain out of the European Union on January 31.
But it also redrew the political map of England as swathes of its working-class north voted Conservative for the first time.
Labour's socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn -- a 70-year-old who campaign on a radical platform of state spending and re-nationalisation -- has since promised to step down.
The formal campaign to replace him is not set to begin until next month.
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Yet several prominent Labour figures have already signalled their intention to enter a leadership contest.
Blair castigated Corbyn for "almost comic indecision" about which position to take on Britain's near half-century membership in the EU.
"The absence of leadership on what was obviously the biggest issue facing the country reinforced all the other doubts about Jeremy Corbyn," Blair said in a speech in London.
"Politically, people saw him as fundamentally opposing what Britain and Western countries stand for.
"He personified politically an idea, a brand of crazy revolutionary socialism, mixing far-left economic policy with deep hostility to Western foreign policy, which never has appealed to traditional Labour voters."