TONY BLAIR launched an extraordinary attack yesterday on North-East council leaders who fought mine closures in the 1980s - comparing them to the Soviet Politburo.

The Prime Minister criticised councillors who had vowed to "take industrial action here and protest there" at the height of 1984-5 miners' strike.

Mr Blair, who was only 29 when elected Sedgefield MP in 1983, joked they had been "about the same age as the old Politburo and had some of the same characteristics".

And he hailed the forward-looking attitude of Mick Terrans, Labour leader of Durham County Council throughout the 1980s, who alone had accepted that "mining was finished".

The Politburo, the Communist Party's policy-making body in the old Soviet Union, was renowned for blocking attempts at modernisation.

The Prime Minister's unscripted comments, in a speech at an Edinburgh business school, revealed his frustration at those who stood in the way of change, even as long ago as 1984.

He said: "The last coal mines in County Durham, where my constituency is, were about to close, and I remember there being a meeting at the local county hall.

"The leaders of the councils in the North-East in those days tended to be about the same age as the old Politburo and had some of the same characteristics, it has to be said, from time to time.

"I remember this guy getting up who was in his eighties and had been a branch official in the 1926 strike. Therefore he spoke with a certain authority.

"I always remember him getting up and saying he'd had enough of all this talk about how they were going to take industrial action here and going to protest there.

"He said 'Mining's finished in this county. What we've got to ask is where are the new jobs going to come from?'."

Mr Blair said Mr Terrans had recognised the need to seek new jobs, whether from Japanese motor manufacturers or local entrepreneurs.

He added: "Here was this man who had lived his whole life in the mines, and fought for the protection of people at the workplace, just accepting the fact that the modern world was imposing changes upon his whole sense of tradition and history."

Mr Blair said Mr Terrans, who led Durham County Council from 1981 to 1989 and later became chairman in the 1990s, had also said he had never wanted his own child to work down the mines.

"And when he thought about it even further, what he actually wanted was his own child's child to go on and get to university and get what he called a decent job," the Prime Minister added.

Mr Blair quoted his experience in County Durham in the 1980s to illustrate that aspiration, opportunity and social mobility had "motivated me since earliest days as an MP".

Cutting his political teeth in a declining industrial region, he had seen at first hand "the need for new skills, new investment and a new competitive edge based on higher value jobs".