LABOUR legend Dennis Skinner has brushed aside Tony Blair’s dire election predictions and exhorted the party to ape the “audacious” socialist vision of its 1945 pioneers to beat the Tories.

In a new year’s rallying call, the stalwart socialist MP said that Ed Miliband could lead Labour to a majority in May that would rank alongside the historic victory achieved by Clement Attlee.

But the Beast of Bolsover made it clear that Labour would not recreate the spirit of ’45 without offering popular left-wing policies.

Mr Skinner, who will stand in his 12th general election this year, told the Star: “I remember ’45. I lived through it.

“We’d got no money but Nye Bevan said let’s build an NHS — the audacity of it!

“Despite all the talk about recession then and the influence of the right-wing press, people said: ‘That’s a good idea’ and we won with a majority of over 100.

“It’s similar to today really.”

Mr Skinner’s positive message drew a stark contrast to the downbeat forecast of Labour’s general election chances by toxic ex-PM Tony Blair this week.

The new Labour architect appeared to suggest that the Tories were set for victory in May unless Labour embraced his brand of right-wing populism.

He told the Economist magazine that the election could be one “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result.”

Mr Blair later tried to row back on the comments but GMB union leader Paul Kenny said it showed he was “disconnected from the lives of ordinary people.”

Despite being Labour’s most notorious rebel, Mr Skinner’s new year’s message struck a similar to tone to that of Labour’s current leader.

Ed Miliband also evoked the achievements of the party’s post-war government, saying: “If we could walk through those fires, we surely can meet the problems of our time.”

And Mr Skinner believes Mr Miliband should look to Attlee’s triumph over wartime Tory leader Winstone Churchill for inspiration rather than to Mr Blair.

“Churchill was beaten and he was a war hero,” he said.

“This is a fella who had been on all the news reels in every cinema every week.

“And yet such was the spirit of ’45 that we didn’t just win, it was a walkover.

“Blair had a magnificent victory in ’97 but who did he beat? John Major.”

Mr Skinner insisted though that Labour’s unlikely post-war landslide was down to Attlee “having good people around him” and the veteran MP strongly rejected Britain’s move towards a US-style presidential election campaign.

“It’s not a presidential system but the right-wing press want to portray it as that,” he said.

“They’ve managed to get this idea across for the last 20 or 30 years because they like to argue on personalities and not policies.

“I think Nye Bevan was better known in the run up to the ’45 election than Clem Attlee. He certainly was in our house.

“So it’s not about personalities, it’s about the policies of the whole party.”

Mr Skinner said that Labour’s general election pledge card must offer a real alternative to Con-Dem austerity.

“In order to outflank the Tories, Ukip, the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalists, we’ve got to have a good, strong left-wing policy,” he urged.

“People are crying out for it. It’s more than 20 years since the massive privatisation by Thatcher and people have got tired of it.”