Over the years, UKIP and its stances that chimed with the right of the Tory Party and the country as a whole ceased being a problem just for the Tories and became a problem for Labour (and the rest of us).
Blair's term in office undercut the Tories, and as with the Thatcher/major era, all was well as long as the illusion of economic competency lasted. Both finally imploded under the weight of the contradictions in their economic stances and policies and the pitfalls they entailed.
The problem with the Blair era was that it muddied the waters by cosying up to the big financial interests and becoming dependent on them.
By abandoning any pretence at even a severely watered-down socialist analysis of societal ills, it led the pinning of, then left the way open for others to pin, the blame on a series of outgroups progressively lower down the food chain - union leaders, "the hard left", "scroungers" etc., then ultimately immigrants, amid the long-running grumbling antipathy towards the EU.
Once you accept that, and allow the narrative to be reinforced without pushback over so many years, it's near impossible to walk it back while retaining credibility.
The shame of it is that the Tories were on the brink of one of these cyclical implosions - austerity was demonstrably not working in reducing the deficit, analysts were predicting another crash, then came the killer blow of the Referendum result. Rather than capitalizing on this disarray, a faction in Labour decided to opportunistically pursue their own power struggle at the worst possible moment. So it's not just the Tories who've sacrificed the country's interests to a party in-fight.
How different these last few months might have been if this hadn't been the case.
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