Andy Burnham has accused Sir Tony Blair of failing to acknowledge that life for millions of Britons is much harder than it used to be, as he hit back at the former prime minister’s lengthy criticism of the direction of the Labour Party.
The cost of living crisis is the “gaping hole” in Sir Tony’s argument, the Greater Manchester mayor argued, as he said his city’s recent economic success had been achieved through a “very interventionist” approach that proved that “you can’t just leave it to the market”.
He also criticised the Blair government for being part of “40 years of neoliberalism”, which he said had “not been kind” to many communities.
His rebuke comes after Sir Tony warned that Labour was “playing with fire” over the future of the country, and urged the party not to move further to the left, saying it should instead occupy the “radical centre”.
Mr Burnham is currently walking a tightrope politically as he seeks simultaneously to win over Labour members, who will choose the party’s next leader, and the voters in Makerfield. He must win next month’s by-election in the seat, where Reform did well at the recent local elections, in order to return to parliament and be able to challenge Sir Keir Starmer.
He said he had read the Blair essay three times and agreed with various elements of it, including the call for a renewed focus on domestic issues and the “vital need for higher economic growth as the enabler of greater social justice”.
But he added: “To make no mention of the fall in the living standards of millions, and the reality that life has got harder for most year on year since the financial crash in 2008, is, I believe, the gaping omission in [Blair’s] analysis.
“This has been the single biggest driver of the turmoil in politics he describes and the cratering of support for traditional parties of right and left, here and around the world.”
During the Blair years, Mr Burnham suggested, “trickle-down economics did not in the end trickle down very much at all”.
He also criticised the former PM’s call for regulation to be loosened in order to boost growth, writing in The Times: “The principal cause of the 2008 crash was a failure of regulation.
“So how can a new wave of deregulation plausibly be the answer to the problems we have experienced since?”
Instead, he argued that economic growth can only be delivered through “strong public control and direction”.
He pointed to the decision in Greater Manchester to bring buses back under public control, describing it as reversing “one of the biggest Thatcher legacies”.
Earlier, Sir Keir also hit back at Sir Tony’s essay, which has created turmoil within Labour, saying: “My response to Tony is, yes, it’s right to talk about policy, it’s right to talk about ideas… but actually no, I don’t agree that the policy choices of this government weren’t the right policy choices, given what we inherited – a very different situation in 2024 to 1997.
“And dealing with what we had to turn around, the policy choices, we’re vindicated by them because those changes have happened.”
Sir Tony’s scathing attack on Labour, in the form of a 5,600-word essay, warned that the party had no clear plan for the future and risked doing long-term damage to both itself and the country unless the government underwent a fundamental reset.
In a damning indictment of nearly two years of the Starmer government, he said: “We don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world, and are in the wrong political position from which to devise one and win a second term.”
But he added that trying to force Sir Keir out of No 10 without a clear policy direction “is not a serious way of conducting ourselves”.
He called on Labour to occupy the “best political space”, which he described as “the radical centre”.
Sir Tony also called for old Brexit wounds not to be reopened – a view with which Mr Burnham agreed.
“He correctly argues that our relentless focus now should be on domestic issues, and fixing our own underlying problems, rather than on re-running divisive arguments about rejoining the European Union,” Mr Burnham wrote.
One of Mr Burnham’s rivals to become PM, Wes Streeting, made his opening pitch for the job with a call for Britain to rejoin the European Union. That piled pressure on the pro-EU Mr Burnham, as he seeks to win the by-election in Makerfield, which backed Leave in 2016.