Andy Burnham issues furious 1,500-word response to Tony Blair attack | Politics | News
Andy Burnham has responded to Tony Blair’s intervention (Image: Getty)
Andy Burnham hit back at Sir Tony Blair as Labour’s civil war deepened. The Greater Manchester Mayor claimed Britain had been failed by “40 years of neoliberalism” in his response to the former prime minister’s intervention.
Sir Tony launched a scathing attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s government and warned Labour against lurching to the left in a 5,600-word essay. But Mr Burnham, who is eyeing a return to Parliament in the crunch Makerfield by-election to challenge the Prime Minister’s leadership, blamed Blairite economics for the cost of living crisis.
His response came as Sir Keir, who is fighting for his political future in the wake of Labour’s local election drubbing and the Mandelson scandal, also rejected Sir Tony’s criticism.
Sir Tony Blair warned against Labour shifting to the left (Image: Getty)
Read more: Keir Starmer hits back at Tony Blair as Labour civil war explodes
Writing in The Times, Mr Burnham said: “The Labour Government in which I was proud to serve did many great things. It did not, however, take us off the direction set by the Thatcher path.”
He added: “This has given us 40 years of neoliberalism and the simple truth is this: it has not been kind to communities in Makerfield and those like them across the UK. Trickle-down economics did not in the end trickle down very much at all.”
He said falling living standards in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, which he blamed on deregulation, had been “the single biggest driver of the turmoil in politics”.
Mr Burnham added: “So how can a new wave of deregulation plausibly be the answer to the problems we have experienced since?”
He said the economic success in Manchester was down to a “very interventionist” approach, insisting that the lesson was that “you can’t just leave it to the market”.
He warned Britain was drifting towards a “toxic, divisive politics like the USA with all the social harm that comes with that” in his 1,500 word response.
He also called for an overhaul of the British state to “fix the dysfunctional parts of Whitehall”.
But he agreed with Sir Tony’s call for the UK to do “whatever it takes” to tackle the small boats crisis.
It came as the Prime Minister said he did not “agree with much” of his predecessor’s comments.
Speaking during a visit to a train depot in west London, he said: “We can all argue about individual policies, but the real question is what’s the change, what’s the difference that is happening in a country that we inherited two years ago in a very poor place.”
Sir Keir pointed to measures on economic growth and investment in public services, as well as falling NHS waiting lists and immigration levels and rebuilding relations with the EU as examples of his Government’s achievements.
He said he agreed with Sir Tony that it was “right to talk about policy, it’s right to talk about ideas”.
But he added: “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, who is the only Labour leader to win three general elections, warned on Tuesday that the Government had no plan and that his party was “playing with the future of the country”.
The ex-Labour leader, who left office in 2007, said: “The Labour Party is playing with fire; or, more accurately, with its future, and that of the country.”
He went on: “The Government’s principal problem isn’t Keir’s personality. Or a failure to communicate ‘our achievements’. Or a need to assert more strongly Labour’s ‘values’.
“It is because 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 we can devise one and win a second term.
“The Government is governing from an essentially traditional Labour ‘soft left’ position, parked firmly in the party’s comfort zone.”
He said Labour had held back business and growth since it won the 2024 general election and blasted policies including the employers’ national insurance tax raid, the workers’ rights overhaul and minimum wage hike.
He also called for Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s net zero targets to be abandoned, welfare to be slashed and the state pension triple lock ditched.
And he warned Labour against forcing Sir Keir out without having a proper policy agenda to follow him.
