Andy Burnham hit back at Sir Tony Blair as Labour's civil war deepened yesterday. 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 5,700 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 also rejected Sir Tony's criticism.
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 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 also warned Britain was drifting towards a “toxic, divisive politics like the USA with all the social harm that comes with that”.
It came as the Prime Minister said he did not “agree with much” of Sir Tony’s comments 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.”
The ex-Labour leader warned on Tuesday that the Government had no plan for Britain and that his party was “playing with the future of the country”
Sir Tony 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 also blasted a series of Labour's policies including the flagship workers' rights overhaul and the minimum wage hike, while calling for Ed Miliband's net zero targets to be abandoned, welfare slashed and the triple lock ditched.
