‘He doesn’t mention inequality once’: Burnham hits back at Blair’s Labour criticism

Burnham joins senior figures such as Torsten Bell saying the former PM’s essay does not address today’s challenges

Tony Blair’s criticism of the Labour party fails to engage with inequality and the “extremes of austerity”, senior party figures have said.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is widely expected to launch a leadership challenge if he wins next month’s Makerfield byelection, said the essay merited a “considered response” and he would set one out on Thursday.

But he said Blair had failed to engage with how inequality was at the heart of Britain’s political issues. “He doesn’t mention inequality once,” Burnham told the Observer.

“If you don’t get how that’s driving politics now, if you are not rooting your analysis in the fact that people are unable to live and that things that were taken for granted are no longer affordable, then you are not understanding what’s going on.”

Torsten Bell, the DWP minister who was a key author of Labour’s last budget, said the former prime minister had made a compelling political argument but one that did not engage in serious policy.

Bell said Blair was right to call out “shallow personality politics” but added: “The challenge for the essay is that it doesn’t have a project that remotely fits the time and place we are living in. Saying ‘AI’ is not the same as having a plan for Britain.”

Overnight, Blair published a lengthy critique of Labour’s time in office under Keir Starmer – and warned the party not to rush headlong into a new leadership contest before properly testing ideas that could revive the party’s fortunes.

Blair argued for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon restrictions on oil and gas and smooth relations with Donald Trump.

“The Labour party is playing with fire; or, more accurately with its future, and that of the country. Whether there is a leadership change or not is irrelevant if it doesn’t start with a policy debate,” he wrote, in an essay which also criticised the proposals of leadership hopefuls Wes Streeting and Burnham.

Senior Labour figures have accused Blair of being out of touch with the realities of UK politics and the shifting priorities of the electorate.

Bell said the essay “paints in broad brushstrokes but has far too little actual engagement with the country that is the canvas for those brushstrokes”. He said Blair made valid points on planning reform and regional investment but said the essay did not “live up to its own advice” in engaging deeply with the substance.

“There is no understanding here of why taxes have risen over the past decade,” Bell said, linking that to higher debt interest costs and the “extremes of austerity for public services”. He said it was “a long way from the truth” that high welfare spend was entirely to blame.

Bell said that Blair’s call for VAT to have been raised instead of employers’ national insurance was “a recipe for much higher interest rates” and inflation. And he said there was as “deep inconsistency” in his approach to the US – saying he was “pro-enabling an Iran conflict that has done huge damage to global economy”.