Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham sit on differing ends of the Labour Party and may well end up slugging it out in a leadership contest later this year – but for now they’re united.
The pair have both called out former Labour prime minister Tony Blair following his scathing 5,700 essay criticising pretty much everything about Keir Starmer’s government and his party.
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One of the things Blair took aim at in his essay was the seemingly inevitable Labour leadership contest looming on the horizon.
The three-time general election winner called out both Streeting and Burnham for their leadership desires, writing: “Wes Streeting is a huge political talent and Andy Burnham was an outstanding member of my government.
“But this leadership debate has an extraordinarily retro 20th-century feel to it. Like most politicians, they’re anxious to distance themselves from the ‘Westminster bubble’.”
He also said: “Governments which succeed don’t start with a personality contest.”
Now, both Streeting and Burnham have hit back.
Burnham and Streeting say Blair has ignored inequality in the UK
On Wednesday, the Greater Manchester mayor told the Observer that Blair had completely missed one of the main issues in the UK today – inequality.
He told the outlet: “The last 40 years has given us wide inequality – that’s what’s responsible for the abandonment of the centre.
“People don’t think the centre has delivered for them in terms of their lives, therefore they’ve gone further to the extremes.”
Burnham, who sits on a very different political flank of the Labour Party to Blair, continued: “He doesn’t mention inequality once.
“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.”
‘Blairite’ Streeting has little time for Tony’s intervention
These sentiments have now been echoed by Streeting, who is often seen as the main New Labour/Blairite figure in the Labour party currently.
Writing in the Guardian, the former health secretary said there was a “striking weakness at the heart of Tony Blair’s intervention”.
He said: “Across thousands of words about technology, geopolitics and political strategy, the defining issue of our age is barely confronted at all.
“Inequality – the economic, social and democratic fracture running through modern Britain – is treated as peripheral rather than fundamental.
“But inequality, rather than being incidental to the crises reshaping western democracies, is actually their cause.”
He also gave short-shrift to Blair’s suggestion in the essay that Britain should pursue closer ties with the US.
“When US presidents flirt with authoritarian leaders, undermine international law or pursue reckless military adventurism, Britain must have the confidence to act independently.
“We learned at terrible cost in Iraq what happens when loyalty replaces judgement. Britain’s long-term future lies in Europe,” the Labour MP for Ilford North wrote.