Blair’s advice for Labour fails to engage with inequality, senior party figures say

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. …