Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has described Andy Burnham as being delusional and dangerous and says that Labour is “playing with fire” and risking the country’s future by changing prime minister
In what some will regard as an extraordinary intervention during the Ashton in Makerfield by election campaign Blair also criticised Keir Starmer’s government for being too left-wing
“The Government is governing from an essentially traditional Labour ‘soft left’ position, parked firmly in the Party’s comfort zone… in the last Budget, it appeared as if we were increasing tax to pay for additional welfare spending, when the public already thinks welfare bills are too high”
Blair writing a 5000 word essay on the Blair Institute for Global Change website said that “trying to force the Prime Minister out before we know what policy direction we’re bringing in, is not a serious way of conducting ourselves.”
Blair also described Burnham as having been “an outstanding member of my government” but he added that Governments which succeed don’t start with a personality contest. Or a political question — as in, how do we ‘save the country’ from Reform. They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose, an analysis of what is wrong and a plan to put it right.“
Blair criticised Burnham for wanting to go further left on taxes, spending and welfare, as well as for espousing the criticism of the last 40 years of neoliberalism,
Blair says, is a “perennial delusion” that becomes “dangerous” when in government.
He listed a number of manifesto commitments that should have been scrapped, like the abolition of non-dom status and raising the minimum wage.
He particularly directed criticism towards Angela Rayner’s workers’ rights laws and Ed Miliband’s net-zero ‘acceleration’. Blair explained: ‘These are commitments which economic circumstances have rendered unwise to proceed with… Dropping the commitments would have been painful but bearable because the government would have started with real goodwill from business. But we didn’t.’
