Wes Streeting has defied claims that he is the “Blairite” candidate to become leader of the Labour Party by attacking Sir Tony Blair’s blind spot to “inequality” in his proposals to fix Britain.
The former health secretary resigned from Sir Keir Starmer’s government last month to prepare for a leadership bid after the Makerfield by-election on 18 June.
While Mr Streeting made his own scathing assessment of the “lack of vision” and “drift” of Sir Keir’s government, he has turned on Sir Tony’s own 5,600-word critique.
Writing for The Guardian, Mr Streeting said: “Here is the striking weakness at the heart of Tony Blair’s intervention: 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.”
The condemnation comes after Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who is contesting the Makerfield by-election and is the frontrunner to replace Sir Keir, also criticised the former prime minister.
But Mr Streeting’s intervention could be aimed at those who see the former health secretary as the candidate for the “Blairite” wing of the party.
It is a wholesale rejection of Sir Tony’s demands that welfare is slashed, the pension triple lock guarantee dumped, and net zero spending is ditched.
Mr Streeting noted: “Inequality, rather than being incidental to the crises reshaping western democracies, is actually their cause.
“People are told Britain is succeeding while they cannot afford a home, and that opportunity exists even though their children face lower living standards than their parents enjoyed. They are told to work harder while wealth accumulates ever-more narrowly at the top. And they notice the unfairness.
“A nurse paying back student debt sees a greater proportion of their income taxed than landlords collecting gains from rising property values. People in Britain’s poorest communities fall into ill health nearly two decades earlier than those in the wealthiest. Most private wealth is now inherited rather than earned.”
The two also appear to be at loggerheads over Brexit. In his first speech after quitting Sir Keir’s government, Mr Streeting made a clarion call for the UK to rejoin the European Union.
But in his essay, Sir Tony insisted that Britain could not reset its relationship with the EU while it is economically weak and dismissed the idea that Britain could re-enter quickly, despite playing a prominent role in the Remain campaign himself.
Mr Streeting also claimed Sir Tony put “policy first, politics second”, while he argued that policy is not made in a valueless vacuum.
On Trump, Mr Streeting also took umbrage at Sir Tony saying more needs to be done to rebuild the UK’s damaged relationship with America.
Mr Streeting warned that “Atlanticism cannot mean automatic subservience” and the Iraq war, which Sir Tony led the UK into, was the consequence of “loyalty replacing judgement”.
