Sir Keir Starmer has hit back at Sir Tony Blair after the former prime minister launched a scathing attack on his government.
The prime minister said he doesn’t “agree with much” of what Sir Tony said about his policies in his 5,700-word essay on the future of Labour and the country, and insisted he was in fact “vindicated by them”.
In a major intervention on Tuesday evening, Sir Tony urged the party to return to its “radical centre” and warned that the country was in a “mess” because the party had failed to put policy first and politics last.
In a damning indictment of nearly two years of a Starmer government, he added: “We don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country in a fast-changing world, and are in the wrong political position from which to devise one and win a second term.”
But Sir Keir rejected his criticism, saying he inherited a “very different situation in 2024 to 1997”.
“I agree with him that we should be having a discussion about policy and ideas, and that’s what generates politics, that’s where the focus should be, so Tony is right about that,” Sir Keir said during a visit to the Acton Works train depot in west London on Thursday.
“You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much of what Tony says about what the government is doing.
“We can all argue about individual policies, but the real question is, what’s the change? What’s the difference that is happening in a country that we inherited two years ago, in a very poor place?”
Sir Keir pointed to his policies on economic growth and investment in public services, as well as falling NHS waiting lists and immigration levels, as examples of his government’s achievements.
He said: “My response to Tony is, yes, it’s right to talk about policy, it’s right to talk about ideas, that’s where the debate should be.
“But actually no, I don’t agree that the policy choices of this government weren’t the right policy choices given what we inherited, a very different situation in 2024 to 1997.
“And dealing with what we had to turn around, the policy choices, we’re vindicated by them because those changes have happened.”
In his 5,700-word essay, Sir Tony criticised Labour’s flagship workers’ rights legislation and above-inflation uplift to the minimum wage, while calling for the party to abandon its net zero targets, cut welfare and rethink the pensions triple lock.
But he warned that trying to force the prime minister out without a clear policy direction “is not a serious way of conducting ourselves”.
It comes as Sir Keir faces a looming leadership challenge, which will likely be triggered if Andy Burnham secures victory in the Makerfield by-election and returns to parliament.
Sir Tony’s essay has drawn criticism from within Labour circles, including from Sir Keir’s potential leadership challengers, Mr Burnham and Wes Streeting.
The Greater Manchester mayor criticised the essay for not mentioning inequality, telling 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.”
Mr Streeting took a similar view, with the Labour former minister arguing the “striking weakness at the heart of” the intervention was the lack of mention of inequality.
