Andy Burnham calls for more state control in riposte to Tony Blair
Andy Burnham has called for sweeping state intervention, laying out his plans for the Labour Party in a riposte to Sir Tony Blair.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, who is standing in next month’s Makerfield by-election as a route to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership and become prime minister, said that “40 years of neoliberalism” and Thatcherite policies had failed Britain and left mainstream politics close to collapse.
In a 1,500-word essay for The Times, Burnham said economic success in Manchester had been achieved through a “very interventionist” approach and the lesson was that “you can’t just leave it to the market”.
He said Britain was drifting towards a “toxic, divisive politics like the US, with all the social harm that comes with that”, blaming Blairite economics for the cost of living crisis and collapsing living standards.
This week Blair told Labour that it was risking a “dangerous” lurch to the left under a future leader and criticised government policies on workers’ rights, net zero and tax rules for the rich.
Sir Keir Starmer rejected Blair’s criticism of his government, insisting that his policies had been “vindicated” by improvements in the economy, NHS waiting lists and immigration levels.
He said his government had inherited “a very different situation in 2024 to 1997”. Starmer added: “I don’t agree that the policy choices of this government weren’t the right policy choices given what we inherited. We’re vindicated by them because those changes have happened.”
Burnham’s essay is an escalation in the ideological battle engulfing Labour and presents a clear indication of what a government led by him would look like.
In an apparent attack on Starmer, Burnham says “mainstream politics hasn’t delivered answers”. However, the mayor reserves most of his criticism for Blair.
Burnham said: “The Labour government in which I was proud to serve did many great things. It did not, however, take us off the direction set by Thatcher.”
He added: “This has given us 40 years of neoliberalism and the simple truth is this: it has not been kind to communities in Makerfield and those like them across the UK. Trickle-down economics did not in the end trickle down very much at all.”
Burnham argued that the political turmoil in Britain and the West had been driven primarily by falling living standards after the 2008 financial crash, which he blamed on deregulation.
“The fall in the living standards of millions, and the reality that life has got harder for most year on year since the financial crash in 2008, is, I believe, the gaping omission in Blair’s analysis,” he said.
“This has been the single biggest driver of the turmoil in politics he describes and the cratering of support for traditional parties of right and left, here and around the world.”
In a rebuttal of Blair’s argument for loosening regulation to boost growth, Burnham said: “The principal cause of the 2008 crash was a failure of regulation. So how can a new wave of deregulation plausibly be the answer to the problems we have experienced since?”
Burnham, who describes his politics as “business-friendly socialism”, argued economic growth could only be delivered through “strong public control and direction” and said governments could no longer “leave it to the market”.
“The lesson from Greater Manchester is that you can’t just leave it to the market, as Tony’s essay seems to suggest,” he said. “If you want higher growth in areas that don’t have it, you need strong public control and direction over both the investment strategy and the key enablers of a more productive economy such as transport, energy, water, education and housing.”
Burnham pointed to Greater Manchester’s decision to bring buses back under public control, describing it as reversing “one of the biggest Thatcher legacies”.
He also signalled support for a tougher approach to small boat crossings and asylum accommodation, saying Blair’s call to do “whatever it takes” to tackle Channel crossings “echoes many people in Makerfield in calling for the much firmer control”.
Burnham criticised the use of asylum accommodation contracts in some of Britain’s poorest areas and indicated support for triggering a break clause in the £15 billion contracts under which private companies source migrant accommodation.
He also called for an overhaul of the state, arguing that Whitehall had become too centralised and incapable of driving growth outside London. “We need a huge transfer of power, resources and personnel to combined and local authorities,” he said. “We will not create the conditions for local growth if things stay like that.”
“When politics can’t fix something as simple as a pothole, you have a very serious problem indeed,” he said. “The public are losing faith and looking elsewhere for answers and we can’t blame them.”