ANDREW NEIL: My real beef with Streeting and Burnham? They are promoting the same dreary socialist agenda that brought this country to its knees in the 70s

By ANDREW NEIL, DAILY MAIL COLUMNIST Published: 01:01, 30 May 2026 | Updated: 01:01, 30 May 2026 The negative – even hostile – response of many Labour politicians to Tony Blair’s searing critique of the Government this week tells you everything you need to know about where today’s party stands on the key issues. It detests the market economy, longs for an even bigger State, worships welfare rather than hard work and champions a dismal egalitarianism over enterprise and effort. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the responses of the most active pretenders to Keir Starmer’s throne – Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting. It was telling that both chose to berate Blair for failing to highlight ‘inequality’ in his missive. It was, opined Streeting, the ‘striking weakness’ in Blair’s intervention, the ‘defining issue of our age [which he] barely confronted at all… the economic, social and democratic fracture running through modern Britain’. And Streeting is supposed to be the Blairite. Blair ‘doesn’t mention inequality once’, chimed in Burnham. ‘If you don’t get how that’s driving politics now… then you are not understanding what’s going on.’ Take that, Tony. So there you have it. The supposed Right and Left of the Labour Party united in their condemnation of Blair, the most successful leader in the history of their party by a country mile. Both even singing from the same critical song sheet. Burnham and Streeting, of course, are vying for the affections of the MPs, trade unions and activists who could make them leader – and the Left is now the dominant force in all three constituent parts of the Labour tribe.  Earlier this week, I wrote in these pages that there were no votes to be had in the modern Labour Party by being seen to be strong on defence. Burnham (pictured) and Streeting, of course, are vying for the affections of the MPs, trade unions and activists who could make them leader Inequality was, opined Streeting, the ‘striking weakness’ in Blair’s intervention, the ‘defining issue of our age [which he] barely confronted at all… the economic, social and democratic fracture running through modern Britain’ It’s equally clear Burnham and Streeting have concluded there are no votes in cosying up to Blair or his ideas either. Blairism in the Labour Party is truly dead and buried. I don’t for a moment claim – and neither would Blair –that inequality is unimportant. There are many ways in which Britain would be fairer, more prosperous, more dynamic if there were fewer inequalities – or, more accurately – more equality of opportunity. My beef with the Streetings and Burnhams of the Labour Party – indeed with the current Leftward drift of the party as a whole – is how they propose to make us more equal: higher taxes – especially on the wealth creators – more welfare, more government ownership and more regulation. In short, the same dreary socialist concoction that brought us to our knees when Labour was in power in the 1970s. I recently suggested Labour should rebadge itself the Welfare Party. But perhaps the Back-to-the-Future Party would be more appropriate. Burnham is especially guilty of this. In the Makerfield by-election, which he hopes will be his springboard to the Labour leadership, it’s almost as if he’s running against Margaret Thatcher and wants to return us to a mythical pre-Thatcherite idyll. Even though she stepped down as Prime Minister 36 years ago (and died 13 years ago) she gets it in the neck from Burnham for all the ills of the constituency for which he has suddenly decided he wants to be MP. When I pointed out on X that this was a rather strange basis for a campaign in 2026, he responded by saying I needed to get out of London more. Burnham responded to Blair's mini-manifesto, arguing for a 'very interventionist government' Fair enough. But you don’t have to leave London to know that Makerfield has been Labour since it was created in 1983, that it has had a Labour council since the greater Wigan authority was created in 1974 and that it falls within the ambit of the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is also Labour (and happens to be Burnham – at least for now). Oh, and there was a Labour government at Westminster between 1997 and 2010. So whatever ails Makerfield, I responded on X, could conceivably be laid at the door of his own party as much as that of Thatcher, if not more so. I didn’t hear back from him. Well, he has a campaign to fight. And, in a sense, he knows what he’s doing. By railing against ‘40 years of Thatcherite neoliberalism’ he is burnishing his credentials with the Labour Left, which has always despaired that so little was done to reverse the Thatcher revolution during the Blairite era. He intends to put that right. In his response to Blair’s mini-manifesto he argued for a ‘very interventionist’ government with ‘strong public control and direction’ over investment and key industries such as transport, energy and even housing – the antithesis of the New Labour years. And all in the name of a more equal society. So let’s look at how that might work out. But before we do, a word about inequality. Left-wing rhetoric increasingly implies that the rich and well-paid barely pay any taxes at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our tax receipts are more dependent on a small number of the well-off than almost any other advanced economy. The top 10 per cent of income-earners stump up 60 per cent of all income tax revenues. The top 1 per cent pay 30 per cent and the richest 0.1 per cent account for 11 per cent – which is a bigger share of income tax receipts than the lowest 50 per cent of earners contribute. The famous 'class sketch' from The Frost Report – featuring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett – satirises the British class system By railing against ‘40 years of Thatcherite neoliberalism’ Burnham is burnishing his credentials with the Labour Left That looks to me like a pretty progressive tax system. Of course, you could always squeeze even more out of the high earners. But that would very quickly be subject to the law of diminishing returns, as the well-off find ways to avoid higher taxes or simply leave for friendlier tax climes. The Left often say: ‘Good riddance, we don’t need them.’ They couldn’t be more wrong. Given how dependent our tax system is on the high-fliers, when they leave it’s a huge chunk of our tax base that is walking out the door. And the only way to make up the shortfall is to impose higher taxes on those on more modest incomes. Yet aspiring Labour prime ministers continue to scurry around looking for new ways to tax us, especially ‘the rich’. Even though the level of wealth inequality has been broadly stable since the 1980s, wealth taxes are now the Left’s new favourite source of revenue raising. But there’s a problem. Wealth taxes have been tried in numerous advanced economies, especially in Europe, from Sweden to France. None has ever raised that much revenue. All contributed to a shrinking of the tax base as the rich left with their capital. Most have been abandoned. While Burnham has jumped on the wealth tax bandwagon, he has – characteristically – provided no details of what form they would take. Streeting has fallen back on a proposal to raise capital gains tax (CGT), which he now designates a wealth tax, to income tax levels. It’s a debate worth having. Why not tax income and capital gains at the same rate? But if there is a case – and Nigel Lawson equalised them when he was chancellor in 1988 – it’s one of equity rather than extra revenues. HMRC’s ready reckoner calculates higher CGT would actually reduce revenues in the short term, as people delayed realising their capital gains. Over time, revenues would rise – but modestly. It would be far from the game-changer Streeting thinks, especially since he wants to build in all manner of exemptions, further complicating a tax code that is already the longest in the world. So, even though our tax burden is at a 70-year high, Labour politicians are still searching for new taxes to pay for more government which, they claim, will make us a more equal society. Yet I can discern no correlation between bigger government and less inequality. Indeed, state action can often exacerbate inequalities. Mass migration, tolerated (sometimes even encouraged) by all governments in this century, has depressed the pay of those on average earnings or below, increasing the gap between the lower and higher paid. An energy policy which has resulted in us having industrial fuel bills that are among the highest in the world has hollowed out our heavy industry, destroying tens of thousands of well-paid blue-collar jobs in the process. Nor does pushing up taxes to pay for more welfare make us more equal – just less dynamic and less prosperous. If this Labour government survives its full five years, total welfare spending will have risen £90billion by the end of the decade to around £410billion a year. Taxes on working people are rising to pay for that. Loading taxes on the strivers while paying out-of-work benefits to 6.5million people of working age is a strange way to promote equality or economic growth. Before the pandemic there were just over 2million on sickness benefit. Now it’s over 3million and by 2030 it will be 4million, according to official projections. Total health-related benefits cost £66billion a year when Labour came to power. They will be £100billion by 2030. Even though our tax burden is at a 70-year high, Labour politicians are still searching for new taxes to pay for more government which, they claim, will make us a more equal society Tony Blair and then health minister Andy Burnham in 2006. If the current Labour government survives its full five years, total welfare spending will have risen £90billion by the end of the decade to around £410billion a year This is not a recipe for less inequality. It is a sure-fire guarantee of more stagnation. Labour’s new consensus that an activist state equals less inequality is belied by its own actions. It has introduced above-inflation increases in the minimum wage, beefed up workers’ rights – even for the young and part-timers – and increased employers’ national insurance contributions. With these three measures, Labour has made it more risky and costly to employ people. So there can be no surprise unemployment has risen. Young people, in particular, are paying the price. This week the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets) passed the one million mark for the first time. Six out of 10 of that one million have never had a job. According to Alan Milburn, a Cabinet minister in the Blair years who published a seminal report on the problem this week, the total will hit 1.25million before the decade is out. Sadly, many of these youngsters currently living on benefits will never find a job. As Milburn wrote: the current welfare state is ‘exacerbating inactivity’. We are building inequality into the system, courtesy of the state. Yet Labour wants to double down on all of this. There is, of course, another way. It is to accept that all societies will have their inequalities and the pursuit of egalitarianism as an end in itself can only be achieved via the dead hand of State socialism or, worse, communism. And recognise that a properly run market economy can overcome many of our festering inequalities. Strong growth and rising prosperity benefit everyone with the gumption to seize whatever opportunities present themselves. The State, of course, has a role in providing the overall framework in which enterprise can thrive and should show special concern for people who are losing out and areas which are suffering. But its proper job is to facilitate the wealth creators, not get in their way, on the understanding that profit is not a dirty word but the reward for risk which, in turn, generates the wealth – and by extension the tax revenues – required to finance our public services. There need be no conflict between a dynamic market economy and an effective welfare state – but only if welfare is seen as a hand-up in time of need, not a handout that creates a lifestyle built around benefits. A safety net through which nobody falls and a ladder up which everyone has the opportunity to climb as far as their abilities will take them is a simple but sound template for the good society. Yet on so many fronts Labour now stands for the opposite. Take the education sector. There has been a remarkable improvement in English state schools in recent years, which has seen them soar up the international league tables, but the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson – for whom the phrase ‘dull egalitarianism’ might have been invented –appears to be intent on reversing this progress. Devolution has largely been a disaster for Scotland and Wales but it has brought one benefit: it gives us a glimpse of the future if we continue down the path Labour is now on. In Scotland, the state now accounts for 55 per cent of GDP, in Wales it’s closer to 60 per cent. Yet in both countries public services are poor, poverty is rife, the economy is stagnant – only kept afloat by massive public spending – and inequalities are baked in perhaps never to be eradicated. Even the middle class prefer the warm embrace of public sector employment to the risk of entrepreneurial endeavour. It’s not often we get to see what’s waiting for us on our current trajectory. We cannot claim not to have been warned. The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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