Andy Burnham has accused Sir Tony Blair of failing to understand the pressures facing ordinary Britons as the pair clash over Labour’s future.
The Greater Manchester Mayor launched the attack after the former Prime Minister published a lengthy essay warning Labour against lurching to the left on taxation, welfare and public spending.
Sir Tony argued the party risked slipping into the political "relegation zone" and accused Sir Keir Starmer of retreating into a left-wing "comfort zone".
The former Prime Minister also took aim at Mr Burnham ahead of the Makerfield by-election, with the Greater Manchester Mayor widely expected to launch a leadership challenge if he returns to Westminster.
Speaking to The Observer, Mr Burnham claimed Sir Tony had failed to grasp the economic frustration driving support for parties such as Reform UK and the Greens.
"He doesn't mention inequality once," he said.
"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 Burnham, once viewed as a committed Blairite after Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, said New Labour had become too dependent on market-driven policies.
Mr Burnham claimed Sir Tony had failed to grasp the economic frustration driving support for other parties
| GETTY"If you want to call it left-wing, it's fine by me," he said, adding that "Blairism sometimes saw the market as always the answer. That's its problem."
Wes Streeting also criticised Sir Tony’s intervention, arguing inequality lay at the heart of growing political instability across Europe and the US.
"Inequality, rather than being incidental to the crises reshaping Western democracies, is actually their cause," Mr Streeting said.
Sir Tony’s comments followed remarks made by Mr Burnham earlier this month, where he blamed "40 years of neoliberalism" for economic decline in northern England.
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Sir Tony argued the party risked slipping into the political 'relegation zone'
|GETTY
The former Prime Minister later challenged the remarks during an interview on BBC Radio 4, asking: "Nothing good happened in that period of Thatcher with the business community or New Labour? I don't think he really means that.
“I like him and I wish him well, but when we switched from that Corbyn agenda there wasn’t enough explanation as to why Corbyn was an election loser - that was obvious, but why the whole agenda was wrong.
“You have to explain to people why it’s wrong if you want to lead the party in the future in a coherent way."
Allies of Sir Tony told The Times that Mr Burnham's swipe had "put a fire in his belly" to become more active in Labour’s internal debates.
Sir Tony accused the Prime Minister of retreating into a left-wing 'comfort zone'
| GETTYSir Tony also used the intervention to hit out at Ed Miliband’s Net Zero strategy, accusing him of pushing for a "quixotic fantasy".
He urged Sir Keir to abandon the targets and allow more North Sea oil and gas drilling.
The former Labour leader argued Britain could not tackle climate change alone while China, the US and India continued producing the majority of global emissions.
Dismissing the idea Britain’s climate policies would influence Beijing, Sir Tony told the News Agents podcast: "Xi Jinping is not sitting there in Beijing saying, I wonder what Ed Miliband thinks."
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