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| L Keir Starmer R Andy Burnham |
Short of an unexpected natural disaster, it looks like Andy Burnham will be Labour leader and new Prime Minister, perhaps be the end of July. Labour conference looks like being a coronation, there being little likelihood of any right-wing opposition to Burnham from the parliamentary Labour Party, most of whom are only too happy for a chance to salvage their political careers under a new leader.
Before considering the implications of Burnham ascendancy, it is worth noting that he will be the seventh Prime Minister in ten years – a record for the British capitalism state and one that marks it out as the least stable in western Europe in recent times. Moreover, the dumping of a Labour Prime Minister, less than two years into the parliament has never happened before in more than a century of Labour history.
Starmer’s resignation speech was a master-class in self-righteousness, lies and hypocrisy. He claimed to have inherited a party “that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt”. In fact Labour was the biggest party is western Europe, awash with money from its membership dues. Starmer squandered this money on pointless litigations over alleged antisemitism.
As for “morally” bankruptcy, Starmer glossed over ditching his “ten pledges” as soon as he was elected, and the tens of thousands of pounds-worth of “gifts” he received from rich backers immediately on coming into office. And there was no greater absence of morality in helping empower Netanyahu in his genocidal attack on the people of Gaza.
The key question that faces socialists
The key question that faces socialists today is this: to what extent will the Labour Party revive under Andy Burnham? If the Labour Party is pretty much a moribund organisation now, with few activists and largely demoralised or quiescent membership – not to mention the plague of CLP suspensions and closures – will it revive again in the future, and will it once again, a place where real socialist ideas can be aired and get a hearing? The answer to that, as we will explain, is a heavily qualified‘yes’. Qualified, only because the scale of change and the pace of change are impossible to predict.
There is a spectrum of opinion on the left as to what difference Burnham will make. On one end of the spectrum is the Marathon to Snickers view: the name and wrapper was changed, but the content was exactly the same. On the other end of the spectrum, some on the left think that Burnham will ‘save’ the Labour Party from a defeat at the hands of Reform. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but where precisely it lies on that spectrum remains to be seen.
In times of social and economic crises, class conflicts and struggles are sharpened to a higher degree, through strikes, demonstrations, occupations and even riots. As economic uncertainties and insecurities intensify, so also do political reactions to them. But clash of opposing class interests is always reflected inside the labour movement – in the trade unions and the Labour Party – in the form of more bitter and angry conflict between left and right, over what is the correct course of action.
Such is the period that is opening up at the present time. We can more or less identify the pressures that will be put on Andy Burnham from both right and left, once he takes the keys of Ten Downing Street.
The worst Parliamentary Labour Party in its history
Burnham will be under the sway of a Parliamentary Labour Party which is the worst in the Labour Party’s entire history – nine-tenths of ‘Labour’ MPs with little connection to working class people, and out only to further their own careers and prestige.
Burnham, let us remember, has been adopted by the PLP right wing as the only hope of saving their careers. Josh Simons, who stood down as Makerfield MP to let Burnham stand, is an arch right-winger. He was the director of Labour Together, that toxic factional organisation that spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and then promote Starmer for the leadership. (See analysis of that by-election, here)
Much of the huge sums of money given to Labour Together was illegal – not declared to the Electoral Commission, for which the organisation was fined – but as director, Josh Simons spent tens of thousands more to put private detectives onto the journalists who were researching that illegality. (On this, see the excellent book Fraud, by Paul Holden).
This PLP of carpet-baggers and chancers only want Burnham to save their necks. But in the process, they will also push him towards ‘moderation’ and against too much ‘radicalism’ – like the rest of Labour’s right-wing, they have no understanding of real politics and their political horizons cannot see beyond the capitalist system.
In pushing from the right, the PLP will be backed up by the media and the establishment in general, including the civil service, the judiciary and the defence procurement monopolies who want to make billions more in profit from an expanded defence budget.
The biggest of these pressures on Burnham, however, will be the insistent and remorseless pressure of the market system itself. Over recent months, even the smallest threat of Starmer’s resignation led to the bond markets being in a panic, pushing up interest rates. There is a constant threat from this quarter that ‘unfunded’ government expenditure will lead to a massive rise in interest rates – as happened under the ill-fated premiership of Liz Truss – and an economic crisis.
The imperatives of capitalism – more austerity
The consensus in all the representative journals of capitalism – like the Financial Times and the Economist – is that there need to be strict controls on government expenditure and that increased spending on defence comes out of spending on welfare. For capitalism, these policies are an imperative.
These, therefore, will constitute the pressures that will push Andy Burnham in the direction of the Marathon/Snickers metaphor – a new label, but the same confectionary underneath. In response to hints about public spending, Burnham has already been making some suggestions that he will abide by the same ‘fiscal rules’ – ie limit public spending – as has Rachel Reeves.
But on the other hand, what will be different for Burnham, as compared to Starmer, is that expectations are different. Burnham has been catapulted into high office precisely because there is a perception within the labour movement that he will represent working class people better. To some extent, although often vaguely, he has articulated the needs of working class people – for example, by talking about “forty years of failed neo-liberalism” and the need for public ownership of utilities.
Most trade union leaders, with a few honourable exceptions, cravenly supported Keir Starmer heaving the Labour Party to the right. With the assistance of the then general secretary, David Evans, the left was attacked mercilessly. Labour conferences – with the support of right-wing union leaders – backed constitutional changes that shifted the balance of power to the right wing. Corbyn was isolated and not allowed to stand. MPs were suspended for supporting measures like abolition of the two-child benefit cap (a measure Starmer was eventually dragging kicking and screaming into doing away with) and thousands of members were expelled or walked away.
For the 2024 general election, scores of right-wing candidates were parachuted into seats over the heads and usually against the wishes of local party members, and all of this was accepted by most of the trade union reps on Labour’s NEC.
TULO showing signs of life
That may no longer be the case, however. The organisation of affiliated trade union members, TULO, has so much clout in the Party and on the NEC that it could lift its little finger and make the Party leadership jump. They are supposed to represent four million affiliated members but in the Starmer years, TULO misrepresented them.
Now, however, TULO seems to be waking up. In its recent statement it said, in part, “Labour’s affiliated unions are deeply concerned by the Party’s catastrophic election results. They show a stark disconnect between this Labour Government and the working people.”
How can it be otherwise? The trade union leaders understand – even though they may sometimes pretend not to – that the surge of votes for Reform, which threatens the careers of MPs and the rights of workers in general, is not due to a wave of millions of voters become racist. It is due to the overwhelming gut feeling of millions of workers that their economic prospects are getting worse year on year.
Andy Burnham will be under enormous pressure to deal with these very real concrete issues. Working families are less secure. The services on which they rely, especially the NHS, is falling apart in front of their eyes. Their children and grandchildren are getting married but there is no decent affordable housing available. Good, well-paid jobs exist only for a few, while most jobs do not provide enough to live on week by week. Reform UK and the rag-bag assortment of racists and xenophobes have no answers – socialists are well aware of that – but it is easy to understand why so many voters are seduced into thinking that ‘someone’ else, ie migrants, are getting more resources than them.
To take one more relevant example, The Guardian published a story only yesterday about child poverty. “Four hundred thousand children in the UK”, it reported, “were supported by baby banks in 2025, an 11% increase from the year before, prompting warnings from charities that they “cannot continue to absorb the impact of child poverty on this scale” without government support”. And this is under a ‘Labour’ government.
What we need to understand is this: it was not due to parliamentary chicanery or manoeuvres in the corridors of power that Starmer is being booted out. It is due to the bread and butter issues that face millions of working class families and the impact these have had on electoral politics.
And it is in this respect that there will be expectations put on Burnham that were not put on Starmer – in the streets, in the workplaces and in the communities. There are expectations that he will have to provide some answers, something different, even if it means challenging the wealth, power and privileges of the billionaire-class.
If, as seems likely, the right wing of the parliamentary party is not willing to stand a candidate against Burnham, it is because they know that their candidate – Darren Jones, or Wes Streeting, for example – would be utterly crushed in any contest. That is a measure of the feelings of the Labour and trade union grass roots.
Left Horizons believes, therefore, that the Burnham leadership and premiership will mark a new stage in the life of the Labour Party, a small beginning of change, but only a beginning. It does not mean a return to the old conditions, where the two-party system dominated utterly and Labour was the only serious party on the left. The Green Party, with a radical leader and policies as left as Corbyn’s ever were, is here to stay in the short and medium-term at least. It is a party with many good socialist members, thousands of them driven out of Labour by Starmerism.
Labour is today a desert, but things might change
But the idea that the Labour Party is near ‘death’ is a long way from certain. In fact, that argument has been made and proven too many times in the past, and at least at the moment it still rests on the affiliation of four million trade union members.
If an early period of promise and hope under Burnham eventually gives way to a period of disappointment, because of the pressure of capitalism and his inability or unwillingness to resist that, even then that will not necessarily mean the end of that party.
Such disappointment in the present circumstances is far more likely to lead to a revolt within the affiliated unions, and through that, to a revolt in the Labour Party in general. Where the Labour Party is today a political desert, with little activity and discussion, Burnham’s accession to power represents the very early beginning of a change, at first particularly inside the unions.
We live in a period whereby the crisis of the capitalist system is more demanding and intense than it has been for generations. Socialist ideas – the programme of democratic control and management of the commanding heights of the economy and a rational economic plan in the interests of all – are more relevant today than at any time. Such ideas will find a far greater echo in the future, but particularly in the organisations where workers and youth gather to discuss left-wing politics.
Labour has not been such an organisation for some time, but that could be about to change. How much it changes, and how quickly, we cannot say, but in the life of this very important political party, Burnham’s rise could mark an important turning point.
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