Starmer stopped Burnham’s by-election bid out of fear that he would mount a leadership challenge
The fear and loathing inside Downing Street was on show this week.
“To block Andy Burnham would be stupid, so stupid that only Number 10 would try to do that,” said former Labour advisor John McTernan.
Shortly afterwards, the Labour leadership did just that. The party’s national executive committee voted eight to one to block the mayor of Greater Manchester from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Keir Starmer wants to stop Burnham’s return to parliament out of fear that he would mount a leadership challenge.
He’s willing to see Labour lose the by-election to thwart Burnham—which will only mount pressure for precisely such a challenge.
Labour has held the seat for over 90 years and won it with a majority of 13,413 votes in the general election of 2024. But the far right party Reform UK came second—and has since become an insurgent force with an eight-point lead in the national polls.
Zack Polanski’s Green Party, seen as the main force to the left of Labour, is polling high and has been backed in the by-election by The Muslim Vote campaign.
The row over Burnham shows the depths of Labour’s crisis.
Once a typical Blairite politician, Burnham has reinvented himself as a “soft left” social democrat.
He came out for a higher rate of income tax on the wealthy and a £40 billion programme of social housing last year. “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets,” he told the Telegraph newspaper.
That was a side-swipe at Starmer’s “fiscal rules”, which require Labour to cut net government debt as a share of the national economy by 2029-30. These are wholly self-imposed and are there to show bankers and bosses that Labour won’t break with free market economics.
But when the leadership hit back, Burnham back-peddled and claimed he had been “deliberately misrepresented”. He told the bosses’ newspaper, the Financial Times, that he in fact supported Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules.
So, a Labour Party under Burnham would still be caught in the same fiscal trap that sees them push austerity mark 2.
The “soft left” is a product of a contradiction at the core of the Labour Party. Labour has sought to represent the working class in parliament and push through reforms. But it has always aimed to take the reins of the British state and rule in the “national interest”.
There is an overwhelming pressure from the rich to show that Labour will govern “responsibly”. In practice, that means working within the parameters of what big business will allow.
The “soft left” in Labour sees parliament as the only way to bring about change, rather than working class struggle on the streets and in workplaces. So, whenever push comes to shove, it accepts those parameters and ends up siding with the right.
This underlines the need to break with Labour and “Labourism”, the notion that parliament is the most important route to winning social change.
In Gorton there will be immense pressure simply to line up behind Labour to block Reform UK. But Starmer’s Labour—which pushes austerity and scapegoats migrants and Muslims—is no such barrier. In fact, it fuels the rise of Nigel Farage’s far right party.
Socialist Worker supporters have built Your Party and put forward a radical, democratic vision of it. We support the Grassroots Left slate in the central executive committee elections.
Your Party should stand a well-rooted candidate who can offer a socialist alternative to Starmer’s Labour and Reform UK.
They could run an insurgent campaign that galvanises the widespread anger at mainstream politics and champions resistance.
But time is running out to stand with nominations likely due at the end of this week. The clique at the top of Your Party has focused on witch-hunts against the left and hampered setting up local organisation.
If Your Party doesn’t officially stand, it should call on its supporters to join anti-racist campaigning against Reform UK and vote for a credible left wing candidate.
The crisis of mainstream politics is accelerating. An insurgent left alternative that champions struggle could cut through.
Ed Miliband wants to build hundreds of new offshore wind turbines. The energy secretary is rushing to meet a target of supplying 95 percent of Britain’s electricity from low-carbon sources by 2030.
We will need renewable sources of energy—and a radical rethink of housing and transport—to end our use of planet wrecking fossil fuels.
Time is running out. For wind turbines to be reliably up and running by the 2030 target they need to be approved now.
Miliband missed the opportunity to act much sooner.
In 2009, workers at the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight occupied the plant for 18 days to try to stop it shutting down.
Their fight for their jobs drew on the support of hundreds of trade unionists and environmental campaigners. Supporters from across the country set up camp outside the occupied factory.
The workers directly challenged Miliband—who was energy secretary in Gordon Brown’s Labour government.
Vestas worker Dave Hughes asked him, “Why has the government stood back and allowed 600 workers to be fired?” But Miliband refused to nationalise the profitable factory.
19 homes have been destroyed and at least 19 more damaged
Another Blairite gimmick
Human rights groups say the sentences are 'torture'
