Labour Being Labour
Ben Wildsmith
Yesterday, for a couple of hours, it was possible to glimpse something that resembled the Labour Party we remember from history.
When Andy Burnham announced his hope to run in the Gorton and Denton by election, it seemed that high profile figures at the top of the party were ready to reassert their traditional take on Labour values.
Lucy Powell, Sadiq Khan, Angela Rayner, and Ed Miliband all warned against blocking Burnham’s run for Parliament. They correctly pointed out that the Manchester Mayor was uniquely well-placed to win the election thanks to his popularity amongst the electorate in the area.
Tellingly, Powell, who recently trounced Keir Starmer’s favoured candidate for the deputy leadership, Brigitte Phillipson, cited Burnham’s practical application of Labour values as the reason for his voter approval.
As Starmer and Rachel Reeves drive Labour towards the electoral wilderness with their rootless expediency and unwillingness to challenge economic orthodoxy, Burnham’s approach is more recognisably Labour. His Keynsian approach – invest to prosper – offers something substantial to voters who have lost hope in traditional politics altogether.
24 hours on and Labour has, as it always does, fed hope into the party machinery and transformed it into despairing torpor.
Remaining Labour voters wanted Burnham to run, so did floating voters polled in the constituency, most Labour MPs wanted him back along with the London Mayor, the Deputy Leader, the previous Deputy Leader and a previous Leader. So naturally, when a subset of the National Executive Committee voted on whether to let him run today, eight voted against, with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood abstaining and Lucy Powell’s the only vote for Burnham.
The reason given for Cinders not going to the ball was that glass slippers are too expensive nowadays.
Money would need to be found for a mayoral election and Labour, apparently, can’t afford that. The reason its coffers are running low, of course, is that membership has plummeted under Keir Starmer’s leadership. So, when he cast his own vote today, he was effectively justifying it with his own extraordinary unpopularity.
‘We can’t afford two elections, mate, not after I’ve driven everyone out of the party!’
Subversion
This abuse of party machinery is standard in Labour. The subversion of its democracy remains the first priority for any incoming leadership team but has been achieved so efficiently by Morgan McSweeney as to strip its fig leaf of legitimacy.
Who, exactly, is that 8-1 majority pretending to represent? Well, certainly not the membership, who have handed a recent mandate to Powell as Deputy Leader.
Having barred its most popular potential candidate, Labour now faces a by election that could see either Reform UK or the Greens capture the seat. There are rumours that Zia Yusef will run for Reform and that Zack Polanski might announce for the Greens.
High profile candidates like these two can upend any existing arithmetic as media focus will drive a higher turnout and unpredictable voting patterns.
So, if Labour were to lose this seat, what next?
Well, the desperation emanating from the First Minister’s office in Cardiff this week suggests that the loss would be followed swiftly by further bad news for the party around the UK.
Scaremongering
Eluned Morgan is now reduced to parroting Andrew RT Davies’ scaremongering about Plaid Cymru ‘separatists’ ending life as we know it. Trying to cast the genial Rhun ap Iorweth as Ming the Merciless seems unlikely to fly as a strategy for victory.
If, as seems likely, Labour now careens through a series of damaging defeats. Starmer will surely be shown the door this summer. Control-freakery and weaponizing party structures can only get him so far before the reality of the ballot box reveals the situation as it truly is.
To whom, then, would Labour turn if Burnham is locked out of parliament. This weekend’s events seem to benefit the ambitious and media-savvy Wes Streeting.
Without an obvious candidate of the left, his sheer personal drive could see him home. If more radical voices within the party are concerned by that, then today’s decision to bar Burnham needs challenging.
If ‘Labour values’ still mean anything at all, then now is the time to risk something for them.
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We need more Quakers and Jains in government for a sustainable and peaceful country, not the nasty little weasels that inhabit both sides of the aisle these days…
I grew up in childhood in south Manchester, though in those distant days in a place rather too far away from the Gorton and Denton areas to have had, at that time, any significant knowledge of them. However, after two decades of my young adult life living and working in other much more distant places – in various different parts of Wales, to which, having somehow contracted hiraeth on the way, I’ve now returned in my old age – I ended up moving back to the south Manchester area for family reasons; and between 1984 and 2016 I lived in… Read more »
Excellent article! Starmer has destroyed the Labour Party. After over 12 years of tory austerity Labour won the 2024 General election with a huge majority because everyone wanted something different. But straight away they cut winter fuel payments to hard up pensioners, cut disability benefits, try to force digital ID on everyone even if you don’t have the technology, ignored the genocide in Gaza., and not stand up to Trump’s threats to Greenland and his actions in Venezuala. They are just another right wing party. Andy Burnham offered a glimmer of hope to people who remember the old Labour party..… Read more »
The Labour left had two goes at getting their politics into government and failed which gave us Brexit and Boris Johnson. The Labour right has succeeded multiple times at getting elected but now the Labour left think they have a right to ignore the electorate and get into power by a backdoor coup. Those that say a donkey with a red rosette could’ve won in 2024 because everyone was so fed up with the Tories need to remember 1992. Those that say it’s all the right-wing media’s fault ignore the fact that most people only listen to voices they agree… Read more »
Larry, you’ve got that wrong. Check the figures for Corbyns labour party versus starmers. Corbyn got more votes than both Starmer and Blair. It is the FPP system that wins elections for parties. Of the 48 million voters you mention only 34pc voted Starmer and that included lefties as there was no one else to vote for – might change with the Greens now. You must remember Starmer deliberately undermined Corbyn and actively organised against him in the election – Labour undermining Labour, unbelievable. Check the internal LP report and read the EHRC report, you really will be astounded.
Which bit were you challenging? The Labour left lost twice. That’s a fact. The number of votes is irrelevant, only winning matters.
And don’t forget the Labour left supported FPTP in 2011.
It’s time for you to join Zack and campaign for a different voting system. Any other voting system. Those who used perfect to object to better are the problem not the solution.
FPTP doesn’t win elections; peoples votes win elections. However we spin the numbers for the last few General Elections, May won more votes than Corbyn in 2017, Johnson won more than Corbyn in 2019 and Starmer won more than Sunak in 2024.
The problem is that we never had austerity under the Tories. Both Tories and Labour have borrowed and spent more than the nation could afford. The only difference is that Labour always spends and borrows that bit more but the strategy is the same.
Starmer was very foolish to go to the country with the message that he could spend and borrow even more when spending and debt were already at eyewateringly high levels.
The idea that if we elect Burnham, he’ll find tens of billions more that aren’t available to Starmer and Reeves is just nonsense.
Austerity is any attempt to significantly cut public spending. It doesn’t mean eliminating the deficit. The Cons undermined their own efforts by shrinking the economy with Brexit then trashing the credit rating with Trussonomics pushing up interest payments on public debt. Starmer has five years to deliver on his election promises. Anyone expecting him to deliver it all in year one had unrealistic expectations. And it’s not the size of the debt that’s the problem. It’s borrowing to pay the bills that makes creditors nervous. Borrowing to invest in economic infrastructure that supports long-term growth is welcomed. Look at Singapore… Read more »
This by-election seat in Manchester is now a 2 horse race between the Green Party and fascist Reform.
The natural choice here is to vote Green.
Why do you feel the need to call Reform “fascist”? I’m not going to vote Reform – I don’t like the shallow populist vibe of it. What I don’t need to do though is pretend that they are fascist or anything else. Why? Because I don’t Reform for what it actually is. I don’t need to make things up about it and pretend its something else in order to dislike it.
Turn that question around. Why do you believe they aren’t fascist?
Isn’t it a bit odd that when Burnham stood for the leadership twice before, he was soundly beaten by Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn? Back in those contests, he was the voice of pragmatic realism while Miliband and Corbyn both appealed to Labour members desires to ignore reality. Fast forward a decade or so and here we have Burnham now donning the clothes of Miliband and Corbyn in shunning reality and calling for more fantasy knowing full well that it will tickle the Labour members fancy. His idea of demanding that the money markets lend us more whilst we simultaneously… Read more »
The biggest welfare bill is the state pension. If spending less is important that’s the only social security bloat the Cons didn’t tackle.