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.