British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will have mixed feelings as he awaits the result of today’s Makerfield by-election.
As Labour leader, he will celebrate if his party wins. As prime minister, his survival depends on Labour losing.
A victory for Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate, would be a personal catastrophe for the prime minister. A victorious Burnham would immediately travel to Westminster on a mission to destroy the Starmer premiership – meaning Starmer is all but finished.
This would be an unimaginable humiliation for a man elected as prime minister less than two years ago with one of the largest majorities in British political history.
There is much discussion today about whether Starmer will fight to stay in office, or go quietly. It doesn’t matter. A bad tooth can be extracted using anaesthetic or, more painfully, without. The result is the same.
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In Downing Street, Burnham would start with one huge advantage: he is not Starmer.
People dislike Starmer. Burnham is friendly and warm, with a human touch that Starmer lacks.
He has been a hugely successful mayor of Manchester. We shouldn’t pay too much attention to critics who carp that much of his success is down to others. That’s always true of politicians.
A fighting chance
Starmer never had a hope of defeating the far right. Burnham, with luck and skill, stands a chance.
He comes from the north, a welcome change in a country that is governed from the south. But the main reason for supporting Burnham is that he can attract voters back to Labour by offering an alternative to the politics of bitterness and hatred that is tearing Britain apart.
His wiser colleagues understand this. Ed Miliband, the energy security secretary and former Labour leader, could have stood himself. But he has chosen to play kingmaker instead.
People will want Burnham to succeed. More than that, they will know they can’t afford for him to fail. Burnham is Labour’s last chance. The alternative is oblivion.
Anyone who wants the Labour Party to survive, Britain to flourish and the far right to be humbled will hope and pray that Burnham succeeds
Burnham also starts with one big disadvantage: Britain’s £3 trillion ($4 trillion) national debt. Burnham cannot buy popularity with spending schemes the way former Prime Minister Tony Blair could in the benign economic circumstances of the 1990s. Like it or not, the markets will not permit it.
But there are important things that Burnham can do. To start with, he can mend the Labour Party.
It’s important to remember that Starmer was never, in truth, Labour leader. In reality, he was a useful tool for a small Labour Party faction, the ostensibly benign and well-meaning “think tank” called Labour Together.
As investigative journalist Paul Holden demonstrated in his extraordinary work The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy, Labour Together was a secret project, backed by illegally undeclared money, to capture Labour for a right-wing clique. It can usefully be regarded as the right-wing equivalent of Militant Tendency, which sought to capture Labour in the 1980s.
McSweeney, the former Downing Street chief of staff forced out in the wake of the Peter Mandelson/Jeffrey Epstein affair, was the leader of the Labour Together faction. Mandelson was its godfather; Starmer its unwitting tool.
Undoing years of damage
Labour Together secured the Labour leadership election with a dishonest pitch that tricked the party’s largely left-wing membership to vote for Starmer. Once leader, he reneged on the pledges that had won him the leadership – and set about turning viciously on the Labour left, driving many of them out of the party.
In the short term, this strategy – carried out with the support of the Tory media – secured Starmer his massive parliamentary majority. But it split the Labour Party, leading directly to the rise of Zack Polanski’s Green Party.
This explains today’s collapse of Labour support, and the deep personal unpopularity of Starmer.
A central question in British politics now is whether Burnham can undo the damage inflicted by Labour Together, and reunite Labour.
Can Andy Burnham offer Labour a new destiny?
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The signs are mixed. There is gossip that Burnham may bring back David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, from his comfortable exile as well-paid charity boss (roughly $1.2m a year from the International Rescue Committee) in New York.
Appointing David Miliband, a Blair protege, to a key position would send the wrong message while the carnage continues in Gaza.
It is troubling that Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together who stood down as a minister after being accused of spying on journalists, made way for Burnham in Makerfield and could ultimately form part of his team. But it is encouraging that MP Louise Haigh, reportedly one of the highest-profile victims of the Labour Together machine, is working with Burnham.
Importantly, former chief of staff Sue Gray, another victim of Labour Together when she was driven out of her Downing Street job, is advising Burnham. She is synonymous with integrity.
Burnham has been criticised for being cagey on policy. That’s understandable; he’s been fighting a by-election, not running the country. If he gets to Downing Street, he will have the opportunity to clean up British politics, promote social justice, fight the politics of hatred, and press forward with the agenda that Starmer spurned.
Anyone who wants the Labour Party to survive, Britain to flourish and the far right to be humbled will hope and pray that Burnham succeeds.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
