It began even before Labour's NEC greenlit his challenge. No sooner had Caroline Lucas counselled the Greens to stand aside because of Burnham's position on electoral reform, he came out as an opponent on proportional representation. "Fairer votes" means the disproportional wonders of AV Plus. Which, with uncharacteristic haste, the government is about to restore for mayoral contests ... just in time for a Manchester mayoral by-election, should one be needed. Then Monday came around. Having said very warm things about the EU and admitting he'd like to see Britain back in eventually, he 180'd and said we shouldn't undo Brexit. Getting two u-turns in for the price of one, Burnham committed himself to Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules. Very different from the Andy Burnham of last September, who dared utter sacriligeous words about the holy wisdom of the bond markets.
He was just getting started. A couple of months ago, Angela Rayner gave a speech that criticised Shabana Mahmood's cruel immigration policies as "un-British" - an intervention Burnham apparently endorsed. This week, he's now a supporter of this doomed attempt to out-flank Reform on the right, and went further at his by-election/leadership campaign launch by demanding net migration be driven even lower. And to round things off, in double quick time Burnham has gone from being a defender of trans rights to accepting the establishment attack on trans people. In other words, everything that was wrong about Labour a week ago are now his policy positions. The only difference that exists between him and the Prime Minister is over who should be in Number 10. From the soft left, it's been a short, sharp road to Wigan Keir.
I suppose some tendentious rationales can be concocted for these about-turns. It's a Reform-leaning seat, so it's time to deploy the Blue Labour strategy that's proven a stunning success everywhere else. There's extra press scrutiny, so time to stifle the leftish vibes given off by "Manchesterism" so one can emote fiscal orthodoxy and fealty to Treasury shibboleths. Reform's problematic plumber might go in for cheap point scoring come any hustings, so socially liberal approaches to immigration and trans people has to be ditched. Or you could see it as Burnham adapting himself to the Labour selectorate. Plenty of MPs bear a grudge from his refusal to go along with their anti-Corbyn wrecking, and further back for breaking and critiquing the Blairist orthodoxy on health. And these days, the Labour membership are much more middle class and managerial than at any other time and are, by and large, habituated to life in a rudderless political husk. Either way, Burnham's pitch is the traditional Labourist marriage of perceived expediency and political cowardice.
This does raise serious questions about what Burnham's Labour is going to look like. At first contact with re-entry into national politics, the great hope of the soft left has capitulated across the board. The criticisms that allowed him to cultivate a prince-across-the-water persona as Keir Starmer stumbled from one catastrophe to another have evaporated. He looks as clueless and as spineless as the man he would replace. If Labour don't change tack, if Burnham carries on like this assuming he wins the by-election and subsequent leadership election, the crisis afflicting the party is sure to persist. Except, without taking stock and changing direction, the new leader will guide the party into its final, terminal phase.
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The Greens did wonder which Burnham would show up. Now they know: 'Keir Scouser'
ReplyDelete“ And these days, the Labour membership are much more middle class and managerial than at any other time and are, by and large, habituated to life in a rudderless political husk.”
ReplyDeleteI have a friend in his late 70s who has remained in the Labour Party, despite everything. He has been a member since his early twenties and has threatened to resign on numerous occasions but remained loyal to the brand. He sees Burnham as the great white (northern) hope: the credible (authentic) leader that the party has been seeking since John Smith. My friend is (impoverished) middle class, patriotic but not a Royalist, and spends a lot of time talking about ‘realpolitik’ as if no one else in politics is aware of the structural forces that impose upon ideology. Push comes to shove, he would fall into the Blue Labour camp, which I guess from the feedback I get from the local Labour Party meeting he attends (made up aged members like himself, who did their very best to discourage the young Corbynist upstarts from playing a part) all of the are of a similar view. Like my friend, they are bemused and befuddled by the unpopularity of Labour. There are no more left wingers left in the party to blame, so they seek a solution in new leader. It’s simple, Starmer was wooden and unrelateable, Labour with a fresh face simply needs more time for the masses to love them again.
Yes, a rudderless, political husk.
Not merely rudderless but also clueless, if that description is anything to go by.
DeleteIf that's what Labour is reduced to, then there's really no choice but for the Greens to put them out of their (and our) misery.
If the Greens stand and Reform wins Labourites will blame everything on the Greens for splitting the vote rather than face up to why Labour is unpopular.
ReplyDeleteMy uncle now votes Reform, I now vote Green. The only thing we’ve agreed on politically in the last 10 years is that the death of John Smith was a tragedy. We were both ‘old school’ Labour, for supporting workers and the vulnerable, for education, giving people chances, for healthcare and housing and improving lives. It’s insane that we’re so far apart now. Labour falling for the Reform trick of setting people against each other, refugees, trans people, people on benefits, has ruined them.
ReplyDeletei’m trying to understand working class former labour supporters going to reform. i’d never vote Labour now but what is the appeal of or how have reform concealed so easily their thatcherism?
DeleteAlways astonished rthat people think there was once a golden age of Labour. I presume it must be the 1945 version due to the founding of the NHS. Seems to me even it is suspect - it supported the attacks on left wing parties in Europe who sought radical change eg Greece, Italy, sought to re-establish the Empire in SE Asia eg Malaysia, helped found NATO, disrupted economic recovery by funnelling money and material into developing a nuclear bomb, only nationalised utilities because they were falling to pieces and the private sector didn't want them. What it did was what Chritian Democratic governemnts did throughout Western Europe.
ReplyDeleteSo it is not a change of leader that will make a difference. The DNA of Labour is to talk leftish in Opposition or when you want to become leader but revert to type in power - and type is what we have seen from Blair and Brown and not Starmer, Reeves, Streeting et al. If Burnham becomes leader then in 2 years time we will be commenting here on why it all went so badly.
Totally true Anonymous 09:07. "Good old Attlee" did indeed lead a Labour government that established the NHS, but this was necessary to ideologically demobilise the huge wave of high expectation radicalism amongst the huge number of recently demobilised servicemen , and women, who were only too aware of the dismal, impoverished, fate of their demobilised fathers after WW 1 , and to counter the ideological competitive appeal of the Soviet Union (or the idealised propaganda version anyway). Across the British empire, and in countries like Greece, the Attlee government was carrying out, violent, dishonest, racist, business as usual for the empire. The UK Left, in its many shades of "radicalism" seems to prefer a mythical history of the Labour Party, to its harsh reality. To fall for the shapeshifting opportunist ex Blairite, Burnham's, empty rhetoric so easily is truly pathetic . But then so many Labour Lefties fell for ex DPP, and Trilateral Commision, creature ,Starmer's, cynical, Ten Lefty Pledges so easily too!
ReplyDeleteMissed out using Japanese POW to patrol what was Saigon to enforce a curfew imposed by the British forces sent to hold the place for the French troops sailing there. Bevan sniggered in Parliament about our excellent relationship with the French
ReplyDeleteI think you mean "Bevin" , as in the ghastly racist rabidly pro British imperialism, Right Wing Labourite , ex Trades Union Leader, Ernest Bevin, centrally responsible for the Attlee government deciding to , (secretly, even from the full Cabinet !) build an atomic bomb, Anonymous 22:03. Not to be confused with the genuinely Left Wing central founder of our NHS, Aneurin Bevan. No Labour MPs of the quality of Aneurin Bevan in todays PLP I'm afraid.
DeleteI don't see a conflict between being pro European and also thinking we are not going to rejoin anytime soon and we need to get on with sorting out the UK's problems without thinking rejoining will rescue us economically.
ReplyDelete