Extraordinary results require extraordinary circumstances. That was the real story of Makerfield. The local and regional party understood this was less about the label and more about the name. Andy for Us said all the posters. Keir Starmer stayed away, but he was very much present as a ghastly shade to be exorcised. The Burnham campaign were the plucky insurgents versus a clueless, careless Westminster. "Are you voting for Andy?" was the scripted canvassing question Labour supporters took to the doorstep, putting distance between him, his personality and standing, and the embarrassments of government. Burnham's political weight isn't thanks to his charisma, which he has in bucket loads compared with the voids around the cabinet's table, but his record. Once again demonstrating that political science isn't rocket science, ensuring the little things are seen to be done and are felt to be done is the root of Burnham's popularity. Riding subsidised, reliable buses into the city centre one can see the new wealth flowing into Manchester. The optics of 21st century Labourism are cranes dotting the skyline, the continued vibrancy of the city as a leisure destination and cultural capital, and getting the homeless off the streets and into accommodation. In reality, Burnham's much touted Manchesterism is a vibe consisting of localist Croslandism, a property boom, and frequently declared intentions to help the most vulnerable. But for enough Mancunians this is enough. Being seen to be successful and cultivating an impression that Andy is on their side won Burnham the seat.
To be fair to Makerfield's new honourable member, Burnham's two victory speeches, at the count and Friday's rally, show an understanding of the hows and whys of his win. His message about Makerfield being typical of London's neglect of the north is consistent with past positions. Most famously his populist and popular show downs with Boris Johnson on Covid restrictions. But the real rub is the emphasis he placed, in both speeches, on this by-election victory being his - and Labour's - last chance. Surely, Burnham must be aware that rowing back from his soft left persona in the opening weeks of the campaign is pregnant with the potential of political ruin, as a slippage in his approval rating attests. Burnham talks a good game with frequent verbal broadsides against trickle down economics and 40 years of Thatcherite abandonment. But will his actions match the impressions he's spent the last five weeks encouraging?
That depends on which Andy Burnham turns up on Number 10's doorstep, or puts a showing in should Starmer and/or others insist on a summer-long leadership contest. If Burnham is to thrive, if Labour is to survive, it means - incredibly - taking its cue from Lisa Nandy. "The era of centrist governments are over", she apparently declared at the Makerfield count. She's right. Labour's salvation lies in understanding its voter base, its coalition, and acting accordingly. Labour must marginalise its right wing, who are supplicants to the tech and finance oligarchies. And the party must learn how to think again. Makerfield spoke on behalf of this country's social democratic majority. They know "their" government can't work miracles, they're not expecting loaves and fishes, but they do expect to have a sense that it has their backs. That Labour politicians care about the people who put them there. They expect Labour to work toward building a better life for everyone, not just for a few MPs and advisors at the top of the party tree, and the rich people who pay for them. This is the instruction the electorate have issued to Andy Burnham. He, and the party, would do well to heed it. Otherwise ruin awaits.
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12 comments:
There's never been any doubt "That Labour politicians care about the people who put them there."
The problem is that's sometimes meant donors and newspaper owners, rather than voters!
“ Makerfield spoke on behalf of this country's social democratic majority.”
Indeed. People are now more keenly aware that a significant minority (possibly 25%) of the electorate have fascistic tendencies. Historically, these tendencies have always been there and were accommodated with varying levels of success by the Conservatives. However, it was the combination of the end of the ‘Great Compression’ in the late 1980s and the crash of 2008, which saw a massive redistribution of wealth to the very rich, that led to the collapse of the political consensus that had more or less existed since the War. Emboldened since the Brexit referendum, the fascistic element are now out in the open. No longer the solicitous mutterings of discontent in the golf clubs and at Freemason dinners, they are a vocal and visible army of keypad warriors, flag-hoisters and migrant-bashers. The greatest support for fascism in the past came from the petty bourgeoisie and it is no different today. Although misunderstood by Guardian journos and BBC reporters when they visit ‘red wall’ towns to interview the working class, their sample of the local populous are nearly always petty bourgeois - made up shop keepers, stall holders, taxi drivers etc (and the occasional elderly shopper) who make vocal their disenchantment with Labour.
Currently, the left does not have a credible narrative to counterpose the ‘common sense’ (in Gramscian terms) of the right. The only thing going for the Labour Party is that they are not Reform. There is now a growing consensus that a Farage led government would be dangerous. For many, this will mean taking the barely-palatable choice of voting for a party of neoliberal, Zionist-supporting authoritarians, just in order to keep Reform out. In a constituency where the Greens or the Lib Dems offer a more credible opposition to Reform, Labour will not hold on even to this support.
There is barely disguised fascistic element within the population, which has a strong class component, that is not well understood by most political commentators or sociologists.
I'm afraid Burnham already demonstrated very clearly during the by election campaigning just what a slippery character he is. Examples : the slippery use of the term " Public Control" for solving the disaster of the privatised water industry , as an actual alternative to outright renationalisation. A total con trick. He means merely another refurb of the Ofwat regulatory failure. He threw the Waspi women (despite his promises) under the bus immediately re their deserved financial compensation. He fell in line with the "prepare for war with more cash for military spending" mantra. He promised fealty to the Reeves budgetary straight jacket, etc etc, etc. Make no mistake, a Burnham premiership is merely lipstick on the pig of continuity austerity and warmongering .
And after the guaranteed disappointment of yet another neoliberal government ? Then the Far Right will ride electorally on the tsumami of disgust at yet another failed promise by the centrist political establishment.
If Burnham does want to save Labour, he's now got a very difficult manoevre to pull off.
12 years after Liam Byrne's infamously consequential joke note, Truss capped off the process of turning it into an actual reality. Now there really IS "no money", just as the public are sick to the back teeth of being told that; and just as the slightly more public-spirited half of the political class have finally, grudgingly, accepted the necessity of reversing Thatcherism. But how will they even start undoing decades of entrenched private sector parasitism in the country's essential infrastructure, never mind urgently building the military back up to snuff, without any money? Burnham's uncomfortable wriggling over the last month shows clearly enough the bind that he is in.
Assuming that he can dislodge Starmer (and see off Streeting) without a ruinous scorched earth battle, a Burnham Prime Ministership has got three genuine ways out that I can see.
One, convince the electorate of the reality that I just described above, without (somehow) making himself a mere continuation of Starmerist miserablism, and get the public to drastically lower their expectations about it being fixed any time soon. Not a target that I'd want to be aiming at.
Two, throw the EUphobes - many of whom presumably just voted for him - fully under the bus, immediately, and go with open arms to the continent. An unapologetically vindictive campaign to bring down the full weight of the state upon the oligarchal organs which agitated (and continue to agitate) for Brexit might well win him a net gain of fans, if he has the spine for it.
Three, play the far right at their own game, but competently. That is, use the same essential strategy, but not targeting the same audience. The strategy is using loud social policy distractions to disguise an unappealing economic package, and the required audience is the coalition of voters who are nearly as appalled by Starmer/McSweeney's "Reform Lite" strategy as they are by Reform itself. Every social liberal sacred cow that the Reformites want to butcher, Burnham has to commit the state to fierce protection of. This is not a path which will appeal to much of the Big Money currently trying to meddle in UK politics - among many other things it requires properly standing up to the US-Israel monster, and shutting down Moldemort on attacking trans rights - so it's one which will require no small amount of political courage and preparation to weather retaliations.
All attempts to avoid biting at least one of those bullets will inevitably amount to nothing more than dithering, prevarication, and shepherding his party pathetically towards an open grave just as Sunak did for the Tories. He could perhaps take a lesson or two from New York right now.
Not sure if the photo shows Burnham as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz between the Tin Man and a substitute Lion/Fox or the Straw Man seeking a brain. Always surprised at how Labour leftists see a new dawn in a new leader who is mildly left wing. Andrew has grasped that the most rhetorically left wing candidiate always wins a leadership contest if the members get a vote. He did lose to 'Red Ed' and Corbyn in his previous attempts to be leader and is now tacking as far left as he can without alienating the Guardinistas or unleashing the 'Mail' and 'Express' dirt diggers.
I suspect that once installed as leader/PM he will prove as left wing as other Labour leaders - Wilson, Kinnock, Starmer - and prove he is a grown up, adult in the room. It will all be blamed on unexpected contingencies or unexpected crisis. His comment that he could not judge if there was/is a genocide in Gaza from Manchester speaks volumes on his politics.
Well put
Andrew has grasped that the most rhetorically left wing candidiate always wins a leadership contest if the members get a vote.
There's one particular leadership contest which stands in stark contrast to that rule - the one which installed Starmer. Perhaps you suspect, as I do, that it was rigged.
Ok, Burnham will be the next PM, but what's he going to do? Is there a plan for actual productivity growth? Taxes are already at historical high levels, economic inactivity is serious problem and lenders are nervous about borrowing to fund spending on stuff that's not true investment e.g. things that don't deliver clear ROI as opposed to mollifying the already economically inactive.
I'm highly skeptical that modern Labour represents the class interests of those who support themselves through working (as opposed to being supported by state subsisdy). I see a lot of vague wibble from the left about 'neoliberalism', 'Thatcherite settlement' and calling opponents fascists despite them not really meeting tue classical definition (the same people sometimes being morally relativistic towards groups that bear far greater similarity to true fascists). What I don't see is a coherent, competing thesis for boosting productivity. To me that is a representation of where the interests of Labour's actual client base are.
My guess is it will just be more of squeezing what remains productive to subsidise what isn't, without fully throttling the economy to death. That's not to say there aren't possible policies that may raise productivity and benefit everyone, but they will be opposed within the left because too big a share of the gains will fall to the productive (an absolute gain for the unproductive will still seen as relative decline due to how these things are now commonly understood).
Ah, our most persistent font of dubious wisdom, kamo, is here! And as always, walking the fine line of presenting the half-baked, emotionally addled results of right wing "thinking" without getting booted for obvious regurgitation of bile from the right wing press.
A nod to racist dog whistling with "moral relativism", an appeal to cap-doffing bootlicking with the refrain of "Labour voters aren't the people who actually do the work" (which if you read carefully, are in kamo's mind probably supposed to be the entrepreneurs and privateers - the ones who take the "gains" - rather than their hapless minions), Truss-style growth fetishism, sneering at the "economically unproductive"... A good selection of well-worn kamo hits here.
And what's kamo's solution to the productivity problem which he fixates upon? Something vague about policies which will deliver the largest gains to the "productive" in order to "benefit everyone". Sounds rather like trickle-down theory, doesn't it? Perhaps corporate welfarism (of the sort which placed several of the zeroes on Elon's account)? Or maybe it was really intended, alongside the sneering, to mean something more like work-or-starve Osbornist chequebook euthanasia - bit of a trim of the "economically unproductive" from the balance sheet (nothing "fascist" about that at all, right)? Unless he deigns to elaborate with more detail, we can only guess at which particular brand of right wing cheeriness that he fantasises about steering the debate towards.
Dear Kamo, do the unproductive include pensioners who spent 40 years working productively and now need to rest or the disabled unable to work or the children at school waiting and hoping to join the workforce or mothers of new babies tasked with nurture?
It seems a very vague category that you use to cover people you don't like to think of as having support.
If, as seems likely, a shoo in "coronation" has been organised for Andy Burnham as next PM, what promises has this supposed "progressive" given to the Big Business and UK Deep State puppet masters to make this process such a smooth transition ? Will, for instance, UK support for the genocide in Gaza continue as before ? Will the UK continue to be one of the most provocative , Russophobic nations in Europe, directly participating ever more dangerously in the nominally Ukraine v Russia proxy war ?
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister , Alexander Grushko has just announced that, on the basis of countless statements from leading European (including British) politicians, Russia has to assume it will be attacked by Europe/NATO directly in 2029/2030, and has to prepare accordingly. Can Andy Burnham turn the UK Deep State away from this crazed EU/UK/NATO objective , and avoid nuclear Armageddon ? Slippery Andy will in office as PM undoubtedly continue the Con/Lab uniparty priorities pursued by both Labour and Tory governments for the previous 30 years of neoliberalism, so the Barack Obama - like high flown promises rhetoric of Andy will very likely not lead to better times for most citizens. On the backwash of yet more failed promises the neo fascist UK Far Right awaits its awful moment.
With the advisors he'd lined up, all neoliberals, I suspect 'there's no money' will remain the mantra, despite the fact £174m was found three weeks ago 'just like that', i.e. normal for a fiat currency economy. I hold out no hopes.
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