Labour’s leadership crisis lays bare the conflict.
Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is standing for Parliament in the hope of challenging Keir Starmer for the ultimate prize in British politics. But the problem isn’t just Starmer.
Replacing the premier with Burnham won’t save the Labour Party, never mind reverse the UK’s misfortunes, though it’s easy to forget this while watching Labour’s psychodrama unfold in the media.
Nigel Farage looks increasingly like the prime minister-in-waiting after his far-right populist start-up party, Reform UK, swept local elections.
Farage exemplifies Trumpism with British characteristics. The Labour Party, by contrast, remains wedded to the same neoliberal approach to governance that was in vogue in the 1990s, one that is narrow and managerial, devoid of passion.
Labour’s leadership crisis is just a part of a wider crisis for democracy in the United Kingdom, where minority rule is becoming normalised. The political class is less concerned about building consent and even less worried about its own legitimacy.
Britons need better choices.
The Face of Crisis
Starmer is just the face of Britain’s crisis. But he certainly isn’t helping matters. Instead of meeting Britons where they are, he talks over them, preferring the Treasury’s fiscal orthodoxy to the radical structural changes the nation needs. He doesn’t even try to persuade the public that he is right.
His Labour government rapidly lost popularity, in part because its public support was always tenuous. The party won a majority without a mandate in 2024, with a vote share just under 34% on turnout of less than 60%.
Even worse, Starmer has only expanded the state’s powers to crack down on protests, while making life ever more uncertain for foreign-born UK residents. Britain increasingly resembles a soft police state with its lack of political accountability and unrepresentative media.
Meanwhile, the British economy remains wracked by a cost-of-living crisis set to get worse due to the US-Israeli war with Iran. This is on top of stagnant growth and wages following a decade of austerity and the devastating COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Greens are the only party taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is demonising this progressive party as a haven for Antisemitism. Its Jewish leader, Zack Polanski, is attacked by the press far more than Farage.
What makes this especially infuriating is that Reform UK appears set to take power in 2029 with a vote share of as little as 25%. Although this would represent only 15% of the total electorate on 60% turnout, the mainstream media would no doubt herald this result as proof of a great populist upsurge against elites.
Many of Farage’s hardline supporters view populist rhetoric as the thin end of the wedge needed to prise open Westminster for the far right. Some Reform UK voters are even saying “First Reform, then Restore” in reference to Restore Britain, the radical breakaway faction of Rupert Lowe.
Neither Labour nor Reform UK can offer the country more than authoritarian drift and economic decline. Nevertheless, legacy media continue to insist that Labour and Reform UK are the nation’s only viable options.
They’re urging us to believe that Andy Burnham will save the day, somehow.
Burnham left Parliament in 2017 to become mayor of Manchester and moved to the left, presiding over the transfer of bus services to public control. He became known as “the King of the North”—a reference to the HBO series Game of Thrones— for standing up to the Tories during the Pandemic.
Most Labour members dismissed Burnham as a continuity figure when he ran for Labour leader in 2010 and 2015. To his credit, however, he did not join the attempt to oust Jeremy Corbyn following the 2016 Brexit vote.
Still, Burnham’s record is more complicated than some of his fans want to admit. Early in his career, he was part of New Labour’s Brownite wing of New Labour. He was no radical during the Blair-Brown years and supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq as most other Labour MPs did.
But even if his subsequent political evolution was not a cynical makeover, it’s hard to imagine the Manchester mayor succeeding. No one in Labour, including Burnham, has a fiscal strategy to overcome the pressure from rising government borrowing costs versus the need to repair the damage of austerity. And that’s leaving aside the problem of assembling an economic stimulus package.
The only sustainable solution to this crisis will require higher taxes on the rich and the middle class in the long term. But few people are willing to admit it. Everyone fears the politics of redistribution, except when it comes to redistributing from the poor to the super-rich.
Labour has traditionally relied on economic growth to offset the burdens of bigger government. This was true under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, just as it was true under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Growth made it possible to delay answering fundamental questions about the distribution of income and wealth in the country. Now they must be confronted. Unfortunately, there is no indication that Burnham—personable and humane as he may be—is equal to the challenge.
Nor is Farage up to the task. That’s why he doesn’t even bother to make an economic case for government. The British right’s entire focus now is on immigration, specifically stopping the boats and deporting as many migrants as possible.
An incoming government led by Reform UK could oversee deportations of tens of thousands of people—maybe hundreds of thousands—and trigger very real violence against anyone who gets in the way.
If you don’t think this will ultimately result in the demand that British-born minorities leave the country, too, you’ve got another thing coming. Quite literally, if you’re not white.
In the meantime, Starmer is still calling the shots at No. 10 Downing Street despite calls from over 90 Labour MPs for him to step down. With no chance of economic growth in the near future, he is setting the stage for a far-right takeover.
Political Doom Loop
Both Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage reinforce the worst tendencies of British society. The only hope may be that the Greens can grow fast enough to counterbalance both Labour and Reform UK on a national scale. But that is highly improbable, given how recently the party became a significant player.
Unless something drastic happens, the UK is destined to drift ever deeper into authoritarian misrule, with a stagnant economy that serves only a tiny elite.
It’s almost as if the British ruling class and the media have given up on the prospect of a better future.
The UK clearly needs a complete political break with the past. The alternative is a path to self-destruction.
Photograph courtesy of Duncan Cumming. Published under a Creative Commons license.
