Andy Burnham’s victory over Reform in last week’s Makerfield by-election has started an avalanche in British politics, giving Keir Starmer the final push needed for him to resign as Labour leader and prime minister.
The scale of Burnham’s win put him in a very strong position personally. With the wind in his sails, The Man Who Beat Reform is now marching south to Westminster to seize the crown.
Last Friday, following the Makerfield result, Starmer was still signalling his intention to battle on. But the pressure over the weekend was too great.
With the threat of mass resignations from his cabinet, the PM was forced to announce his imminent departure from Downing Street this morning.
Those hoping for a smooth transition are likely to get their way. Rather than a bloody leadership contest, a simple ‘coronation’ seems to be on the cards, with potential challengers like Wes Streeting stepping aside.
Burnham could be moving into Number 10 as early as next month.
But far from calming matters, this changing of the guard is only going to light the fuse on a new, even more explosive period, as the crisis of British capitalism intensifies.
Time’s up
For months, until today, Starmer has clung onto power like a limpet on a rock.
This Knight of the Realm, possibly the most hated prime minister on record, had been burying his head in the sand. He was clearly a dead man walking for some time, yet was determined to keep stumbling on. Like all doomed men, he was hoping for a miracle to save him.
🚨 Starmer, the shortest-serving Labour PM of all time, leaves office with a net approval rating of -44.
✅ Approve: 20% (-20)
❌ Disapprove: 64% (+32)He began his tenure with a net rating of +8 🤣
+/- vs July 2024 pic.twitter.com/9jSWHeFzDB
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) June 22, 2026
But everything was stacked against him. A YouGov poll in May found that Labour members would back Burnham by a 59-37 margin. More than 100 Labour MPs, meanwhile, a quarter of the parliamentary party, had already called on Keir Starmer to resign in response to the Mandelson-Epstein affair.
Even Donald Trump was reading Starmer his last rites, saying in a social media post yesterday that the UK premier was finished.
Starmer’s dying days as prime minister – holed up in his Chequers retreat, desperately scrambling for support – had all the hallmarks of the satirical film The Death of Stalin.
If he didn’t stand down, the Labour leader would have faced a rebellion at his next cabinet meeting, scheduled for tomorrow. In the end, therefore, the limpet was forced to give up.
Messiah of Manchester
In the space of a few days, Starmer’s administration has completely collapsed, like a house of cards. After a landslide victory in 2024, and just two years in power, ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer is no more.
Many Labour MPs, desperate for Starmer to resign, will no doubt breathe a massive sigh of relief. For some time, they had been hoping that Burnham would come to the rescue and save this unpopular Labour government, their party, and above all their parliamentary careers.
Now the Messiah of Manchester has finally arrived in Westminster! Hallelujah!
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A new chapter is certainly opening up in British politics. But it will not be the one that these people hope for.
We can understand the sentiments shared by many. With the loathsome Starmer gone, maybe Farage and his gang can be quelled?
Reform’s defeat in Makerfield was a setback for Farage. But the party still increased its vote compared to 2024.
Burnham’s victory was largely due to tactical voting, with many saying they voted for the Manchester Mayor simply to keep out Reform, and nothing more.
Above all, it is important to see the bigger picture. Yes, Burnham defeated Reform in Makerfield. But, as the crisis of British capitalism deepens, he will not offer any fundamental change.
Left leaders’ response
Nevertheless, some on the ‘left’ have been jubilant about Burnham’s Makerfield victory, and his impending arrival in Downing Street, as an opportunity to reset the political agenda.
Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, for example, went so far as to hail Burnham’s win last week as “a victory for the labour movement”. Sharon Graham of Unite, meanwhile, has suggested that Burnham offers a “glimmer of hope”.
Maryam Eslamdoust, general secretary of TSSA union, was delighted by the Makerfield result, saying: “Andy Burnham’s victory is a mandate for a change in direction right at the top of the Labour Party…The electorate…backed a candidate strongly supported by the Labour movement.”
‘Left’ Labour MP Jon Trickett similarly wrote – on behalf of Momentum – that: “Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield shows what’s possible when all corners of Labour come together to defeat the far right.”
Presumably “all corners of Labour” includes the Blairites, the parliamentary party, and other such charlatans and proverbial ‘broad church’ crap.
“[This win] could not have been achieved,” Trickett stated, “without thousands of activists rallying together inspired by the promise of a more hopeful, imaginative, and inclusive politics.”
This meaningless drivel about “hopeful, imaginative, and inclusive politics” is typical of the so-called ‘lefts’.
Sowing illusions
The rest of the left are sowing similar illusions in Burnham.
Rather than arguing for clear socialist policies, for example, Aaron Bastani of Novara Media is peddling the idea of tactical voting – as ‘vindicated’ in Makerfield – as the way to stop Farage from getting into power.
A similar pattern of tactical voting in a general election, Bastani writes, “would stop Nigel Farage getting the keys to Number 10.”
This is scraping the bottom of the barrel – presenting electoral trickery as the saviour of the working class.
All of these pseudo-lefts – including Novara Media, the Morning Star, Tribune, Counterfire, and the SWP’s ‘Stand Up to Racism’ front – have adopted a position of ‘lesser-evilism’. “Vote Andy to keep out Farage” is their battle cry.
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No doubt they will be advocating this line come the next election: in all likelihood, even more loudly and hysterically than are currently.
This will include putting pressure on Polanski’s Greens to form an electoral pact with a Burnham-led Labour Party – as was essentially seen in Makerfield, and as an ‘old guard’ faction within the Green Party has openly called for.
But ‘vote Labour to keep out Reform’ is precisely the surest way to boost Farage and his party.
Damascene conversion
The Morning Star – the mouthpiece of the so-called ‘Communist’ Party of Britain – even views a Burnham leadership as a means of restoring the fortunes of the discredited Labour Party.
Earlier this month, for example, the Stalinist paper called on the unions to work with Labour MPs and others “to impose a new political strategy” on the Labour Party.
“The looming leadership battle in Labour provides an opportunity,” states the Morning Star. It urges the unions to coalesce behind a common set of policies and “a single candidate for leader, based on reconnecting the party with its working class roots”.
The paper sheepishly doesn’t mention Burnham by name, but the intention is obvious.
According to these so-called ‘communists’, after decades of subservience to Labour’s right wing, the trade union leaders are expected to rise up and fight to change the Labour Party. Some hope!
If this were to happen, it would represent the biggest transformation in outlook since Paul the Apostle fell to the ground on his way to Damascus.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
The argument from all these ‘lefts’ is clear: a ‘progressive alliance’ is needed – behind Burnham – to stop Farage. This amounts to support for popular frontism and the snakeoil of lesser-evilism.
They seem to ignore the fact that Andy Burnham is no left-winger, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a capitalist politician with a long history of faithfully serving Blair and Brown.
Burnham’s so-called ‘business-friendly socialism’ is simply warmed-up Starmerism. The soon-to-be PM fully accepts the government’s racist immigration policies, as well as Starmer’s ‘fiscal rules’, which mean permanent austerity.
He has quickly surrounded himself with bourgeois economic advisors, including the former deputy director of the Bank of England, a defender of the free market.
Many of the reforms that Burnham has suggested in passing, such as justice for the WASPI women, have already been rowed back on – even before he steps through the door of Number 10.
He has already committed himself to increased spending on the military, which will mean cuts elsewhere. And he will continue with Starmer’s foreign policy: supporting Ukraine with billions for bombs and bloodshed; as well as supporting Israel, while denying the genocide in Gaza.
This is the programme that these ‘lefts’ are effectively endorsing: one of continued cuts, migrant-bashing, and militarism.
No room for manoeuvre
It is as clear as day that Burnham – set to be Britain’s seventh prime minister in ten years – will continue with the same policies as Starmer’s government, with only this-or-that small difference at most.
The Starmer government, operating within the confines of capitalism, was always going to be a government of crisis. And the same will be the case with a Burnham government, as the situation goes from bad to worse.
With the bond markets – as well as military chiefs and Trump – breathing down his neck, Burnham will have no room for manoeuvre.
In the last analysis, as long as the bankers and billionaires remain in control, it is not the government that dictates to the economy, but the economy that dictates to the government.
Any illusions in Burnham will therefore be short lived, as his government crashes up upon the same rocks as Starmer – not to mention Sunak, Truss, Johnson, May, and Cameron – before him.
Lesser-evilism
Let us spell it out. The policy of supporting the ‘lesser evil’ is a trap for the working class.
In reality, it is precisely the inability of the ‘lesser evil’ to bring about any genuine change that ends up preparing the way for the ‘greater evil’.
In the United States in 2020, for example, all the liberals, ‘lefts’, and ‘progressives’ wholeheartedly supported Joe Biden for US president, in order to defeat Trump.
But Biden’s victory, and his subsequent failures, only laid the path for Trump’s return to the White House – big time – in 2024. We ended up with Trump on steroids, even more reactionary and reckless than in his first time.
In the same way, a Burnham government, given his adherence to pro-capitalist policies, will simply prepare for a bigger swing towards Farage and Reform later on.
Hysteria and pessimism
The ‘lefts’ are building up illusions in Burnham, just as they built up about Starmer when he was first elected.
“The left should wish him [Starmer] well,” stated ‘left’ author Owen Jones, for example, at that time. “Now is the time for critical friendship, to wish a genuinely decent and progressive politician well: because his success is our only chance to rid the UK of the cruel injustices that both scar and define our society.”
Again, as with Burnham now, these cynical, sceptical ‘lefts’ said that we were in the ‘last chance’ saloon, and should support Starmer. Look how that ended.
What will the ‘lefts’ say when Burnham – as night follows day – simply continues where Starmer left off?
It is clear these hysterical pessimists are incapable of seeing further than their own nose. They have no perspective or understanding of what is happening. They are simply swept along by events – content to organise their meaningless events and rallies to blow off hot air.
Terminal crisis
The truth is that British capitalism is in a terminal crisis. It is not ‘neoliberalism’ that is responsible for this crisis, as the ‘lefts’ always claim, as if we can bring in some kind of ‘nicer’ version of capitalism. Austerity is not an ‘ideological choice’.
“Powerful forces are determined to uphold an economic model that makes grotesque fortunes for a few while the country goes to rack and ruin”, states the Morning Star, for example.
Today’s deepening crisis is not about ‘models’, however, but is a reflection of the death agony of the entire capitalist system.
Ironically, precisely at the moment when the rottenness and impasse of capitalism is being exposed to millions on a daily basis, these people have the greatest faith in the possibility of bringing about a fairer form of capitalism.
Those who advocate for tinkering with capitalism miss the point entirely. They are living in the past; in a dream world.
Let us be clear: capitalism cannot be ‘reformed’, regulated, or improved. It must be overthrown.
Government of crisis
It is precisely the endemic crisis of capitalism that is behind the collapse in living standards, in Britain as elsewhere. And this, in turn, is the reason for the intense anger and bitterness that exists today.
This is not going away as long as capitalism exists. In fact, it will only intensify.
By 2029 and the next general election, the crisis will be even deeper and the anger even greater.
The Burnham Labour government – another government of crisis – will be hated by millions, who will have experienced nothing but hardship and misery for the past two decades. Through its actions and policies, it will prepare the ground for Farage.
Much could happen between now and the next election. Events are unfolding at lightning speed. We are in a period of sharp and sudden changes.
Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain may complicate things for Farage and Reform. But even that would only add to the political polarisation in Britain, and thereby to the instability for British capitalism.
Burnham says this moment represents “our last chance” to change Britain. But he is wrong. There is no last chance under capitalism, only lasting misery.
However things pan out exactly in the coming months and years, it will be those who continue to defend this rotten capitalist system who will be responsible for the rise of the far right, in whatever form.
By their decisions and deeds, they are preparing the whirlwind.
Revolutionary leadership
The present situation is characterised chiefly by the crisis of leadership.
The Labour Party; the leadership of the trade unions; the so-called ‘left’: all are completely bankrupt and barren politically.
Even the new wave of left leaders – such as Polanski, Sultana, and Mamdani – do not have the programme needed to genuinely challenge the billionaires and bankers, or put an end to capitalism’s neverending crisis.
Our task is to resolve this vacuum by building a real revolutionary leadership – armed with a programme to completely destroy this dog-eat-dog system, expropriate the billionaires, and put power in the hands of the working class.
Only then, on the basis of socialist revolution, can society be freed from the horrors of capitalism. There is no middle road.
