The Labour government is deeply unpopular as a result of its first two years, where it attacked pensioners and pursued policies that showed it was jettisoning any idea of welfarism and left rhetoric. It blatantly is pro-business and pro-market.
Starmer sought to block any contenders to leadership of Labour back in 2021 when he increased the percentage of MPs needed to set off a contest from 10% to 20%. This has blocked the former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, himself an alternative Starmer, with a record of viciously attacking the NHS, and indeed, if anything, more Blairite than Starmer.Sections of the Labour Party started panicking that under Starmer they would lose the next election. They looked to Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, as someone to replace Starmer.
Andy Burnham is no fiery left winger. He supported the Iraq war when he was a MP, voting for the invasion of Iraq. He served as a minister under Blair, and over the next ten years he voted to block any independent inquiry into the war. He then opportunistically started to say that he regretted the war when he became Mayor of Manchester. Whilst in Parliament, he abstained on opposing welfare cuts proposed by the Tory government. He made it abundantly clear when Corbyn was elected Labour leader, that he was dissociating himself from the whole phenomenon of Corbynism. He supported Starmer in the 2020 leadership contest.
In addition, he was an important member of Labour Friends of Israel whilst in parliament, and has spoken regularly at their events. He says that Israel would be the first country he would visit if he became Prime Minister. He is a confirmed supporter of the Israeli state.
Now, however, in order to win the leadership election, he had to pose as to the left of Starmer. So, he is calling for more funding for council housing and more re-nationalisation (indeed Starmer himself changed direction over this, calling for nationalisation of the steel industry).
Sections of the ruling class were concerned that Starmer could not retain control over his MPs and continue its assaults on the working class. Therefore, Burnham is seen as a handy alternative, due to his supposed popularity, and better able to implement harsh measures. Burnham has said that he supports fiscal rules and so may well curry favour with sections of the boss class. He hopes to garner the racist vote by his support for anti-migrant action pushed by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. He has said that the government should spend more on defence, rather than health, education and infrastructure.
Now Burnham's winning of the Makerfield election has forced Starmer to resign. This is at a time when the UK has shown that it is as unstable a state, as, for example, Italy, with six different prime ministers in the last ten years.
This instability is caused by the ongoing world economic crisis, dating back to the crash of 2007. All around the world, governments, whether, left, right, or centre, and at the bidding of the boss class, imposed austerity measures. With the failure of neo-liberalism to get out of this crisis, we see a new tack, with increasing state intervention in the economy. Alongside this has come the encouragement of racism and far-right groups, payrolled heavily by trillionaires and billionaires; and a culture war, attacking the gains of the late sixties onwards around women's and LBGTQ+ rights.
However, the Starmer government decided to continue with austerity measures, as it was scared of affrighting the ruling class and upsetting the financial markets. Burnham, it will be seen, is no more capable of going against the grain as Starmer was.
An indication of the direction he is going if he wins the Labour leadership contest is his appointment of three economic advisers all tightly linked to austerity policies and to financial institutions like the Bank of England and Goldman Sachs.
The past few decades of austerity and rising cost of living have dealt severe blows to the old establishment parties of Labour and Conservatives. Unfortunately, the vacuum that is opening does not benefit truly radical ideas, but offers new opportunities for the populist hard right. Bigotry and racism are now fully out in the open. As for the left, whether they be the old Stalinist formations or the Trotskyist groups, they have been unable to develop any significant threat, tied as they are by an umbilical cord to Labourism. The majority of British anarchism, now much reduced, is also similarly unable to offer a challenge.
A social alternative is in dire need of being created. This has to mean painstaking work around the cost-of-living crisis, the rising cost of energy and food, housing, and transport. This crisis has been aggravated by the Trump regime's war against Iran, and so a clear antimilitarist message has to be linked to any such fight against this crisis. Whether this alternative can be built remains to be seen. If not, the far right will profit.
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/jackdaw_low-res.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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