4 days ago
19
Labour’s impulse for political self-harm defies belief. It is as if some enemy within guides it unerringly along the wrong strategic path. Declaring war on Andy Burnham anoints him as a northern martyr and hero, and casts Keir Starmer as a coward. Many opposed Burnham throwing down the gauntlet for all the problems it would have caused if he won. If he had run, and won, Starmer would have a choice: squeeze him python-tight within the fold, or confront any leadership manoeuvring head on. Instead, before he could show any strength, he funked it, using evasive proceduralism to block his rival from the byelection in Gorton and Denton.
What timing for this decision! Starmer, along with his chancellor, business secretary and other chief allies are due to depart for China on Tuesday: his absence from PMQs, from the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting and from TV studios is a blunder.
Why this provocation when obstacles aplenty were already in Burnham’s way, with no easy route to No 10? Even those who are not particularly his supporters see how boldly he was ready to hazard his political career on an uncertain byelection at a time of wild political volatility. He could have lost to Reform or to the Greens, or been hindered by a pro-Gaza independent, and that would have finished him politically. But he had a good chance of winning: now, if that seat gifts Nigel Farage his ninth MP, excoriating blame will fall on Starmer.
The byelection to replace Burnham as Manchester mayor would indeed have been mortally dangerous: a Reform win would have been a disaster, not just for Labour but for the future of the country. Anger at that needless loss might well have terminated any Burnham leadership bid. But, even if returned as a victor to the Commons, he would have been cold-shouldered by a fair number of unwelcoming Labour MPs: they note that, ever since he said government should not be “in hock to the bond markets”, the markets twitch whenever he steps towards power. It happened again last week when he threw his hat into the ring.
A leadership contest with Wes Streeting and maybe others would be hard fought, no shoo-in. But, fearless or reckless, Burnham was willing to risk everything with that familiar challenger’s blend of personal ambition and resolve to rescue his party from its deepest slough of despond. It took guts.
Starmer has dealt himself a blow. “Frit” was how Margaret Thatcher described it, when, in 1983, she accused Denis Healey of being afraid of an election. Blame falls on Starmer’s henchman Morgan McSweeney, but it was the man himself who ducked letting his challenger reach even first base, being on the national executive committee (NEC) panel that voted eight-to-one to hold Burnham down.
Rows may lead to this NEC blunder being reversed in one more U-turn, as polling shows that 66% of Labour members thought that Burnham should be allowed to stand. Either way, his status is burnished, members preferring him to Starmer for Labour leader by 48% to 26%. Only he among senior Labour figures scores a positive public rating, gaining from the northern air of Manchester, uncontaminated by the detested Westminster miasma. But as suggested by astute psephologists such as Mark Pack, surveying all polls, that’s scant prediction of how much lift any new leader would give Labour. After all, they will follow the five PMs in a row who have each been the most hated ever, in this time of anti-politician ferment.
But whatever the unknowable result, keeping calm and carrying on over the precipice looks like the worst option. Labour has had that lemming instinct in the past, but no longer. This is not about one party’s survival but mortal combat with the Farage forces of darkness. The left-liberal bloc of parties is duty-bound to see off the hard-right bloc, the Tories now sucked into the frighteningly race-driven orbit of the Trumpian Reform UK. Starmer himself said on Monday, as he did in his conference speech, that this is the fight. But it’s now clear to all that he’s not the one to lead that fight.
The new leader has to be acceptable enough to appeal to tactical voters across the whole liberal-green-left spectrum. The new leader has to be bold enough to go for immediate electoral reform, to ensure every party only gets the seats earned by its vote, or Farage could do as Labour did in 2024, and win by a mile, despite the great majority voting against him.
Let selecting a new leader be done with the least bloodshed, but it needs to be done before May: why wait for brutal results if there’s a chance of stopping a haemorrhage of Labour councils and terrible losses in Scotland and Wales? Choose whoever is fittest to draw in the most support for the stop-Farage fight.
The Scottish secretary, Douglas Alexander, one of the wisest put up to defend the NEC decision, was right when he told the Today programme on Radio 4 that the last thing the country wants now is an internal Labour melodrama, when the cost of living, state of the economy and public services should take up ministers’ every waking moment. But Labour’s failure to persuade on those essentials is exactly what has brought us to this crisis. If Gorton and Denton (Labour majority in 2024: 13,413) falls, that signals that there is no time to lose. That Labour’s NEC could even dare contemplate using the excuse of possibly losing Greater Manchester’s mayoralty to Reform shows the hierarchy accepting too complacently the depths of the party’s failure.
Labour may fall out, unable to agree on the policies or person of a new leader, preferring to stagger on while vainly scanning the horizon for something to turn up. But I would hope the great majority of Labour MPs, members, voters and potential voters want to put up the strongest contender, setting aside factionalisms of small difference in the face of a grave national threat.
Here is the Starmer tragedy, a good and clever man not made for politics or leadership. His lack of arrogance and his earnest endeavour is what his admirers like, but lack of political instinct and firmness of direction is a fatal flaw. Turning the party round after Corbyn was a triumph. His convictions are deep-dyed Labour: children’s opportunities, green investment, workers’ rights. But No 10’s over-cautious wariness of the right stifled the telling of that story. Look, I slid into the past tense because that is where he is almost certainly headed. His legacy will be a far longer list of good things done than anyone heard tell, because it was never well told. How he goes and who succeeds is the next story.
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Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
