Burnham or bust?
The left needs independence
Starmerism is over.
Burnham is back in parliament after winning the Makerfield by-election, and so Labour is out of order. This has meant that he can now take the leadership of the party and become the new prime minister.
And because Burnham is out as mayor of Greater Manchester, this triggers a by-election to replace him. The Greens will use it to build up their local structures for the next general election.
The Greens have been winning by-elections and councils from Labour, putting the kind of pressure on the government from outside that the Labour Left has attempted, largely unsuccessfully, from within. Your Party is one year old and finally launching official local branches but has been eclipsed in terms of membership by the Greens’ growth.
Reform’s growth has stalled, with the party unable to take recent parliamentary by-elections and its leader triggering one in his constituency in an effort to steal the initiative from the authorities investigating his declaration of interests. Big money donations have cast Farage in a new light, and with the major parties refusing to participate in his by-election stunt, he will face a joke candidate in the form of Count Binface.
The Tories, still the official opposition, have been out-polled by Reform but could beat Farage if another by-election is triggered in his Clacton constituency by a recall petition after he’s suspended for breaking parliamentary rules – which seems like the more realistic course of action than him being trashed by a man with a bin for a head.
All of these developments – the rise of Reform and the intensification of attention on Farage, the phenomenal growth of the Greens, Labour’s establishment paving the way for the return of Burnham – are a response to the unpopularity of Starmer’s leadership.
It has finally caught up with Starmer. He is quitting as PM and party leader rather than fighting a contest as he had pledged when there were calls for him to go. Unlike in 2016 when Labour MPs attempted to topple a leader and thousands rallied to defend Corbyn, there were no crowds protesting for Starmer to stay.
Burnham will become Labour leader unopposed, a coronation rather than a contest. It may be a successful coup, but previous Prime Ministers who entered office like this have not succeeded…
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deStarmerisation?
Burnham won his by-election, holding off a Reform gain, by being the anti-Starmer candidate. Vote Andy “For Us” and Starmer is gone. Not that it was said openly. But it is what has transpired. Starmer is going.
Road Bloc has made the case for the broad left to call for a contest and make it happen.
This is not being taken up for a variety of reasons: affiliated union leaders preferring to do a quick deal rather than risk a more chaotic process, Labour MPs preferring an “orderly transition”.
Some Labour Left MPs made noises about the process being inadequate, with members being frozen out, but apart from that, they’ve mostly lined up behind Burnham.
The argument for a contest was that it matters to the whole left – not only the few remaining in Labour but the left outside of Labour. Wherever we are, we will be made to own this by the Labour Right and the Right more broadly.
But that’s not why it mattered. A contest wasn’t guaranteed to see the return of a Corbyn-like figure – not that it would be sufficient to transform that party into something useful to the left.
No, the reason a contest mattered was that the bulk of the party membership is closer to the working class than the MPs in terms of their living conditions and closer to the advanced workers in their political consciousness. A contest would therefore have allowed the interventions of the organised left, as lay members of Labour-affiliated trade unions and as members of socialist organisations, and the ideas of proletarian socialism might in the process have contended with the bourgeois liberalism of Burnham’s “business-friendly socialism”.
If there’s no contest, there’s no need to campaign. There’s no outcome to change. And so there’s not the incentive to engage in a concerted effort to reach individual party members, affiliated trade union members.
Diane Abbott, who was the Socialist Campaign Group candidate for Labour’s leadership in 2010, suggested Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the SCG MP who tried to get on the ballot for the deputy leadership contest last year, should stand for the top job. Ribeiro-Addy describes herself as a socialist and trade unionist, holding the line against the Right’s culture-war demonisation of sections of the working class such as migrants and trans people.
But a leadership campaign – even to merely indicate a willingness to get nominations and therefore intervene publicly in policy debate with Burnham – has not lmaterialised.
Perhaps if the Labour Right had made a move, Labour’s hard left would have felt less inclined to passivity. Perhaps the Labour Left has been successfully tamed by purges and an exodus of left members to the Greens and Your Party.
So is Burnham serious about “ending neoliberalism” or has he just said this because a contest could happen and he may have needed the support of Labour members?
Because Manchesterism is neoliberalism. The metro-mayor system was created by the Tory government. The best Burnham can point to is the regulation, not public ownership, of buses.
So is this a soft lurch to the soft left?
He has arms-length outriders at the Common Wealth thinktank and the new soft left faction Mainstream. But he’s travelling light on policy detail.
The direction seemed clear enough in what little there was of a beauty parade – “taking power out of the centre and putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best” with “Number 10 North” which will aim at “equivalent living standards in all parts of Britain”. But this is not Tory “levelling up” rhetoric from the late 2010s because Burnham says “we will ensure all parts of the UK are able to take greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy and transport”.
This decentralised re-regulation will apparently involve the biggest construction of council housing since the postwar period in the 1940s, electoral reform in Labour’s manifesto for the next general election. As part of a 10 year plan to bring down the cost of basics and reindustrialise the economy, Burnham wants to “safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability across the country in critical sectors like steel, defence, energy, food and farming”.
This all runs counter to Britain’s forty-year bet on financialisation, greater openness to foreign investment in utilities and services, notably by US firms. A turn to what his outriders call a “productive state” – Manchesterism as developmentalism – might have to involve deyankification at this point. Is this agenda not part of what made the first Trump administration hostile to Labour under Corbyn? Trump might be doing America First protectionism, but that doesn’t mean the hegemon will tolerate a similar move in its vassal states.
To even start to end neoliberalism and return to the more developmental model of postwar social democracy would require a purge of the avowed social democrats of the Labour Right – the creation of a new Labour to bury New Labour.
The clues that Burnham is not the messiah are to be found in his past, where he has been a naughty boy – loyal to the New Labour project – and in the cast of characters around him: former New Labour-era minister turned lobbyist James Purnell, the disgraced Josh Simons who resigned to trigger the by-election.
This does not look like the general staff for a war of national liberation from US imperialism, it looks like the road to Wigan Keir, Starmerism with Northern characteristics. Blairites getting the band back together and playing some new tunes.
Where does all this leave the left in Britain? First, the assessment of Burnham’s past, then second some speculation about his future, and finally observations and recommendations concerning the present state of the left.
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The past
Andy Burnham has tried twice before to be Labour leader. In 2010 after New Labour left office and in 2015 after Miliband’s soft-left compromise with the Labour Right failed to advance the party in that year’s general election.
In both contests, Burnham was beaten by candidates to his left. He voted for the Iraq war, he abstained on a Tory vote to cut benefits. He was loyal to whoever was leader at the time and it got him nowhere.
Burnham has posed as the defender of New Labour, as a critic of its “London-centric” approach and the saviour of the soft left. He tried to please both sides and it didn’t work, now he doesn’t need to win the votes.
His return to parliament was secured by Josh Simons, the Makerfield MP parachuted in by the party’s Right in 2024. Simons’ background was as a faction-fighter in Labour Together, the organisation which spearheaded efforts to replace Corbyn with someone acceptable to the membership but backed by the wealthy donors. That was Starmer.
Does Simons’ action mean Burnham is the new donor-friendly leader? Not necessarily! Simons disgraced himself by apparently commissioning espionage against journalists investigating Labour Together but he was an initial enthusiast of Corbyn, turning against his leadership over the antisemitism crisis. Simons claims this latest move is just a sacrifice. It remains to be seen if he will be rewarded for creating a vacancy for the new leader.
Burnhamism’s obstacle for the left now is that Labour will have a leader much like the early Starmer in the course of his leadership campaign in the run up to 2020: it may not be apparent to an intermediate layer of workers, and even some of the advanced workers, that Burnham’s programme is ultimately for a modified form of Labour Right administration.
But Burnham is free to chose, of course, and if he chooses a path like that of Spain’s Sánchez – coalition with others on the left and a defiant (if still Atlanticist) stance towards Trump – then he will face the resistance of perhaps hundreds of those Labour MPs vetted by McSweeney and Mandelson for their obedience to Starmer and his loyalty to the Labour Right, Britain’s ruling class and its vassal relationship to the US ruling class.
What the US might lose with a developmental turn in Europe is a strong flow of profits to its tech firms and banks – if not a sudden and immediate barrier to entry, greater regulation and taxation. Trump is threatening yet more tariffs because of European taxation on digital services. These are not explicitly aimed at disadvantaging US firms but it mainly is the profits of monopolies like Amazon, etc. which are at stake.
The US didn’t invade western Europe in the 1940s and doesn’t officially occupy it. But when the Cold War ended in the late 80s and early 90s and the threat of the USSR spreading communism ceased to exist, the US did not dismantle its network of bases in Europe but moved ever eastwards. Again, apparently voluntarily, in a democratic fashion.
Now the US openly threatens the sovereignty of European states, seeking to take Greenland from Denmark and to prevent the European Union becoming a federal state by backing nationalist-populist movements to break it up. Its leaders threaten other NATO members like Canada with annexation.
If these are just jokes, European leaders aren’t laughing. But they are also probably not capable of mounting a defence of the east of the EU from a revanchist regime in Moscow without the involvement of the US.
The period of the US containment of communism by tolerating reformist social democracy ended between four and five decades ago, since then the aim has been to roll back the post-WW2 social settlement and prevent European integration resulting in a United States of Europe. This has taken the form of sections of the US ruling class backing Brexit, but the next step may be a US president openly calling for France or Germany to follow Britain into the wilderness.
Britain’s ruling class is entirely relaxed about this reversal of fortune, the old colony becoming the new hegemon. To go from an empire to a vassal state is just fine if it means the lower orders are kept in line and the money flows in. And what British domestic intelligence agencies can’t do with “spy cops”, US foreign intelligence agencies can achieve with a much bigger budget for crushing the left.
We should not expect these chains to be broken, perhaps not even shaken, by Andy Burnham. But it suits Labour’s soft left faction for illusions to be maintained. Exposing this is a matter of patiently explaining, as all but the most advanced sections of the organised working class in Britain may have the hope that living standards could improve under Burnham without a rupture from the Labour Right.
Harsh denunciations of Burnham may not resonate. He’s not yet proven, like Starmer, to be selling out. Although his record as a New Labour era MP from 2001-10 was one of loyalty to Blair and Brown, he was also publicly a loyal member of the shadow cabinet under Miliband and Corbyn until he left parliament to become Greater Manchester mayor.
Burnham has acted as if a contest was happening although he faced no credible challenger. He has been made leader by the overwhelming majority of the parliamentary Labour Party – and thanks to Starmer’s doubling of the nominations threshold to dilute the influence of the Socialist Campaign Group MPs. And Burnham has secured the nominations of all of the affiliated unions and socialist societies.
But if he had not won the Makerfield by-election and returned to parliament, it is likely that Streeting would have challenged Starmer – and it would then have been up to Angela Rayner to launch a bid to stop him, backed by the soft left MPs and the trade union leaders.
It is not Burnham’s policy agenda that the Labour Right are necessarily signed up to but his popularity – or lack of unpopularity (so far). The Labour Right isn’t primarily concerned with electability as it claims, though it would obviously prefer to win and govern, because there’s politics to this faction: deference to the US ruling class in foreign policy, deference to the British ruling class in domestic economic policy.
Winning as a left party would be intolerable to the Labour Right because it would be intolerable to its donors. But Labour now faces an existential crisis: having purged the left in conditions where the left can get elected without Labour, the Labour Right is in turmoil.
Burnham has been unopposed by the Labour Right so far because they may imagine he’s doing Starmer 2.0: talk like a soft left to get elected, act like the Labour Right in office. But the uncomfortable fact is that individuals have free will. And this is what the Labour Left is clinging to at the moment.
If the Right hopes Burnham will be Starmer but without the 2029 losses which the May local elections portend, the Labour Left hopes that he will be the Starmer of the 2020 leadership contest without leading them to defeat.
The Socialist Campaign Group has issued a policy platform. But of what use was it without a candidate? It appeared as though they were about to pledge loyalty to Burnham en masse but needed to make a little noise to make them feel less ashamed at submitting without a struggle.
Typical of Labour’s hard left of late, the SCG did not raise clear democratic demands for the restructuring of the state – there’s not even a mention of proportional representation, which Burnham himself has professed to support.
We have witnessed a more limited contest than even the New Labour handover from Blair to Brown in 2007 when the SCG not only issued a policy agenda but had a candidate. Burnham’s failed bid to stand in the Gorton and Denton by-election and then his subsequent victory in the Makerfield by-election have given him the aura of a radical upstart – along with his statements about ending neoliberalism.
The reason the Labour Left is not pushing further is that it basically accepts a permanent alliance with the Labour Right. And since its leading figures are members of parliament, their priority has been to change Labour’s leadership rather than change their own party membership in a split – recall that Corbyn had to be forced out, he would otherwise have stood for Labour in 2024 if permitted.
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The future
The way forward in Britain is a united front of the organised working class at the core of a broader popular front which can draw in allies from the heterogeneous class forces surrounding it. This democratic anti-monopoly alliance may be capable of electing a legislative majority willing to implement a left wing programme and rupture with US imperialism, overturning British imperialism in the process.
The kind of social-democratic reformism which occurred in Britain from the 1940s, the “sprint of ’45” may no longer be possible. It depended upon Britain’s established status as an imperial power with colonies around the world and the transfer of power in international affairs to the US, which had established a presence across Europe after the Second World War.
The war mobilised virtually the entire workforce in Britain, achieving full employment to win what was a total war. This allowed the advance of trade unionism as Labour entered a coalition government with the Tories to win the war and achieved immediate reforms at capital’s expense such as the introduction of capital controls to prevent a flight of money.
Rather than take state power and socialise finance and the monopolies, the landslide Labour government in 1945 remained loyal to Britain’s ruling class and its new master, the US. The compromise which was reached endured for a generation.
We cannot be sure that a bottle-neck similar to that of the 40s will exist in future, which prevented the reformism of the postwar Labour government being immediately wiped away. A big part of it was the US pursuing a strategy of containment within western Europe – not threatening or carrying out coups or blockades against social-democratic governments but tolerating them, supporting them through the Marshall Plan to counter communism.
Perhaps war or ecological collapse will lead to a revolutionary wave causing the US to tolerate social democracy in Europe again. This cannot not concern us, however. We have to resist US imperialism rather than plan for a dirty deal with it.
The alliances necessary to rebuild working-class power requires a mass party or a pre-party formation capable of gaining mass membership, especially among the already-organised working class in the trade unions. Because this would be an uneasy alliance. United front work involves strikes and protests which can conflict with the timidity of non-proletarian allies within popular front work.
The conditions for creating a mass communist party, far larger than the small left parties which already exist but just as radical, may be the election of a left government. Though of course it is necessary to carry out unity efforts before that point in time. We probably can’t elect a left government without fusion of left parties into an alliance.
We can’t plan for anything else – not a monopoly socialism based on a single party winning a majority (the electoralism of the centre-left politicians) nor a protracted people’s war in the countryside encircling the cities (the paramilitarism of the ultra-left) nor a strike wave culminating in a general strike a new social order (the syndicalism of the ultra-left).
Let’s briefly consider why alliancism is necessary:
• Electoralism results in tailing the reformist leaders of Labour, the Greens, etc., and is often accompanied by a ‘burrowing’ tactic of entryism under threat of purges. (Electoralism is therefore responsive to the cycle of labourism – when Labour is in opposition, individual militants and groups undertake entry work and/or give automatic support for Labour, then when the party is in government or just about to enter it, conducting purges, an exodus takes place and there is then automatic support for attempts to create a new version of Labour.)
• Paramilitarism imposes casualties and leads to mass arrests; a milder form of this, direct actionism, also leads to a form of substitutionism in which the actionist behind bars replaces the workplace militant accountable to mass politics. With non-violent direct action the impact on the civilian population isn’t as harmful but there can be no illusions that the regime will melt away if a certain percentage of the population are in the streets, occupying squares, etc.
• Syndicalism involves a similar process of liquidation by abstention to paramilitarism, but here there is a broader reach on the basis of an economistic focus on pay and conditions in the hope of generalising strike action. When confronted with a paralysing strike wave, however, the bourgeoisie in a liberal-democratic state can rely upon a general election to prevent escalation into a dual-power situation. So there’s no escape from the high politics of the constitutional order by means of industrial action.
It is worth stressing this question of legality. Non-violent direct action and forms of political speech are increasingly treated by the British state as terrorism even where no incitement to violent activity nor material support for proscribed organisations is provided. The surveillance power of the modern bourgeois state is ever-advancing. We therefore cannot afford adventurism on the left, it will criminalise a generation of young militants and take them out of action in their communities and our workplaces.
The alternative to electoralism, paramilitarism, and syndicalism, involves a combination of consistent electoral work, community activism manifesting in street protests, and rank-and-file trade union organising resulting in strikes. Individual militants may be largely devoted to one or two of these, but all three are required of a mass-membership party.
A single mass-membership party (or more immediately an alliance, a pre-party formation) can be forged out of splits from reformism and fusions of left forces. Such a party could not guarantee legislative results for itself, it could not order people to take to the streets, it could not take direct control of strikes, and it could not be militarised in peacetime. But it could be a significant counter-weight to the bourgeois parties, an anti-systemic opposition force.
(Both the British ruling class and the US ruling class feared that Labour would become something like this under Corbyn: too radical to permit it to enter government, too democratic to purge its left, too united to lure it into moderating its programme. Instead Labour become none of those things with the victory of Starmer, aided by the failure of Corbynism to purge the Labour Right when it had the chance.)
We only achieve this kind of radical, democratic and united organisation in the medium to long term by alliance-building in the short term. Since the party would have to be decentralised, with the ability of branches to take initiative and the right of members to express their views and associate between branches, what we do to create a democratic culture matters.
Our ultimate focus has to be shifting the national politics within the territory of the British state decisively to the left, of course. It will not be possible for a left parliamentary majority to establish socialism – or do it in isolation, of course. Momentum within the British state will require unity with revolutionary movements across Europe and the world.
There are those who recognise this: groups on the Labour left, the Green left, and the radical and revolutionary left in and around Your Party, and some on the left within the movements for national self-determination in Scotland and Wales. And this is particularly obvious within trade unionism and tenant unionism when the limits of such campaigning are reached: the legal barriers to exercising working-class power within workplaces and neighbourhoods.
What’s not widely theorised is the legal and ideological mechanism of transition to socialism – not merely a succession of left governments but, in all likelihood, a constituent assembly to legitimise the creation of a new democratic republic in Britain. This may perhaps also be on a continental basis through a single unitary state formed out of the major economies of Britain, France, Germany entering into a fusion process, or more realistically via a federal republic, a United States of Europe in place of the European Union.
Rising temperatures in Europe resulting from climate change, and the rise of China challenging “the West” as a coherent entity led by the US, mean that the constitutional order across this continent will be upended. European capitalists don’t want to compete with exports as China moves up the value chain to produce cars, etc. but they can’t afford protectionism either. And reducing carbon emissions surely involves trade with China rather than attempting a kind of European autarky when it comes to the technology to replace the burning of hydrocarbons.
If Burnham were to choose to be the British Sánchez, then sections of the left outside of Labour would no doubt enter into an alliance with him. The Greens perhaps, maybe even the Your Party aligned MPs. This would be coalitionism if not ministerialism – legislative support and a softening of rhetoric, not seats in his cabinet.
This should concentrate minds on the programmatic basis on which the left operates. Would we accept this horse-trading over policies and resources or do we hold the line for the full implementation of a socialist programme? It is the latter choice which will avoid overt political liquidation and provide a radical leadership to the advanced and intermediate sections of the working class.
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The present
Should Burnham proceed with his “public control” of energy, housing, transport, and water, then the question arises of how that greater regulation is exercised. The model Burnham is taken with is the one which allowed him to build a base in opposition to Starmer – the metro-mayor system created by the Tories, one-man management rather than the indirect election of council leaders, and the private provision of public transport, regulated through a franchise.
The Bee Network buses is a source of pride for Burnham, but if broader “public control” is exercised by metro-mayors and existing public services, including those provided by local councils, are subject to austere conditions, that’s a recipe for disgruntled councillors – tasked with cutting budgets and raising taxes, unlike the metro-mayors.
In this context, the suggestion for the newly-formed Socialist Federation to champion a “communities before cuts” pledge campaign for the May local elections, culminating in a conference next autumn, has merit. It could potentially be bigger than both TUSC’s petitioning of Green council candidates to back no-cuts budgets and the efforts of Greens Organise to cohere support among Green candidates for an anti-austerity stance in local government because Labour and other candidates would be asked to sign the pledge and build the conference. (And there’s no reason why TUSC and Greens Organise wouldn’t build such a pledge campaign and conference, though it would have to be some of the public sector unions taking a lead rather than the relatively-obscure Socialist Federation.)
Burnham’s commitment to Reeves’ fiscal rules mean that jobs and services in local government will be subject to a squeeze. A campaign around council funding could come out of pay disputes and feed back into mobilisation for strikes by organising the broader public in defence of striking workers.
In the context of warfare versus welfare public spending decisions, clarity on what’s happening is essential. The US is going to build a war with China and make Europe pay for it. The abortive attempt by the US and Israel to take over Iran was just the latest manoeuvre. The future the US has planned for Europe is a weak and divided continent, unable to unite into a single state and compete with the US.
This is why Polanski was right to risk talking about the end of NATO in his campaign to become Green leader last year. It is why Sultana was right to be loudly against NATO. This is not an issue which will go away.
US support for Israel’s genocidal violence towards the Palestinians in Gaza, its land seizures in the West Bank, and regular invasions of Lebanon, and British state complicity in all of this has generated a significant Palestine solidarity movement which dovetails with existing mass sentiment of scepticism about British participation in US-led wars after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, which the Stop The War Coalition has represented for 25 years now. Coordination across Europe against the march to rearmament is taking place.
Any brief popularity boost Burnham will enjoy for Labour with his domestic agenda on energy, housing, transport and water, may quickly be overshadowed by deference to the US. Starmer’s parting gift to Burnham is more unfunded “defence” spending – more demands for arms expenditure will be forthcoming as the Trump regime realises how easy it is to shake-down the Europeans.
Because what is Burnham’s record on foreign policy? Voting for the Iraq war, association with Labour Friends of Israel. Even so, he has faced the spectre of a leadership challenge from Al Carns, a Tory voter, former officer in the armed forces, who was parachuted into a safe Labour seat by the Starmerites in 2024. The clear implication – as with Streeting ducking out of a contest – is that if Burnham doesn’t obey, he’ll get the Corbyn treatment.
The Burnham government is unlikely to reverse Starmer’s assault on civil liberties, take the Sánchez line on the US in the Middle East. It will be committed to a largely uncritical Atlanticism, the “special relationship”.
So Burnham looks set to be a Starmer 2.0 but with more skilled communication and without ten pledges to break. This should result in a brief period of relative popularity or neutrality among a centre to left section of the electorate followed by strong unpopularity.
It’s therefore not a case of “Burnham or bust” for the left in terms of advance, but when it comes to defeats his failure will be a set-back for the left as the chances are he may remain leader until the time of the next general election. If he presides over a loss to a coalition of the Tories and Reform – which seems to be the most likely configuration of a government without Labour – then the left will also be defeated.
Burnham’s best move may be to call a snap general election, something Gordon Brown failed to do in 2007, because he and Labour may not be as popular as when he first becomes Prime Minister.
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Declaring independence
Tailing Burnham, even if he were to wake up tomorrow a convinced communist, is untenable. Independence cannot be traded away by trade union leaders or leftwing members of parliament.
What does this political independence from the government look like?
The Greens may take an initial polling hit from Burnhamism but local elections next May offer another opportunity for the new Green left to put down roots. The timing of attacks on Burnham will be the subject of debate between Green MPs (who may hope to coalesce with him and become ministers) on one side and the party’s more radical membership (and those leaders who see Burnham and Labour as a direct challenge to their own prospects).
Because of their local election gains, the new Green left is gradually being drawn into managing the local capitalist state, taking over councils and potentially implementing budget cuts which continue to erode public services unless an alternative course of action can be found.
Your Party is finally rolling out its official local branches in anticipation of May elections, having purged much of the already-existing organised left.
One year on from the announcement of its creation, there’s a great degree of scepticism about Your Party’s prospects. Some of that is from those defeated by the majority faction – including those purged. (The purges now apparently include suspending those on the left of its leadership suspected of organising against the ruling faction.) But there’s some gloating from Labour’s soft left, believing Labour is about to be rescued by Burnhamism.
The radicalism in both the Greens and Your Party will be sustained by open factional organising on both a practical and principled basis.
Greens Organise, the newer left faction in the English Greens, will apparently hold a conference on austerity in local government, details to be announced. They have played a productive role in growing the party’s membership by securing the election of Polanski as leader but the crunch will come with council budgets.
And the new Socialist Federation in and around Your Party is perhaps not as focused on this internal party work yet but may be drawn into it if the official party branches take off. Other formations exist in and around YP but SF has the most developed political perspective.
This point about radicalism also holds with regard to Labour. The hard Labour Left – in Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, and the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs – might presently be quiet, waiting to see if Burnham calls off the purges, allowing the Left to defy the whip without losing it. But when the cuts come, there will be a reaction from backbench MPs and activists in the constituency parties. Including those on the soft left who are currently backing Burnham – we saw this with Starmer, after all.
This gets us to the point about Labour which will endure until it collapses as an electoral force, the unions disaffiliate, the voting system changes, etc. There will be workers of intermediate to advanced political consciousness who are drawn into it as members not only as tactical voters.
Whatever Burnham does, though, the autonomous organising of the left can contribute to blocking a turn to the Right in Britain. Not just in contesting the march of the right on the streets but also at the ballot box.
Notions of a “progressive alliance” based on the lowest common denominator politics of Labour, the Liberals, Greens, etc. are just not credible. A socialist alliance to support viable left candidates regardless of party does have some validity (although Labour Left candidates may be unable to accept donations from an alliance and some on the left will choose to field candidates against them, if not campaigns which could actually defeat them).
Does this mean the left forms an explicit alliance with a government of the centre which is being pulled to the right by Britain’s ruling class and the US ruling class?
No, and Burnham will probably not seek such a deal with the radical left in Labour and outside of it. (Though some of the SCG MPs might be hoping to move nearer to the frontbench with bag-carrying roles for soft left ministers. And one or two might succeed. Starmer took that approach initially as part of a divide and rule strategy.)
The broad left will have to fight not only that potential for opportunistic sections of the left to tail the Labour leadership in the run up to a 2029 general election but also fight the perception that the left is the same thing as the liberal centre by asserting its own politics effectively.
The problem though is that another Corbyn-type movement within Labour remains a possibility in future unless the party changes. If Burnham was for some reason unable to continue as leader and PM, could an SCG member get 81 nominations to get on a leadership ballot? Probably not, but if Labour is driven into opposition in 2029 or gets a second term with a smaller parliamentary delegation, then it very much depends on the balance of forces within it. The hard left and the soft left could be proportionately larger than at present and moved to nominate a figure who could draw the broader left back into Labour.
The immediate task for the left then is to articulate a common programme for a left bloc as well as building one’s own organisation. This would be a programme which plans to not only break with the decline in living standards in Britain but seeks to create a democratic workers’ republic to secure that change.
This is not a programme to be formulated on the basis of the politics of broad-frontism – denying one’s true politics, with communists cosplaying as social democrats to make up the numbers – or a kind of leftwing NGOism where leaders and policies are not at all accountable to a rank and file membership organised in local branches. These two forms of democratic backsliding – opportunism and managerialism – are pressures faced by everyone active on the left. The need to go along to get along, the fear of open debate opening up irreconcilable differences.
Whether there’s a snap general election this year or next, or the government lasts the full term, the broad left will have to think in terms of alliances – a strategy that makes the most of organisational divides.
We will have to prepare our class to become the ruling class in the territory of this state: respecting the right of nations to self-determination, seeking co-operation with workers across Europe and the world to overcome the isolation and bureaucratic degeneration which would result from a failure for the revolution to spread on a continental basis and make international alliances.
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Postscript on a Platform
We will have to design organisations which allow for open debate and decision-making right across the left in Britain.
To end on a positive note in this regard, Root and Branch is a new socialist organising network co-founded by We Deserve Better.
People on the left, whether members of Labour, the Greens, Your Party, etc., can join the site and vouch for each other, organise in their locality using forums and discuss left media content. Hopefully, unlike the US tech platforms it will not be driven to prioritise rage-driven engagement to keep people hooked and viewing advertisements.
Much will depend on how it is governed and whether it is taken up widely by comrades across the left in place of Facebook, WhatsApp, etc,. But in its early days, Root and Branch looks like a positive contribution to the broad left in Britain.