No coronation

The left and the unions need a candidate in a full Labour leadership contest

Keir Starmer probably won’t be Labour’s leader at the next general election in Britain.

What happens next matters for Britain’s trade unionists, whether or not their union is affiliated to the Labour Party.

At present, it appears as though Manchester mayor Andy Burnham will fight the Makerfield by-election as Labour’s candidate and then challenge for the leadership of the party and control of the government. To this end he seems to have the support of Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, the former deputy Angela Rayner, and perhaps soft-left cabinet members like former leader Ed Miliband.

Starmer has been unable to again stop Burnham from standing for selection in a by-election in the North West of England. It’s open to question what would have happened to the Greens in Gorton and Denton had Burnham not been blocked but the aftermath caused soul-searching within Labour.

A complete defeat for Labour in the 2028/9 general election would probably mean a Reform-Tory coalition government and with it a far greater assault on public sector jobs and workers’ rights across the economy than Labour could ever deliver given its ties to the organised working class in affiliated trade unions.

Trade unionists should therefore call for a full leadership contest, regardless of the party they support or whether their union is affiliated to Labour, because the party’s membership lives more like the average trade union member than the high-paid Labour MPs.

Without pressure from below there could be a deal between Burnham and the former health secretary Wes Streeting, currently presenting himself as the natural candidate of the Labour Right having resigned from the cabinet. This could lead Burnham’s current positions on public ownership and proportional representation – both popular with Labour members but maybe less so with the MPs – to be discarded like Starmer’s notorious pledges.

A contest will mean that Burnham has to reiterate the things he is currently saying on the campaign trail in Makerfield and which he first seriously outlined as a leadership pitch in the New Statesman last September.

Unions may or may not want to have a close proximity to Burnham’s Manchesterism, styled as a ‘business-friendly socialism’, but they should want a contest not a coronation.

Even trade unionists on the right would benefit from a left candidate in the race. It can’t be left to Burnham, a former New Labour minister who has faced strikes by transport workers as mayor, to take up the demands of the unions.

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Who cares?

The position of Road Bloc is that Britain’s road to socialism is blocked by the absence of a sizable delegation in parliament which would form the core of a government committed to a leftwing programme.

Another blockage is the legacy (and perseverance) of ‘actually-existing socialism’ without multi-party elections which contrasts negatively with the ability of the working class here and now to seemingly carry out revolution at the ballot box, with the right to vote for a choice of candidates apparently countering bureaucratisation and allowing the renewal of representation.

The left will have to lead the working class and its allies to political power in Britain, and across Europe and the rest of the world, through a succession of legislative majorities, transforming the class basis of the existing bourgeois state, creating a people’s multi-party democracy – in place of the monarchic and bourgeois rule, a democratic workers’ republic.

The British revolution will require a democratic anti-monopoly alliance to encircle the state-monopoly capitalist class. The reinforcement for a united front of workers’ organisations, the rank-and-file in the unions and workers’ parties, will come from cross-class organisations, popular fronts open to people from the intermediate strata, class-traitors from the petty-bourgeoisie and even haute bourgeoisie.

Neither a general strike nor any other form of insurrectionary action can overcome the ability of the bourgeois state to call an election and try to settle class war at the ballot box, let alone its overwhelming military force through adventurism. And national questions within the British state mean that majorities will have to be constructed across these islands on the basis of nations having the right to self-determination.

The demand for elections to a constituent assembly will inevitably be central to an enduring left wing programme for government. It will not be possible to just elect a left government and leave the institutions of the existing state intact, a constituent process will have to be initiated to counteract bureaucratisation and create new institutions of popular administration.

The major barrier is that Labour remains a bourgeois workers’ party. It has a claim in its constitution to be a democratic socialist party, it has trade union affiliates, and it still attracts the votes of many class-conscious workers and their allies. Yet the Labour Right is funded and promoted by the British ruling class and its allies, in particular the state of which Britain is a vassal, the US.

The class struggle therefore has to be fought within the party – in and against it – through its affiliates if not always through its actual membership via entryism. Because the party depends upon union funding to survive when it has lost office and the bourgeoisie no longer lavishes it with donations, and because its members of parliament require organisation in the constituencies to secure their election and re-election, the Labour Right is not immune to popular pressure and contestation.

All of this necessitates the defeat not only of the Right in politics but also the Labour Right, with whom the Labour Left is in a permanent alliance. The monopoly of political representation of the organised working class must be broken so that competition can weaken and divide the Labour Right – allowing deselection at the ballot box.

Over the past three years, splits from Labour and fusions on the left have led to the Workers Party, the Independent Alliance, and the Greens gaining seats in parliament and on local authorities within England, which comprises the bulk of Britain. But without proportional representation in the British parliament, the cycle of labourism may again draw militants from the organised working class back into Labour once it loses office, and these declarations of independence from the capitalist-funded wing of Labour may prove fleeting.

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Who fears a vote?

The boss class has not wanted Starmer to go and they certainly don’t want a full and broad contest. They know that the candidate closest to fulfilling their wishes could be rejected by Labour’s largely soft-left membership.

The temptation of the affiliated union leaders may be to do a deal with the current cabinet and go along with an ‘orderly transition’ so that union members who are also Labour members are denied a vote. In the name of stability and concessions, a coronation.

It is no secret that the union tops looked to Angela Rayner to use her position as deputy leader to secure reforms like the new employment rights act. That was a limited success and has delivered modest changes to workers’ rights and the rights of renters.

They may expect her and Andy Burnham to rescue the party from the Labour Right’s chosen successor, the health secretary Wes Streeting. (This, despite the role of both Rayner and Burnham in strikes by workers represented by Unite and UNISON. And also misgivings about the government’s commitments with regard to North Sea gas and oil – Unite’s demand is for ‘no ban without a plan’, no denial of the role of hydrocarbons in climate change but a concern that this energy transition is just.)

Rank-and-file trade unionists don’t have to take a diplomatic approach to government ministers, they can make a big noise, setting the scene for negotiations and opening up the whole process.

Indeed, this pressure may be productive if it is visible. Because although the unions can’t make a contest take place if enough MPs block it, they own Starmerism to some extent having funded Labour candidates and maintained ties to the party.

By taking a public stance against Starmer and for a contest, trade unionists can prove they do not bow to politicians and can’t be expected to own Burnham – or Streeting, should he win.

Union branches should move motions as soon as possible calling for a contest. Union delegates to constituency Labour Party branches should speak out about local party members being given a vote.

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Hope over fear

There is cause for urgency.

Labour has never held a leadership contest when in government under the rules introduced in the early 80s to extend the franchise to members outside of parliament. Before then, the parliamentary Labour Party was purely parliamentary, the MPs decided who became leader. The ruling class would prefer that these rules still existed in Labour!

The only leadership transition when the party was in government under these rules was when Tony Blair was replaced by Gordon Brown in 2007. A full leadership contest was then avoided because the left could not get enough nominations to stand a candidate against Brown.

One objection to causing a stir now is that the demand will be raised for a general election if there is a change of leader – and especially if that leader is seen to be responsive to the demands of the organised working class.

But a general election before 2029 is nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, a snap election when Brown took over in 2007 might have allowed Labour to avoid a prolonged period in opposition. It was certainly a missed opportunity, from a purely electoralist perspective, that the Labour government elected in 1997 did not keep its manifesto commitment to changing the voting system.

And in any case a general election is not a constitutional requirement – Truss did not call an election in 2022 (though perhaps she didn’t last long enough) and nor did Sunak when he took over a matter of weeks later.

What did the Tories in between 2019 and 2024 was not that they cycled through leaders but that the material conditions for the broad mass of the population did not undergo significant improvement and actually worsened. That is what led to the rise of Reform at their expense and the loveless landslide which propelled Starmer to Downing Street.

A new Labour leader could push ahead with electoral reform, forcing the next government to require greater popular support than the one in three voters who backed Labour in 2024.

An election held with a proportional voting system might allow gains for the broader left, with Green and independent socialist MPs winning more seats, ensuring a continued fragmentation on the right of politics. It would be possible for Labour’s monopoly on working class political representation to be challenged by an enduring party or parties of the radical and even revolutionary left.

And a leadership contest now is the point at which support for the demand for electoral reform – backed by most trade unions – would be a topic of debate at hustings meetings.

It must be stressed: a general election is not constitutionally required until 2029. Assuming that a majority of Labour MPs don’t quit the party, depriving it of a parliamentary majority and the confidence of the House of Commons, a new leader can plough on until May 2029. (Barring a military coup or perhaps a palace coup initiated by the King, of course.)

But maybe a general election would be needed, many current Labour MPs have been hand-picked by the Labour Right – if the party is re-elected with a smaller majority, provided that the Labour Left doesn’t lose out, a soft-left leadership might command enough authority to break with orthodoxy in the direction of trade union policies on the economy.

For the left and the unions, running scared of mass participation is bound to lead to cynicism and demoralisation as the right minority makes the running with an openness to the free choice of the masses. But it is reasonable to say that there’s not a requirement to go to the polls until 2029.

The street movements of the right have in recent years presented the technocratic centrist government of Keir Starmer as some kind of Stalinist project, a party-state standing above any contestation from below. And certainly, the cancellation of elections in reorganised local authorities have given this impression that the Starmerites are afraid of the verdict of the masses.

Provided that the left (including the soft left should it dominate the government) is not seen to give up on the goal of democratisation, winning concessions can be sufficient cause to wait until 2029.

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Economic and democratic

Active trade unionists come to know the limits of trade unionism: what can be won by employer recognition and negotiation, what requires regulatory or statutory enforcement.

The kinds of demands which are raised by trade unionists and directed at the Labour government can’t just be centred on a second employment rights bill, the fiscal rules, taxation and spending, and the pattern of ownership in the economy.

This would be to continue with economism in politics, focusing on economic demands and expecting the capitalist state as it is currently structured to concede reforms.

Democratic demands play an important role in working class mobilisation, drawing in the layers among intermediate strata and even sections of the capitalist class.

The CWU is therefore correct to restate a demand, at its conference, made by other unions for legislative elections to be conducted using a reformed voting system. Proportional representation in councils and parliaments isn’t a silver bullet, but it does create the conditions for the trade unions to have more enduring influence and for the working class to break the monopoly of political representation held by the Labour Right.

The risk for trade unionism in the coming period is that general secretaries are drawn into a dirty deal with Starmer or with his cabinet as part of an ‘orderly transition’ to replace him. The brand of trade unionism can’t become the brand of Labour, not least because Labour’s reputation tarnished in the eyes of voters. Nor can it be the brand of Burnhamism, for that matter.

In addition to changes like PR for the British Parliament, the trade unions across these islands will have to articulate the democratic demand for national self-determination through devolved institutions. With nationalist parties in office in Scotland, Wales, and the North of Ireland, votes on independence and reunification may be requested in the coming years. It can be the unions which draw together workers regardless of opinion that can stand for these issues to be resolved democratically.

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Raynerism returns

Angela Rayner has been cleared by the tax authorities and is consequently freed of the spectre of further fines or legal action. She resigned from the cabinet over this tax issue concerning the home of her disabled child and complicated living arrangements which may be familiar to many families.

No doubt she has sought to advance herself throughout her career as a trade unionist and elected Labour representative, but none of this is particularly remarkable. It represents less an example of personal corruption and more the incorporation of the organised working class into the capitalist state, producing state-loyalism and equivocations over imperialism and neo-colonialism. So, for example, Rayner went along with the Starmerite position of complicity with the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel and the UK’s arming of the IDF.

She was once a great hope of trade union leaders, occupying a role within the Labour Party as deputy leader akin to that of John Prescott in the New Labour era – she too is a politician from a union background, familiar with speaking to rooms of delegates, and therefore able to speak fluently to the aspirations of active union members.

Her intervention in the leadership debate has been cautious, not making a declaration that she will stand but instead setting out what needs to be done in her opinion.

What her assessment gets wrong electorally is that the government’s fiscal rules will have to be paused given the US turn towards protectionism and the disruption resulting from the war in Iran. Such austerity may limit any broad-based economic recovery which could be secured with public ownership and investment.

But what it gets right is that the cost of living is the top issue for working-class voters which can be tangibly changed by legislative action. Of relevance to trade unions is her call to move ahead with Fair Pay Agreements, sectoral collective bargaining first of all in the care sector.

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Class war and peace

Both Rayner’s platform and the leadership pitch advanced by Burnham have little to say about British imperialism and neo-colonialism, the presence of US military bases in Britain and the state’s complicity in the war against Iran which has threatened the supply of energy to Europe.

For this reason, it may be necessary for Labour’s hard left to attempt to stand its own candidate – able to articulate the kind of criticisms of NATO made by the new Green leader Zack Polanski and by the Your Party project of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

Burnham is open to British remilitarisation – he voted for the Iraq war when he was last a Labour MP, of course. And other prominent soft-left figures are just as incapable of imagining a British foreign policy which is not tied to the US or guided by the imperial ambitions of its bourgeoisie. Miliband did not lead Labour to oppose UK participation in the US intervention in Libya when he was opposition leader, although he did stand against overt military intervention in Syria.

The demand of US imperialism today is for the European states locked into its NATO military alliance to increase spending on ‘defence’ – to offer more lucrative contracts to US arms companies and tech firms like Palantir.

The dream of some in Europe’s ruling elites is for ‘strategic autonomy’ from the US under Trump. This may be a necessity if Trumpism endures after the 2028 presidential election. The US currently seeks a weakened and divided Europe, unable to unite into a single federal state and compete with it for world-hegemon, and it is willing to back far-right political forces which will rail against ‘more Europe’.

Despite Trump’s claims that the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if he had remained president, he has been unable to end the conflict to US and European satisfaction. The Russian state is more than just Putin and its ruling class has not given up on territorial claims over Ukraine such as Crimea despite the huge loss of life.

Starmer prevented the parliamentary Labour Party from reflecting the sense within the British labour movement that US imperialism is as much a threat to Europe as Russian aggression. In 2022 he called on Socialist Campaign Group members to remove their signatures from a statement which was critical of NATO expansion in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The spectre of Russian aggression threatening Britain will be used to justify arms spending at the expense of social spending. It is not necessary to engage in a defence of the ‘Special Military Operation’ to resist the demand for warfare not welfare. Is Russia such a significant threat to Britain’s territorial integrity that current levels of expenditure on defence cannot suffice?

Trump’s America may only threaten the territorial integrity of Denmark over Greenland, of course, but this is not the conduct of an ally – Canada is also threatened by Trump and the King is head of state. Yet calls for US troops to leave Britain are not forthcoming from political leaders here.

The real destination for conflict is not Russia, of course, but China. Its development is a threat to the US position as the world hegemon and as such the US seeks a similar barrier to trade as has been put up against Russia since 2022. But given the interdependence on this manufacturing powerhouse, it seems impossible.

So Europe is caught between free and open trade with China, and calls for a renewed protectionism and rearmament coming from the US.

Trade unions in Britain will feel the same pressures. There are jobs in arms industries covered by collective bargaining agreements. The bourgeois media can easily counterpose the economic prosperity of those workers to those of workers in healthcare, education, the civil service and local government. The slogan ‘welfare not warfare’ has assonance but the scapegoating of claimants, particularly unemployed youth, make it a difficult but necessary argument to be made.

A full Labour leadership contest should be the goal of trade unionists. Class-conscious working people need to speak out against a stitch-up. And if Burnham won’t make the case for peace, then the Socialist Campaign Group should try to secure enough nominations to broaden the debate.

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Another Corbyn?

Former shadow chancellor and SCG stalwart John McDonnell has called for Burnham to offer the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s doubtful that Corbyn would want to return to Labour – what has been taken away before can be taken away again, after all – but the provocation is a productive one. Should Your Party want to dramatise any compromises which Burnham makes with his erstwhile colleagues on the Labour Right, the notion of Corbyn’s readmission can be raised.

What may prevent the soft-left Labour MPs lending their votes to a hard-left challenger is the fear that Burnham would again, as he did in 2015, lose to a candidate to his left. But with the cut-off date for new members to participate probably being this January and the outflow of more radical party members to the Greens and Your Party over the last year, it’s unlikely that a hard-left candidate could win.

Plus, Burnham cannot make the mistakes he did in 2015 again. He launched his bid for leadership back then as a member of the party’s leadership team, with anti-migration positioning and an abstaintion on a vote on Tory welfare cuts – loyally following the acting-leader Harriet Harman – handing Corbyn easy wins among soft-left party members who were particularly repulsed by the failure to stand up for claimants.

As he has been away from Westminster, Burnham was not in the shadow cabinet or cabinet under Starmer and has positioned himself as a critic of welfare cuts, a supporter of closer ties with Europe.

It’s therefore very difficult to see how he is unlucky in his leadership ambitions at this third go if there’s a candidate to his left.

An SCG candidate could have a positive radical flank effect for Burnham, making him seem like the new centrist leader in a contest involving the Labour Right’s Streeting and perhaps even the current prime minister Starmer.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy attempted to stand for the deputy leadership last year and Richard Burgon stood for the deputy leadership in 2020. Either of them, or perhaps McDonnell himself (dusting off his 2006 campaign document Another World Is Possible) would be preferable to a contest limited to soft-left figures associated with the New Labour project and the current Labour Right.

In fact, a McDonnell run for the leadership today could not be interpreted as a genuine bid for control given his seniority. His support for the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign would make it hard to present criticism of increased expenditure to US arms firms as mere Russian campism.

These factors might allow him to participate in hustings, to pressure the soft-left to take a stronger line against Trump, and to openly express the kinds of criticisms of the Labour Right which Burnham might refrain from out of loyalty. In addition, an SCG candidacy could put forward a position distinct from that of Streeting and Burnham on Europe, beyond the binary of rejoining or remaining outside of the European Union.

The risk for Labour’s hard left is that by piling in behind Burnham, they are easily discarded. He may build his Mainstream against their Momentum and make accommodations with the Right at their expense. He could be Starmer 2.0. Who knows?

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Dare more democracy

Trade unionists have to speak up for pluralism and participation. Not out of self-interest because many of us are not in Labour and therefore would not get a vote. Nor out of affiliation to Labour’s hard left because many of us are critics of its permanent alliance with the Labour Right as members of a single party.

We have to speak up because it is in our strategic interest that Labour has a full contest, its new leader and prime minister has been exposed to economic and democratic demands from below, from workplaces and neighbourhoods outside of Westminster and Whitehall, and traditions harder than the soft-left and more radical than the Labour Right.

The average Labour member lives closer to us than the average Labour MP. Let’s win them a vote and a real choice.