Because that was the real, not always stated, reason for Burnham’s return. The current Labour leader is merely the figurehead of grotesquely corrupt Labour Together. He lied to get the top job. His “handler” Morgan McSweeney boasted - or others boasted on his behalf - that Labour Together had worked to deliberately throw the 2019 General Election. Membership has plummeted as a result.
And that is where a Burnham leadership comes in, or so many in the wider Labour movement will be hoping. There were lots of activists turning out for his campaign, but the problem at a General Election, or round of local elections, is that covering the wider ground becomes less easy as party members become less willing to turn out, and there are less of them in the first place.
Whether or not Starmer contests a leadership election is less important than the fact that his time is up. Burnham’s election should have told him that. Some in the current cabinet are telling Starmer to set a timetable for his departure; others will join in, fuel the momentum. That is not the difficult part for Burnham. Making the Labour Party electable nationwide once more - that’s the hard bit.
There are some Labour MPs who should not be in Parliament. At all. Peter Kyle is one of them: only last week, it was revealed that one of his constituents had contacted him to express her horror at events in Gaza. His office contacted the cops. THEY CALLED THE COPS ON A CONCERNED CONSTITUENT. After a whole year, the case was thrown out. The constituent was awarded costs.
Nor can he paper over the gaping cracks in the Government taking its heads off the ball. While Starmer and his colleagues have banged on about anti-Semitism, criminalising middle-aged women, the real threat - the far-right and their fellow travellers trying to make mass deportation of non-white British citizens respectable - have mainly evaded attention. That has to stop.
Paranoid wacko Rupert Lowe - too barking even for the Farage Falange - is now claiming that non-white citizens, whom Lowe likes to claim are all of Pakistani heritage, have over the years raped around a quarter of a million women and girls. The figure is based on a guess. It is the most grotesque exaggeration. Where are the Starmer stumblers? Absent elsewhere.
Demonisation of minorities, and especially Muslims, has been allowed to take hold, and, indeed, has become fashionable within the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press. If anything is making the streets less safe, it is this whipping up of the mob. Where is Starmer’s challenge to the racist, fascist and dishonest far right? As before, it is absent elsewhere.
Andy Burnham needs to take on board Galbraith’s definition of leadership: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership”. Living standards. The NHS. A decent environment. And not authoritarianism.
Burnham must offer not only honesty, but vision. And hope that tomorrow will be better than today for all those have-nots. No pressure, then.
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5 comments:
Burnham?
The Burnham that voted in favour of the illegal Iraq war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? That served in the Quisling Blair/Brown spiv gangs?
That Burnham?
It's easy to find out Burnham's future intentions if he becomes pm.
Just ask him "Is Israel committing genocide against Palestinians?"
I prefer to think of Mr Mid-Staffs as yet another ambitious populist who came fourth out of five in one leadership election (behind even Liz Kendall, for pity's sake) and then way behind Corbyn the next time. He will be found wanting.
So replacing one genocidal Labour Fiend of Israel with another?
Burnham was odds on to win the leadership race, as Cooper and Kendalls manifestos were simply cut and paste efforts from the Tory's. Indeed many Torys said Kendalls was too right wing for them to stomach.
So, Burnham was a shoe in. Unfortunately for him someone whispered (allegedly mcmoron) in his ear that he was perceived as 'too centre left'. Cue a 'Churchill in the wilderness' moment followed by returning with drivel about 'disabled scroungers' the need to privatise the NHS etc
It was thanks to this 'conversion, that Jeremy Corbyn offered to stand. Thus, although centrists won't have it (odd how alike centrists and Tory's are in denying reality) ironically Labours right ushered in Corbyn.
As for Burnham, yes, he's drifted back to a more centre left position, but he's still tainted with Blairite tendencies. It was he, (for it twas) that began the process of the first privatisation of an NHS hospital.
Burnham is in a fortunate position. Starmer is so widely detested he will have a generous honeymoon period. However, the public expects Starmerite watering down, and shunting into the long grass, of manifesto promises to be reversed, Money to be spent, and taxes on wealth to be raised. Not to mention Israel to be told where to go, and public services restored.
Frankly, he doesn't have the credentials to achieve any of that. Thus, those expecting, and centrists are already are predicting some sort of dramatic sea change, are not just barking up the wrong tree, they're clearly barking .
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