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.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
12 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 .
Use of the term "centrist" is laughable in the context of British politics. This country has been dragged so far to the right it has almost disappeared up its own arse. Especially when Quisling arsewipes like Bomber Benn are "mediating", let alone other red tories spitting on decency and democracy in Starmer's Cabinet.
You'd have to put down rat poison in Downing Street to rid us of such "centrists".
Where's the problem?
Burnham/Streeting will continue - even intensify - the policies regime began in 1979 and ratcheted ever since. No, oligarchs and their presstitutes have nothing to fear. Organised thievery is safe.
And when Burnham goes Streeting will step in. You know, like Blair/Brown.
The only losers (yet again) are the British people mug enough to even think it might be any better.
Burnham: "Number 10 in the North".
Given experience of the London corruption I would've thought that's the last thing the North wants.
Then again, Mancs have always been London's regional clerks. It's why they were awarded all those characterless antiseptic high rise anthills.
There's going to be a lot of "change" rhetoric from Burnham. Just as there is from the Nazi frontman gargoyle Farage. There'll be lots of bureaucratic shuffling to go with it. Maybe a few crumbs here and there. But not much else, especially while "Labour" is still riddled with flag-shagging righties like the Essex spiv Streeting (waiting for his turn).
Burnham might, just might, get some credibility if he has the guts to openly denounce the last forty-seven years of organised corruption, greed and deindustrialisation. Not merely in general terms but in the specifics. Name names like the corner shop shithouse Thatcher, the seedy bagman Howe, the hypocritical adulterer Seesil Parkinson, especially the war criminals Blair and Brown - the two who could have reversed it all but instead made it worse for the sake of their own miserable lousy careers. Call oligarchs and their corporate media for the evil liars they are. And he could expose the "City of London" as one of the main hubs of the money laundering cancer that makes it all possible at home and abroad. He would legislate accordingly.
Of course none of this will happen. Because ultimately Burnham is no different. He might even turn out to be the worst of the lot.
Unfortuanately, you need only look at Labour MP's deafening silence on the appalling Letby MoJ tells you how much they care about justice.
You'll like this one, Tim. Wait until they get stuck into Burnham.🤣😂
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-news/2026/07/06/communist-party-usa/
Yup. If you want to read about just how right wing Labour are, just visit the Disability News Service site. He has used foi requests, parliamentary meeting notes, and ministers actual comments to highlight the zero level of difference between this govt and the last.
In other words, unlike the political right, he doesn't just make up 'facts' about disability and benefits.
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