I’m not going to say too much about the apparent likelihood that Keir Starmer is to announce his resignation as prime minister any day now. Well, hopefully not. I’ve been a Starmer supporter since I rejoined Labour after the Corbyn years, believing in his ability to make the party electable again and to stabilise and improve a country in dire straits after 14 disastrous years of Conservative government. Unarguably, he has achieved both things but it seems that is not enough for many Labour MPs and voters.
It’s an odd situation since when people are asked, they are critical of so-called ‘career politicians’. How often have you heard people say that “s/he doesn’t understand my life, all they are interested in is to further their own careers”? Yet when we finally get a PM who came from a relatively poor background, worked hard to reach the top of his profession as a lawyer and then became an MP late in life for all the right reasons, he gets dumped for another career politician, this time Andy Burnham. The ultimate career politician in the UK, and arguably the most effective, is far right grifter Nigel Farage.
For what it’s worth, I think this has been a good Labour government. The economy has been stabilised following the disastrous Johnson/Truss/Sunak years, internationally we are a force for good again, public services are improving, we have been kept out of Trump’s war on Iran (despite both the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK urging full participation) and things are getting better. But, I fear, not quickly enough.
The media campaign against Starmer, which has included everyone from far right propaganda outfits like GB News, almost all of Fleet Street including the Labour hating Guardian and, disgracefully, the right-leaning BBC and Sky, has been relentless. I believe Starmer’s unpopularity is down to more than that, but the onslaught of abuse has been disgusting. If this is how we treat an honest and decent man, is it any wonder that our country appears to be heading to hell in a handcart?
I am carefully considering whether I shall remain a Labour Party member when and if Starmer is ousted and replaced by Burnham. I like and admire Burnham, voting and campaigning for him in 2015 when he stood for Labour leader, only to be defeated by the utterly useless Jeremy Corbyn. At the moment, I am angry that his stage-managed return to parliament and his likely ascendancy to prime minister has taken place without reference to Labour members like me. It feels as if we are be about to be presented with a fait accompli. ‘Give us your money, but you have absolutely no say in choosing the leader you want.’ As of now, my feeling is, fuck that. But I’ll give Burnham a chance to persuade me otherwise.
Like it or not, the country voted for Keir Starmer’s Labour for up to a five year term. We do not elect prime ministers but the win was in his image. The new leader will need to convince voters that he has a mandate, despite not even being an MP in 2024 when Starmer won a landslide.
Whatever the next PM does, she or he needs to change this country for the better and quickly. S/he will need to unite us and end the hate and to start building a fairer, more equal country, where everyone has the chance to get on, where we are properly defended, where poverty becomes a thing of the past; in short a country that works for everyone.
Starmer did the groundwork for a better country and now Burnham, or whoever, needs to finish the job.
I’ll always vote Labour. I did when Tony Benn was wrecking the party in the 1970s and 1980s and I did even when Jeremy Corbyn, the worst and most inept leader in this history of Labour, led the party to a landslide defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson.
I don’t know about things can only get better: things have to get better, demonstrably so. The alternatives, Badenoch’s crumbling right-wing Tory party, Farage’s far right Reform Party UK Ltd and Rupert Lowe’s essentially fascist Restore UK.
I’ll finish with a message to Andy Burnham. You have destroyed the 2024 Labour government, elected by the British people in a landslide. We need less of this shit about ‘King of the North’ and more about what you are going to do to make all of this country better. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with your own electoral mandate in the 2029 general election. If you fail – and the entire British media and all other political parties will be hoping you do – you will never be forgiven. This is not a game: it is real life. I hope you fucking know that.
