It’s Andy!

So the ‘King of the North’ will be coming to Westminster (again) after all.

Andy Burnham, now the former Mayor of Greater Manchester, has won the by-election for the British seat of Makerfield. More than a seat in the House of Commons was at stake. This sets the scene for an inevitable showdown with Keir Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party, and hence the Prime Ministership. It also delivered a solid rebuke to the far-right and racist Reform party of Nigel Farage.

How did this happen – and can Burnham turn the tide of British politics?

Starmer’s stumbling leadership

It’s hard to believe that it was less than two years ago that Keir Starmer led British Labour to a decisive general election victory.

After 14 years of Conservative Party rule (the first 5 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats), the British electorate finally turfed the Tories from power. Their long reign was nothing less than catastrophic for Britain.

Most obviously, there was the tremendous error of the referendum on Britain’s involvement in the European Union, “Brexit”, which we will make the 10 year anniversary of this week. But even before that calamitous decision the Tories had set Britain on a trajectory of decline through their punishing programme of economic “austerity”, which meant the laceration of public services in areas that most needed them.

Austerity was not just an all-out act of class war by the rich on the working class and vulnerable communities, it was an act of economic vandalism that was only further exacerbated by the lunacy of Brexit.