United Kingdom

Starmer Leadership Crisis

Is Burnham Labour's last and best hope, another soft left figure doomed to fail or a plastic socialist who will deliver no meaningful change?

Published 3 hours ago

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Above: U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer outside 10 Downing Street in London, U.K., on Jun. 22. Image credit: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The Spin

Labour Party narrative

With Labour's polling numbers in freefall and the prospect of a Reform government looming ever larger, Andy Burnham is the Labour Party's best and last hope of avoiding catastrophe. Given his proven record as mayor, coherent political ideology and recent success against Reform, Burnham could bring the same radical and positive change to the country as he did in Manchester, improving both the U.K.'s fortunes and Labour's electoral prospects.

Andy Burnham on X

Josh Simons on X ITN

Conservative narrative

If Andy Burnham is the answer, then Labour is asking the wrong questions. Evidently, the party still deludes itself that its inherent unpopularity stems from anything other than its own ineptitude and countless failings in government, borne of its socialist policies. Rather than correcting course, bringing welfare under control and growing the economy, however, Labour is intent on dragging the country even further left, with predictably disastrous results.

Spectator (UK)The Telegraph The Telegraph

Left narrative

As the joke goes, "A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a bar. The barman says, 'What are you drinking, Andy?'" The jest might be humorous if it weren't so tragic. Rather than a people's champion and an ardent socialist, Burnham is cut from the same cloth as Starmer before him, a political chameleon with no firm principles and whose premiership will deliver no meaningful change for the suffering British working class.

Scottish Socialist Party on X

Novara Media on X Socialist Worker