VOTERS in Thursday’s Makerfield by-election elected Labour’s Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, with a majority of 9,231 (55 per cent), doubling Labour’s previous majority, and routed second-placed Reform UK (35 per cent), with the Tories in fourth place with just two per cent of the vote. Coming after Reform UK’s drubbing of the Labour Party in the recent local council elections nationwide, this result was a massive statement by the working class against Reform UK’s extreme right-wing policies.
Britain’s biggest trade union Unite welcomed the result yesterday and demanded a Labour leadership election to replace PM Keir Starmer. It said: ‘There is absolutely no doubt that over the last two years workers and the working class have fallen out of love with Labour. The win for Andy Burnham in Makerfield is a glimmer of hope, but it must not be taken as a business as usual mandate.
‘It is clear that there now needs to be an orderly timetable for a leadership election and Keir Starmer must do the right thing and step down. The inevitable leadership election must be fought on real change and policies. Not personalities or better speeches.’
Burnham’s allies were even more strident in their demands for Starmer to quit as PM, with Labour MP Luke Charters calling on the Prime Minister to step aside, telling LBC: ‘I think it’d be good this weekend for the PM to take heed of what was an absolutely seismic and colossal message here … I think the Prime Minister should look at that.’
Burnham is expected to trigger a contest against Starmer within weeks and Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, has said he will launch a challenge if the PM does not resign by next week.
Luke Sullivan, Starmer’s former political director, also urged him to consider a ‘managed transfer of power’ to Burnham, or things would get ‘very messy’ and Burnham is expected to move against the PM in the coming days, with allies claiming he has the support of the 81 MPs required to trigger a leadership contest.
In his acceptance speech, Burnham warned that his victory was the ‘final chance’ for Labour to change, but just what those changes are focused on is reducing the near-£3 trillion state borrowing debt by cutting the welfare budget.
In a recent interview, he outlined his 10-year approach to defence and security, emphasising the need for increased investment and that he was not ‘squeamish’ about reducing the welfare bill and transitioning people from welfare into work.
However, this did not placate the money markets one bit after his previous comments about the UK being ‘in hock’ to the financial bond markets.
In fact, the cost of UK government borrowing rose at the fastest pace in Europe after Burnham’s election yesterday, with the yield on 10-year gilts, a benchmark for what the Treasury pays to borrow money, climbing from 4.76 per cent to 4.8 per cent as trading began in London, with huge implications for the cost of servicing Britain’s nearly £3 trillion national debt.
The pound dropped 0.3 per cent against the dollar overnight, falling below $1.32 for the first time since and Burnham’s comments spooked the markets, with hints about higher spending and borrowing costs after his 2025 comments that Labour must ‘get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets’.
Official Treasury figures yesterday showed that debt interest payments soared last month with £46.3bn already borrowed in the first two months of the financial year, which is £8.9bn more than this time last year and £7.7bn ahead of Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts. Markets may not take kindly to huge tax rises at a time of stagnant growth, warns Dan Boardman-Weston, the chief executive at BRI Wealth Management.
The most obvious place to look for cash would be in the welfare budget, with spending predicted to hit £407bn by the start of the next decade. He added: ‘It’s clear that they need to cut welfare spending, but is Burnham the one to cut welfare spending? I highly doubt it.’
The reality is that the political crisis reflects the underlying economic crisis and the bankruptcy of the capitalist system in its death agony which has failed to crush a defiant and undefeated working class into accepting destitution, starvation and the destruction of state social welfare and the NHS.
It is beyond urgent that this Labour or any anti-working class coalition government must be brought down with mass general strike action by the unions to open the door to a workers’ government and a socialist system in which the industry and banks are nationalised and the national debt to the hedge funds is repudiated.
There is no parliamentary road to socialism. Workers must force the TUC to recall the General Council to call for and to organise a general strike to take state power with a socialist revolution. This is critically long overdue!
