LABOUR’S spectacular defeat in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, although expected, has driven deep splits and recriminations within the party.
Hannah Spencer, the Green Party candidate overturned a huge Labour majority of 13,413 in a safe Labour seat to poll 14,980 votes to Reform’s 10,578, Labour’s 9,364 and the Tory’s 706, just 1.9 per cent of the vote.
In her victory speech, Spencer MP, a working class plumber by trade, slammed ‘politicians and divisive figures who constantly scapegoat and blame our communities for all the problems in society’.
She said that the country was being ‘bled dry’ by billionaires and vowed to stand up for white working-class and Muslim constituents.
‘People in their thousands told me on the doorsteps and at the ballot box that what we are sick of is being let down and looked down on – that we are angry that our hard work is making other people rich,’ Spencer added.
After this electoral disaster, Labour leader PM Keir Starmer was urged to quit by Labour MPs and union leaders.
Jon Trickett, a left-wing backbencher, called for Starmer to ‘consider his position’ in the light of the result.
The Transport Salaried Staffs Association, and the Labour-affiliated unions, said he should resign and allow the party to pursue a more left-wing agenda.
Andy McDonald, a former Labour frontbencher, said that any minister defending the result was ‘being delusional’, adding: ‘Moving to the left is our only option.’ However, Starmer has rejected calls to quit, insisting he would not quit and would continue fighting. Instead he attacked the Green Party as ‘extreme’ and posing a threat to Britain and attacked a Green Party leaflet which urged voters to ‘Punish Labour for Gaza’.
In fact, working class hatred of the Starmer government burst onto the political scene in the by-election. This was due to Labour’s economic austerity policies, its dismantling of the NHS and support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
However, there is no doubt that the corrupt and depraved ruling class is itself in a terminal crisis. This crisis is dealing a death blow to the old two-party system of parliamentary democracy, amid Labour’s failure to destroy the unions, and force the working class to pay the full bill for the gigantic state deficit. Labour has been unable to enforce a starvation wage economy to stave of the collapse of the bankrupt British economy.
Labour’s support for the Zionist propaganda that criticism of Israel was anti-semitic was exposed on Wednesday when the Green Party leader Zak Polanski publicly declared that he will support a motion titled ‘Zionism is racism’ if it is linked to the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
The motion, which will be put forward at the party’s spring conference next month, is titled ‘Zionism is Racism’, and also backs the ‘right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation’.
MPs and many senior Labour insiders expect that Starmer will face a leadership challenge after May’s local elections, when the party is expected to face more losses on English councils and in devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales.
With 16-25 year olds in Britain already bearing the brunt of unemployment, companies are warning of future mass sackings due to Artificial Intelligence replacing workers.
Nearly one million young people are now registered as not employed or studying in the UK.
More alarming warnings that an AI jobs carnage is ‘harming Britain more than global rivals’ were published by Morgan Stanley yesterday.
It said that Britain is losing more jobs to Artificial Intelligence (AI) than most other countries in an ‘early warning sign’ of how the technology is set to upend the labour market.
Morgan Stanley also reported an 8 per cent net job loss in the past year – twice the international average.
Starmer had staked part of his plan for ‘national renewal’ on AI technology.
In the UK, the AI revolution has emerged as employers are struggling with increases in taxes and the minimum wage imposed by Labour, which have driven up costs.
This has led to companies slashing jobs at the fastest rate in six years, with unemployment also at a near-five year high, according to official figures.
British employers surveyed said they were most likely to cut early-career jobs requiring two to five years of experience, in a major blow to graduates and young workers.
Vacancies in the UK have fallen by more than a third since 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics. That is equivalent to around half a million roles.
It means young workers are facing pressure from all directions, as AI squeezes entry-level white-collar roles, and Labour’s tax raids hammer jobs in retail and hospitality.
It also means that the time has come to organise the British socialist revolution to smash British capitalism and bring in a planned socialist economy as part of the World Socialist Revolution.