ANDY BURNHAM’S bid to challenge PM Keir Starmer for the Labour Party leadership late Thursday, following Wes Streeting’s resignation as Health Secretary, has ignited the leadership challenge to replace PM Keir Starmer in earnest.
What is required is a general strike to bring in a Workers Government and Socialism!
Starmer’s failed attempts to grow the economy, by off- loading the economic and political crisis onto the backs of the working class, resulted in a huge, historic and disastrous loss of Labour council seats in the recent local council elections.
At the same time, the cost of government borrowing has now hit its highest level since 1998.
The yield on 30-year gilts, which shows the return the Treasury must pay when borrowing from financial markets, has surged with long-term interest rates leaping from 5.65 per cent to a 28-year high of 5.8 per cent, while the benchmark yield on 10-year gilts, as UK government bonds are known, rose to 5.14 per cent – the highest point since 2008.
The pound has also dropped by 0.8 per cent against the dollar to a one-month low of $1.335 from $1.36 on Tuesday.
George Cole, an economist at Goldman Sachs, has warned that in the near term ‘political and fiscal risks may re-emerge’ for bond investors.
He said: ‘This is most likely to come from a loosening of fiscal policy — for example, debates about higher defence spending commitments and the challenge of incorporating this into existing fiscal rules could be a source of this risk.’
Fresh news of the crisis in manufacturing emerged yesterday. This is that Jaguar Land Rover’s profits have plunged by more than 99 per cent after the carmaker was struck by Donald Trump’s tariffs and a devastating cyber attack.
The carmaker, owned by India’s Tata group, revealed its profits dropped to £14m in 2025 from £2.5bn a year earlier, as it grappled with a hack in its computer systems, which shut down its factory lines for more than a month. Its annual sales were down by about a fifth to £22.9bn in 2025.
Financiers also fear any move to the left from the Labour leadership. The chief executive of America’s largest bank is already threatening to pull the plug on a £3bn UK investment .
Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase boss, has threatened to review its plans to build a new skyscraper headquarters in London if the government becomes ‘hostile to banks again’.
His warning comes as Sir Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure to resign.
Andy Burnham and Angela Rayner, both contenders to replace Starmer, have called for more tax and spending, while a group of 100 Labour MPs, led by Louise Haigh, have called for a more left-wing economic policy.
Yesterday, Anthony Bamford, chairman of the giant earth-moving equipment manufacturer JCB, targeted the cost of social spending on housing benefits and Universal Credit, as areas of public spending that must be slashed to reduce the UK debt. It is clear that there is to be no fixing of the UK capitalist economic crisis, other than off-loading the crisis onto the working class.
Meanwhile, trade union strikes are erupting up and down the country, including transport workers, health workers, teachers and lecturers to name a few.
What is needed is for the trade unions to insist that the TUC calls a general strike to bring down the Starmer government and to bring in a Workers Government.
This will nationalise the banks and the major industries and put an end to the dog-eat-dog capitalist rat race to make billions through the super exploitation of the working class.
A socialist nationalised and planned economy will produce everything that the working class and the youth require. The alternative is a hideous rerun of the starvation conditions that the working class faced in the hungry 1930s.
Forward to the British socialist revolution! Dump capitalism into the dustbin of history!
