Andy Burnham is papering over the cracks

Starmer will be remembered for his repressive law-and-order agenda if he is remembered at all. Socialists must be ready for new challenges under a government led by Andy Burnham – but our tasks remain the same.

On 12 June, four of the bravest people in this country were charged as terrorists and condemned to a combined 25 years in prison. Ten days later, Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister. If he is remembered at all, it will be for cruelties like this.

Starmer was always presented by the media as a sensible, if boring, technocrat, but he has always been a vicious ideologue. His record in government has been to restore stability after the threat of an insurgent left-wing Labour Party. In doing so his government has actively participated in the Gaza genocide, whilst failing to deliver sufficient reversals to the austerity programme of the previous government and targeting sections of the working class in an attempt to triangulate with a growing far-right movement.

He has restricted jury trials, proscribed peaceful protest groups as terrorists, ramped up vicious attacks on trans people, and increased deportations. These actions have set dangerous precedents and developed repressive state capacities.

Andy Burnham is now trying to form a coherent project in the wake of this disaster and differentiate himself from Starmer’s zombie politics. The King of the North is doing this by preaching the virtues of “Manchesterism”: a strange brand of politics built on shaky foundations of mild transport reform and rampant property redevelopment.

Despite his regional accent and references to the Rochdale co-operative movement, his proposals ring hollow. He is committed to largely the same structural and ideological limits as Starmer enforced.

The press remains uncooperative and supportive of hard-right politics. The Bank of England remains wedded to a policy of quantitative tightening, creating little headroom for the necessary investment required to deliver better conditions for working people. The bosses, landlords and billionaires that keep a vice-like grip on British politics show little sign of loosening their grip.

Even if he is successful in implementing reforms, Burnham is committed to governing the British state and capitalism. He will not make the fundamental break which is necessary to prevent climate collapse, end the genocide in Gaza, and dismantle the structures of exploitation on which this country is built.

Socialists should not be fooled by Burnham’s claims of “change” and “hope”. We have seen this before. Starmer said the same. We should not be bullied into supporting willing managers of British capitalism in the name of keeping out the far right. It is essential we build our own organisations, articulate our own politics, and build working-class opposition to this infernal order that condemns millions in this country to lives of poverty, and millions abroad to death by bomb, bullet, and starvation.

The tasks of revolutionary socialists remain the same: to build democratic institutions of working-class agency, develop the struggles for liberation across our society and the world, and fight to depose the political forces that have administered the Gaza genocide.

But whilst the task remains the same under a Burnham-led Labour government; the challenges may be different. It remains unlikely, but if Burnham is able to generate support amongst the working class and peel off layers of the organised left, we will need to adapt. We need to be ready to identify strategic openings, points of antagonism, and risks of cooption.

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