His lamentable excuse for blocking Burnham standing, made a Prime Minister already widely perceived as weak look like a paranoid wimp
I heard the opening conversation in Beijing between China’s President Xi and Keir Starmer went something like this. “My dear friend, it is so good to be in the company of a badass autocrat who runs a brutal machine with an iron fist and knows how to crush all opposition to his glorious rule.” To which Starmer replied: “Well, if I hadn’t stopped Andy Burnham winning that Manchester seat, I’d be finished.”
Okay, maybe not. I doubt Xi has heard of Gorton and Denton, just like the vast majority of British voters hadn’t. Until last week. Now there’s a distinct possibility without Manchester’s popular Metro Mayor taking the fight to Nigel Farage on home soil, Reform will take a solid Labour seat and Starmer will, effectively, be finished.
His lamentable excuse for blocking Burnham standing, that it would spark a costly mayoral race when everyone knows it’s because it threatens his own position, made a Prime Minister already widely perceived as weak look like a paranoid wimp. Especially when, had Burnham won the byelection, he’d still have had a mountain to climb to take Starmer’s job.
Weakness and self-preservation at all costs is not a good look especially in a week that saw Starmer’s government’s 13th, or was it 14th, cack-handed u-turn, this time on pub business rates. Which was the latest damning proof of a government that came to power without the policies, vision, or willpower to steer a set course.
Small wonder that, despite winning by a landslide 20 months ago, Labour has lost 300,000 members and half their electoral support while polls name Starmer the least popular PM in recent British history.
But back to Gorton. Starmer says it’s vital Labour holds that seat to stop Farage’s “politics of toxic division” gaining more momentum. And he’s right. The problem is, rightly or wrongly, an increasing number of working-class voters believe Starmer’s lawyer-like disdain for their fears about issues like asylum and immigration make him the toxic threat.
Reform’s Gorton candidate, hard-right activist Matthew Goodwin, who claims that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British, will play right into the hands of disillusioned voters. Burnham, from working-class Liverpudlian stock who has worked with working-class Mancunian voters for 25 years has the voice, experience and trust to persuade enough people to disown that warped view.
Labour increasingly needs senior politicians who look and sound like real people, to convince the masses that blindly following Farage is a wrong and dangerous choice. Burnham can do that. A Starmer clone will struggle. The bookies agree, having Labour third, behind Reform and the Greens, to win that formerly nailed-on red seat. With the Labour leadership apparently happy to take such a result rather than a Burnham win.
Which is both shameful and dangerous because it offers the real possibility that voters will soon become so disillusioned with the stale platitudes offered by the Labour and Tory benches that Farage and the Greens’ Zack Polanski become the two most attractive party leaders. Mainly because they are perceived as conviction politicians with personalities, offering something different from the failed centre ground.
A scenario that would delight Farage as it would see him romp home at the next election. You live in interesting times, as Xi no doubt diplomatically told his guest.
This week’s five big questions
1) Police pledging to reach every city crime scene within 15 minutes. Looking back to Partygate when Downing Street police were yards away from nightly crime scenes but did nothing, how can we take this seriously?
2) Penguin offering Brooklyn Beckham a seven-figure deal to write a tell-all book about the family wedding fallout. At the glitzy launch will Rebbeca Loos be asked to have the first dance with him?
3) Can we suspend the offence of assault for a week so we’re allowed to hit any friend who smugly says “Dry January was such a doddle I’m planning to never drink again”?
4) How weird that MAGA America, which is obsessed with a citizens’ right to carry guns, believes the crime that got Alex Pretti murdered in Minneapolis was the fact that he was exercising that right?
5) Neil Young giving Greenlanders free access to his music for a year to cheer them up. Can someone tell Adele not to do the same as they’re depressed enough as it is?