Burnham makes his mark

Andy Burnham starts his premiership on a high note clearing out the rubbishy ministers that revolved around Starmer and the ageing Blairite clique he relied on during his two years of misrule. He rejects neo-liberalism – the laissez-faire capitalism that gave us two global slumps and the second world war in the 20th century – and he’s even made a modest criticism of Israel over Gaza. While a package of modest reforms including a curb on bus fares throughout the country, VAT breaks for pensioners and pubs, more devolution and a national council house-building programme will boost Labour’s fortunes for the next few months.
But Burnham’s devolution specifically rules out independence for Scotland or Wales. His government still crawls to the Americans and we’re still waiting for the renationalisation of the water industry.
Labour’s move towards more Keynesian economic solutions is not a shift to the left but merely a return to the traditional right-wing dogmas that once held sway in the Labour Party before the Blairites took over. But social-democracy in whatever form cannot solve the problems of the working class. Our task, to make the case for the communist answer to the capitalist crisis, is more urgent by the day.

Enter the Binman...

Summer is known as the silly season in the press because the long parliamentary recess means they have to fill their columns with even more rubbish to make up the difference. And nothing, perhaps, could be more sillier than the epic battle between Nigel Farage and Count Binface in a run-down former sea-side resort in north Essex.
The leader of Reform hoped to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny of his dodgy undeclared gifts and donations by resigning to trigger a by-election and re-contest in his own constituency. But his dream of trouncing the Tories and his other political foes in the poll has turned sour with all the mainstream parties boycotting the election and leaving the field to Binface and a legion of others seeking their fifteen minutes of fame on the streets of Clacton today.
Count Binface is the street persona of Jon Harvey, a stand-up comic who has been a familiar face at by-elections since 2017. Binface upholds the rights of every citizen to stand in elections and gets a protest vote that many left groups would envy these days. Now the Count is playing for higher stakes on an ethical platform that challenges all that the Faragists stand for. 
Clacton-on-Sea is one of the poorest towns in Essex. Forty seven per cent of Clacton's residents over 16 are classified as "economically inactive" as they say. One in five working-age adults have never held a traditional job. High unemployment and the drugs and petty crime that go along with it have made this traditional Tory homeland the prey for the Faragists and their kind in recent years.
Some argue that the left should have joined the 30-odd others in the fray but this would be pointless given the absence of any substantial working-class movements in the constituency apart from the trade unions and the co-ops. Others say Clacton deserves more than a comic candidate to represent them. They certainly deserve someone better than Nigel Farage. At the end of the day those who bother to vote will decide. Who knows...it is, after-all, the silly season...

If wishes were fishes…

 ...we’d all cast nets they used to say, Now all we hear in the Westminster bubble are the odds on the gravy-trainers lobbying for jobs in the new Burnham government and the echoes of the media pundits on the direction that the “King of the North” will take when he moves into Downing Street. A lot of the speculation is, of course, inspired directly by the Burnham team who hope their leader’s “coronation” will lift Labour out of the pit of despair Starmer left the party in after his two years of misrule ended this month.
Burnham is an ambitious politician who did little during the Corbyn and Starmer years to hide his ambition to lead the Labour Party and the country. Now his time has come with a “Burnham bounce” that has given Labour its first lead in over a year in the opinion polls amid talk of “Manchesterism” and a “new vision” for the future. But what actually is on the Burnham table?
The answer is nobody knows. Burnham is talking about launching the biggest council house building programme since the Second World War. He hasn’t given a figure but last year he talked about building half-a-million “social homes” by 2030. If he ends the “right to buy” and the restrictions on council borrowing that has been upheld by successive Tory and Labour governments since 1979 that will drastically cut the shameful UK homeless figures and create more work for the younger generation throughout the country. Vague promises to return the water industry and the power utilities to public ownership have not been followed up with concrete plans to restore part of the public sector while talk of more power to the councils and the regions is all very well – but it’s meaningless unless these local authorities are given the power and the funds to provide the social services that people so badly need.
Burnham’s people are talking about electoral “reform” which would get the Greens and the Liberal-Democrats on track for a tactical vote alliance at the election. Your Party may be dead in the water as far as a national party is concerned but, nevertheless they look likely to keep the five parliamentary seats they hold at the next election. It could even sway the Corbynistas, if only Burnham could swallow his fear of bringing Jeremy back on board.
But all this is meaningless without a social programme – a genuine commitment to implement the union agenda, restore the welfare state and the public sector we once had. That’s what the unions have got to fight for and that’s where the struggle has only just begun.

So long Keir Starmer…

It didn’t take long to get rid of Starmer after all. His pathetic resignation speech marked the inevitable end of his dismal two years in office spent crawling to the Americans and what he believed was the dominant trend amongst the British bourgeoisie. No longer of any further use to the ruling class following the overwhelming Burnham victory at the Makerfield by-election. Stabbed in the back by his phoney friends in Parliament. No one will miss him.
In the corridors of power Labour politicians and senior civil servants are already drafting plans for the new Burnham administration while union leaders lobby for the return of the water industry and the power utilities to some form of public ownership.
Burnham’s team say their man will revitalise a moribund party, head off the challenge of the Faragists and a resurgent Tory party, and lead Labour to victory at the next general election.
They like to present the “King of the North” as a new broom. But there’s nothing new about Andy Burnham, who while not a Blairite, nevertheless comes from the ‘Old Labour’ class-collaborationist tradition that still holds sway through much of the labour movement.
Economic stagnation, unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. These are the problems that face the incoming Burnham government. These are the problems of end-days capitalism. Ultimately, the only answer is socialism. But in the meantime there’s plenty of scope for a country as rich as Britain to take on board the demands of the labour movement that include the restoration of the welfare state and the public sector that Britain once possessed.
The days when people listened to the rich men who told us that the greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money are over. Great mass movements are again sweeping the continents. The masses are demanding social justice, democratic rights and an end to exploitation. It’s capitalism that’s finished – not us. 
On the streets millions want a decisive break from the imperialist agenda that led to the Zionist genocide in Gaza and countless other Western war-crimes in other parts of the Global South.
The billions consumed by the arms race and the pointless nuclear “deterrent” would be better spent restoring industry to provide work for the younger generation and decent pensions for the old. Progressive taxation for the rich, who can well afford it, would pay for the “safety-net” benefits of old and guarantee free education and medical for the sick and infirmed. 
Burnham says he listens to the unions and the street, unlike Starmer and the ageing Blairites the former Labour leader surrounded himself with, Whether Burnham will actually do anything about it remains to be seen. His decision to appoint former head of Labour Friends of Israel, James Purnell, as his chief of staff gives little ground for optimism...

Double whammy in Makerfield

Makerfield’s voters killed two birds with one stone this week giving the Faragists a drubbing and sending Andy Burnham back to the House of Commons. If Starmer goes before Parliament’s summer recess that will be an added bonus. 
Burnham’s by-election victory was not all that surprising. He was the odds-on favourite with the bookies on the eve of the poll that ended weeks of ferocious Labour campaigning on the streets of the constituency in what was essentially a two-horse race between the “King of the North” and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. But the stakes weren’t quite the same. For Farage victory would just be another feather in his cap. For Burnham victory opens the door to Number Ten.
Farage likes to pose as a country gent with the common touch. But he’s just a venal City businessman who’s been the political voice of those sections of the ruling class long-opposed to the European Union.  For many years he languished on the political fringe of British politics. He made common cause with the Tories with his heady mix of racism and anti-Euro federalism during the Brexit campaign. But being propelled to centre stage and leading a small, but high-profile far-right front is no substitute for Burnham’s years of political experience as a Blairite minister and then Mayor of Greater Manchester. 
Farage is a good communicator. But so is Burnham. Burnham is a hand-shaker and a back-slapper. He’s everyone’s friend and like Labour’s old leader, Harold Wilson, or the late Charles Kennedy of Liberal-Democrat fame he can get the vote out on the street. 
But that wasn’t always the case. Reform had high hopes for their man, a local plumber who was just three points behind Burnham when the campaign began a few weeks ago in the constituency in Greater Manchester. The Faragists played the race card clearly hoping that the Southampton riots and the sectarian violence in northern Ireland would trigger nation-wide unrest that could be exploited in their favour throughout the rest of the country. But the firm response of the anti-racist movements, together with that of the local communities as a whole,  made sure that was no repetition of the mob violence in Southampton despite the best efforts of the racists, the fascist gangs and the followers of Tommy Robinson to stir up anti-immigrant  hysteria. 
Burnham is back in Parliament and he says he’s ready to challenge Starmer for the leadership. Starmer’s followers are drifting towards the Burnham camp. Those of his rival, Wes Streeting, want to do a deal to keep their place in the new Burnham administration. Some Corbynistas even hope for reconciliation – though Burnham has ruled out any return for Jeremy Corbyn himself.
Burnham may not be “New Labour”.  But he’s definitely “Old Labour”. He says he’ll keep the triple-lock and return the water industry to some sort of public ownership. But that’s as far as it goes from a man who comes from the right social-democratic camp that has traditionally dominated the Labour Party from Ramsay MacDonald’s days...

What a difference a day makes…

...or not in the case of Sir Tony Blair whose comments on the current turmoil within the Labour Party were splashed all over the bourgeois press last week. Whatever he achieved in office –  Scottish and Welsh devolution, ending the conflict in northern Ireland and pushing through some minor social  reforms – was far eclipsed by his despicable role in supporting the American onslaught on Iraq which ended in invasion and the execution of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. The dreams of Anglo-American imperialism ended in the streets of Baghdad as the Iraqi resistance fought back to eventually free the country from imperialist occupation. Blair fell from grace soon after – leaving Downing Street to console himself with lucrative sinecures, non-jobs like his “peace-keeping” role in the Middle East, that were given to him by the Americans as a reward for his life-time of service to imperialism. 
To be fair Blair never pretends to be anything more than he is – a mouthpiece for what he thinks is the dominant trend within the ruling class. He has plenty to say but he’s got nothing to offer workers. Or as Jeremy Corbyn  put it “Tony Blair thinks the answer to this country’s problems is AI, welfare cuts and endless spending on war. Who benefits? Arms companies and tech billionaires. Once again, Blair is wrong. The answer is a redistribution of wealth and power and the relentless search for peace”.
Tony Blair, like Ramsay MacDonald and Sir Keir Starmer, divided and ultimately betrayed the Labour Party. But to paraphrase Orwell and say “all Labour leaders are rubbish, but some are more rubbisher than others” may be going too far.  Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan did have their moments – though this was largely due to the immense pressure at the time from the labour movement as a whole for social justice.
Tony Blair is a rich man who has also acquired a number of gongs along the way. These include the usual honours reserved for past Prime Ministers as well as the American Presidential Medal of Freedom and the more dubious Dan David Prize given by Tel Aviv University for Blair’s "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict".
None of this has, however, restored his political standing in Britain. The fame that Blair so longs for continues to elude him. His paean of praise for the sort of  American-style neo-con policies that have been embraced by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington throughout the 21st century may have been music for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Conservative party but it didn’t go down well with Keir Starmer or the two contenders for his job, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, and can only serve to remind them of how glad they were to see the back of him in 2007.  

Let the good times roll…

The race for the Labour leadership has begun. Not officially. No leadership challenge has been formally made. No election under rules has been set. And Sir Keir Starmer is still at the helm. But no one doubts that his days are numbered as Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham set out their stalls in preparation for the contest to come which will give one of them the keys to Number Ten.
Streeting is a Blairite who has nothing to offer working people apart from more of the same rubbish they got from Starmer. He wisely plays down the fact that he was a protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson while Andy Burnham plays up demands for social justice to fend off the Greens and woo back the Labour vote on the streets that until recently had traditionally backed Labour. The self-proclaimed “left” on the Labour back-benches – the sort who support the Socialist Campaign Group and other Bennite campaigns – is backing Burnham, largely to keep Streeting out. John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says that the former Labour leader should be able to rejoin the party if Burnham becomes leader. But this has been ruled out by the Burnham camp.
But everything hinges on Burnham winning the Makerfield seat. If he fails – and the Faragists are going to put up a strong challenge – then all bets are off for both Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting.

Back in Brussels…

...all eyes are on the battle for Labour’s top job. Whoever gets it it’s a win-win for the Common Market. Streeting is opening calling for a return to the European Union. Burnham says nothing now that could play into Farage’s hand but only last year he told his supporters that “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime…”. Whoever wins a second referendum looks inevitable. Rejoining the EU is now back on the agenda, and the Remainers are winning the argument given the pathetic leaders of the Brexit camp these days.
The Tories had a golden opportunity after Brexit to build an independent British economy freed from the fetters of the European Union. Johnson, Truss and Sunak squandered it in pursuit of the impossible dream of a free trade agreement with the United States – that was never on the cards in Washington. 
Lexit, the left case for leaving the European Union, never got off the ground. The public face of the Brexiteers is now that of Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the followers of Tommy Robinson that we see draped in Union Jacks at the anti-immigration rallies of the lunatic fringe.
But one only has to look at what’s happening in Europe today to see that rejoining the European Union will not solve the problems of working people. Communists need to make the case for staying out of the EU, trading freely with everyone throughout the world and building an independent economy needed to restore our public services in the 21st century. 

Now the fun begins...

The knives are out. The back-stabbers are at play as the struggle begins anew in the corridors of power within the Labour Party for the key to Number Ten. Sir Keir Starmer says that the United Kingdom faces going down 'a very dark path' as he pledges to fight on as Prime Minister. And former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says Wes Streeting is planning a stealth coup to move against Starmer to avoid a leadership contest which could include Labour’s “King of the North”, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
The solid vote for the Scottish and Welsh nationalists in last week’s elections in Scotland and Wales along with the spectacular rise of Reform in the council votes in England spells doom for Keir Starmer and the ageing Blairite crew that has brought Labour to the brink of electoral collapse in recent years.
The results – the collapse of the Labour and Tory vote across the country, sweeping gains for the Faragists and more modest but significant gains for the Greens and the Liberal-Democrats came as no surprise to the pundits who long ago read the writing on the wall when the Labour leader purged the Corbynistas and drove hundreds of thousands out of Labour’s ranks soon after Starmer became leader in 2020. The likes of Peter Mandelson believed the working class would put up with this and more as they “had nowhere else to go”. They said Labour’s loveless landslide victory, largely due to the Faragist intervention that split the Tory vote, was a vote of confidence in their particular brand of class collaboration which revolved around following what they believed was the dominant trend within the British ruling class; crawling to the Americans and the Americans; upholding the old Tory austerity programme and carrying on with the stealth privatisation of the health service.
Many of them clearly believed this rubbish even though reality was staring them in the face as hundreds of thousands took to the streets every month to demonstrate against Israeli aggression and hundreds of thousands more abandoned Labour at the ballot box. Starmer clearly still believes in the old lies – trying to block the Blairites chosen successor and clinging to power when it’s obvious the game’s up.
But just getting rid of Starmer will not revive Labour’s fortunes. Labour needs to accept the inevitability of independence for Scotland and Wales and the re-unification of Ireland. It needs go beyond the parameters of political debate set by the bourgeoisie that revolve around law and order, immigration and the European Union and campaign to win the demands of the union movement that the Labour Party was set up for in the first place back in the early 1900s.
 A genuine return to a working class agenda and a commitment to restore the welfare state and the public sector that existed until the Tory come-back in 1979 could win back the traditional Labour vote. That may be a call to far for the Burnham and Rayner camp but it has to be made – inside or outside the Labour Party.

  

   

Starmer must go!

Starmer may not be in the Trump league but nobody believes a word he says these days. He says he knew nothing about Peter Mandelson’s security status. He claims the Foreign Office didn’t tell him that the grandee had failed the vetting process. Starmer clearly thinks everybody is as stupid as himself. 
Many thought that Ramsay MacDonald and Tony Blair were the worst but Starmer has proved them wrong. MacDonald presided over the meteoric rise of Labour after the First World War and led the first Labour government in history back in 1924. He ended up splitting the movement and serving the ruling class he once claimed to oppose during the turmoil that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 that plunged the world into a slump that only ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. MacDonald admitted that all he could do was administer capitalism. But he still talked about “socialism” – albeit in the never-never land of the far distant future.  
Blair, on the other hand, never talked about socialism at all and what he achieved is far outweighed by his role in the imperialist onslaught against Iraq and his support for Zionism that continues to this day. Nevertheless he did preside over the negotiations that ended the conflict in northern Ireland and his administration and that of the Gordon Brown government that followed did pass some constitutional reforms and make some minor concessions to the union movement.
Starmer, on the other hand, has achieved nothing. All Starmer can brag about is a purge of the Corbynistas that drove hundreds of thousands out of the Labour Party.
Starmer surrounds himself with people lesser than himself – like the ageing Blairites who pandered to his vanity to return to the money tree of Westminster politics. They said Starmer’s stand – just another variant of Tory austerity – was the key to Labour’s loveless victory in the 2024 general election. But in reality Labour’s landslide was due to the Faragist intervention that gravely split the Tory vote across the entire country. Now with the Greens and Faragists snapping at their heels Labour is heading for disaster at the Scottish, Welsh and regional polls in May. 
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably falls on his sword. Their time will come but at the end of the day their outlook differs little from the right-wing Labour milieu they came from in the first place. They talk about workers’ rights and pay lip-service to union bureaucrats. That’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. 
Dumping Starmer won’t make much of a difference. But any Labour recovery can only begin when he goes – together with the Blairites and the other bureaucrats that surround him. That fight begins amongst the rank-and-file of the labour movement. That’s where the struggle for socialism must begin anew. It starts now...

Burnham’s move

The Labour bureaucracy’s decision to block Andy Burnham’s bid to return to Parliament comes as no surprise – least of all to the Mayor of Greater Manchester who has done little in recent months to mask his leadership ambitions. Burnham knows the score. His star  rose with the help of the right-wing blocs that have long held sway in the unions and the Labour Party – factions that are still loyal to Starmer and the ageing gang of washed-up Blairites that advise him.
Though some 50 Labour backbenchers and peers are calling on Labour’s NEC to reverse the Burnham ban they don’t have the power or influence to force it through. But the decision to bar Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from contesting the Gorton & Denton by-election is a double-edged sword. It removes a potential challenger to Starmer or his chosen successor, Wes Streeting but at the same time it boosts the chances of the Faragists and the Greens – who are both making huge efforts to turf Labour out at the by-election in the Manchester constituency next month. And if Labour lose Starmer’s days are numbered.
Burnham will still be out of the running. He hasn’t got a seat in Parliament and he’s never going to get one as long as Starmer & Co are in charge,
Burnham’s hope however is that Starmer will fall on his sword if the Labour vote collapses in Gorton & Denton and the regional and local elections that will soon follow in the Spring. If the ‘Stop Streeting’ brigade can mount a successful challenge for the leadership – possibly through Angela Rayner – Burnham’s return to national politics and the high office he craves for is on the cards. The ‘King of the North’ has been checked. But he’s still in the game.
None of this, however, is of much benefit to the working class. At the end of the day there is little that really divides Starmer and Burnham. All we are seeing is a spat within right-wing social-democracy – a beauty contest between the third-rate bureaucrat who claims to lead us and a seasoned street-wise politician who knows how to woo the voters. 
Sadly the left response has been weak and divided. The Corbynistas are too busy locked in their own internal struggles to intervene. One of their prominente, Salma Yaqoob, is openly calling on her followers to support the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election.
Prominent Your Party member and former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob has endorsed the Greens in the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election. She is urging the left to “work together to support” the Greens who are now the bookies’ favourite to take the seat. 
Though essentially a liberal-bourgeois front the Greens like to pose as ‘eco-socialists’ when gunning for votes in traditional Labour areas. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is a former Liberal-Democrat who has seen his platform grow on calls for a wealth tax, an end to arms sales to Israel, and the defence of immigrants, asylum seekers and civil liberties as a whole.
But this is still reformism – a rebrand of the left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire.
Though there is a time and place for a protest vote – and Starmer definitely must go – we must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world.

Trump in Davos

In Roman days the Emperors surrounded themselves with flatterers who fawned over every word they said while the slaves and the overly ambitious were kept in their place through fear of the legions, the lash or crucifixion. But these “rulers of the world”, who were worshipped as gods, realised that terror was not enough. The generals and the patricians with their vast estates and hordes of slaves had to spread some of it about with free food, blood-soaked ‘games’ and the ferocious races of the arena to entertain the well-to-do and keep the poor and the slaves happy. These days the “leader of the free world” simply relies on brute force and economic blackmail to get his own way and gives little or nothing back in return.
Donald Trump, who seeks to “Make America Great Again” largely at the expense of his European allies, did little to mask his contempt for  them at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. At Davos he tried to belittle and brow-beat them into handing Greenland over to the United States. He’s now settled for some sort of deal that will give the Americans more military bases in the Arctic territory as well as exclusive rights to the mineral wealth that supposedly lies under the ice-caps of the Danish territory. 
Trump is getting on. He’s frail and may well be losing his marbles. But the hard-headed industrialists, hi-tech tycoons and the leaders of the energy corporations who stand behind him are not. They are well aware of the fact that Starmer and his friends in France and Germany are clearly hoping to stand-still all the American president’s initiatives until Trump’s final term of office ends to prolong the proxy war against Russia that the Europeans fear is going to be settled over their heads in secret talks with Putin.
These people put Trump into the White House in the first place. When Trump goes they’ll find another to do their bidding. They don’t want the Democrats or the “new world order” though we can see that they certainly want some sort of oligarchal “new order” for the United States.
Starmer and the leaders of Franco-German imperialism seem to think that they pulled one over The Donald by making him lose face over Greenland and boycotting his rubbishy “Board of Peace” which the White House wants to supervise the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. That, of course, remains to be seen.

Burnham’s call

The resignation of a Manchester MP has paved the way for a comeback for the Mayor of Greater Manchester at the by-election in a safe Labour seat which Andy Burnham needs if he is ever going to make his bid for the Labour leadership. Starmer’s gang and the ageing Blairites who surround him have already launched a whisper campaign against Burham who has done little to mask his political ambitions in recent days. But Starmer has been warned by backbenchers and union leaders that any stitch-up to prevent Burnham potentially returning to Westminster would split the party. If that happens the Greens and the Corbynistas are waiting to pick up the pieces...

Winter is Coming

The knives are out for Starmer. In Downing Street Starmer aides move to undermine Wes Streeting, the Health Minister, said to be plotting to mount a challenge to the beleaguered Labour leader while Streeting himself talks about the "toxic culture" of Downing Street and questions whether the PM's long-time ally and chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, should keep his job.
Labour won a landslide victory in the general election last year. Though this was largely due to the collapse of the Tories deserting in droves to the Faragists Starmer & Co and the gang of old Blairite has-beens that surround him actually thought this was a ringing endorsement of their policies – which amount to little more than continuing with Tory austerity and crawling to whoever is in power in the United States. Now Starmer’s Blairite revival, a trashy imitation of a failed past, has brought Labour to its knees. 
 Everywhere we look we see unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. The symptoms of industrial decline, inflationary pressures, stock market volatility and economic stagnation. This is capitalism. And working people are being made to carry the burden of its failure. Unemployment, homelessness, poverty. No wonder the Starmer government is on the rocks.
It would take at least 80 dissident Labour MPs to trigger a leadership challenge but that’s not likely to happen this side of Christmas. Most of the wannabees are from his own bloc like Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood while the “prince over the water”, Andy Burham, bides his time in Manchester waiting for the opportune time for a bid for power that may never ever come.
We certainly can’t expect much from what’s left of the old Corbynista front in the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Most of them made their peace with Starmer.
 A handful took the principled stand to remain in parliament as part of Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance.
There’s still fighting talk from Socialist Campaign Group Secretary Richard Burgon who tells us to “cut through the briefings and counter-briefings — what’s playing out is typical Westminster soap-opera stuff, not a disagreement over policy, principle or vision. What’s really needed to prevent a Reform government is a radical change of direction, with real Labour values”.
But that’s not going to happen is it – not as long as the unions remain in the hands of careerists who, despite their bogus socialist credentials and the empty promises of the factions and platforms they head, are still part of Labour’s bureaucratic bloc that put Starmer into office in the first place.
There is, of course, a fight-back driven by the need to stave of the complete collapse of the Labour Party in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and fend off Reform in the local and regional elections next year. Some will stay to battle it out inside the Labour Party. Others are campaigning inside Corbyn’s new party to hammer out a programme that can provide an effective electoral challenge to the old guard in next years’ polls.
Communists have to defend the principled line of socialist advance throughout the labour movement. We can, and indeed, must work with other progressive forces inside and beyond the Labour Party to support the struggling people of Palestine and the millions upon millions of other people struggling against imperialism across the world and build the resistance to austerity and war throughout our own labour and peace  movement.

A step in the right direction

The Starmer government’s decision to recognise the State of Palestine may be no more than a diplomatic gesture of support but it nevertheless clearly recognises, at long last, the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs to self-determination and independence. The United Kingdom, together with a number of its Western allies, have now joined the overwhelming majority of countries around the world that have long recognised the Palestinians right to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The United States and Israel can now only count on the support of a handful of venal puppets in the international arena.
The surge of support in the corridors of power throughout the Western world reflects a new realism towards the Palestinians and the Zionist entity. At the same time it is a response, and an attempt to pacify, the overwhelming support for the Palestinian Arabs on the street that has led to the despatch of Italian and Spanish warships to protect the aid flotilla sailing to Gaza and fired calls to kick Israel out of the Eurovision song contest and the World Cup.
Zionist drones have repeatedly harassed the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza. Luckily nobody has been hurt, but all those onboard are now on high alert. These boats are on a mercy mission to break Israel's illegal siege and deliver much-needed aid to the Palestinians in Gaza who are facing Israel's genocide. The British government must also act now to protect the flotilla and those onboard, and take action to end its complicity in Israel's genocide.
Much more now needs to be done. The international community must sever all economic ties with Israel over its actions in Gaza and should question its membership of the United Nations. Israel must withdraw from all the occupied territories and recognition of a Palestinian state must be followed by recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arab refugees whose homes are now in Israel.  They must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. 

Burnham shows his cards

By all accounts Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is on the verge of returning to front-line Labour politics. He says Downing Street has created a “climate of fear” within the Labour Party and tells the media that Labour MPs have privately urged him to challenge Starmer for the leadership. That, of course, is easier said than done.
The not so young pretender first of all needs to find a safe, vacant Labour seat to return to the House of Commons before he can move to oust Starmer – and though some seats may soon be up for grabs getting the nomination largely depends on the goodwill of the Labour bureaucracy. He then needs to win the seat in a by-election – no mean feat these days with Labour in the doldrums and Farage on a roll – to garner sufficient support needed within the Labour bloc in parliament before a challenge can even take place.
Burnham is, nevertheless, preparing his platform and already saying he’s willing to work with the Liberal-Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn to face off the Faragists. But there’s plenty of others waiting in the wings who want to fill Starmer’s shoes. If Burham doesn’t move quickly he’ll miss the boat.

Counting the days…

How long has Starmer got? The immensely unpopular Labour leader who claims to run the country licks the boots of Donald Trump while turning his back on starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Booting out four more of his own MPs for sticking up for the disabled shows how unfit he is to lead the party let alone the government he heads.
On his own front bench there’s plenty more than ready to take his place while supporters of Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, are once again talking about his return to national politics.
Meanwhile others are looking to the new political platform which the Corbynistas hope will be built on the foundations of the five-strong Independent Alliance bloc in parliament that Jeremy Corbyn currently heads. The Corbynistas say a new left party will "build a real alternative" to Labour following the launch of a consultation exercise this month.  
Zarah Sultana, the Coventry MP purged last year for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, says she’s planning to create a new political party with Corbyn and the Alliance though what sort of “party” it will be remains to be seen. Corbyn and the four other MPs in his bloc are naturally wary of setting up a party that could easily be dominated by Trotskyist or communist movements whose views they do not share. This, they say, is what happened to Arthur Scargill when he launched his Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in 1996. His party became a magnet for all sorts of fake left posers which Scargill drove out in crippling purges that marooned what was left of the SLP to the fringe of left politics in the UK. They look  also at George Galloway, whose attempts to build alliances with the Socialist Workers Party and the Brarite CPGB (ML) all ended in tears.
What the Alliance MPs clearly want is some sort of political platform, based on a few basic social-democratic demands, that reflects the consensus amongst their MPs and revolves around Corbyn and Zarah Sultana at election time. This is, afterall how General de Gaulle’s Rally of the French People worked from 1947 to 1955. His Rally was open to members of other parties apart from communists and former collaborators. But it was always led the general and those who worked with him in the Gaullist resistance during the Second World War. Similar movements emerged throughout the Third World in the 1950s, much like Nasser’s Liberation Rally in Egypt that eventually became the Arab Socialist Union and a number of other mass based parties in the countries that broke the chains of colonialism in Africa and Asia in the post-war era.
Others simply want another conventional social-democratic party though it is difficult to see how this could succeed without union funding and a legion of activists to maintain the electoral machine needed to sustain its growth at local and national levels.

Tories Ahead

 The Conservatives are seven points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls that also say that some 88 per cent of the public think that the Government has done a good job getting the public vaccinated as soon as possible.
    While Boris Johnson basks in the reflected glory of the NHS’s coronavirus vaccine roll-out the future looks bleak for Sir Keir Starmer and his diminishing band of supporters. The knives are already out amid speculation that Labour is going to get a hammering in the local and regional elections in two months’ time.
    `The Blairites backed Starmer to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and drive the Corbynistas out of the party they tried to reform during Corbyn’s time at the top table. Now they’re having second thoughts.
    Some are openly saying that Starmer is a hopeless campaigner who is clearly unelectable. Others are staying their hand -- waiting to see what actually happens in the May polls before making any move to trigger another Labour leadership contest. But who’s going to lead them?
    Not the old has-beens on Labour’s back-benches who still think Labour’s fortunes can be restored by returning to the imaginary golden age of the Blair era. Nor the others who want to lure David Miliband back across the Atlantic to lead Labour when the time comes.
    They want Miliband. Whether he wants to give up his cushy number as head of the International Rescue Committee in New York in exchange is another matter. We’ll probably never know because there are plenty of other wannabe leaders in Labour’s ranks.
    Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has got his hands full campaigning for re-election in May. But Andy Burnham, the ambitious Mayor of Greater Manchester, has set his sights on the leadership. He said as much last month while denying planning a coup to oust Starmer. Though ultimately a careerist who loyally served the Blair and Brown administrations, Burnham can also count on the support of some of the big guns in the union movement.
    One of them is Len McCluskey. The leader of Unite, the biggest union in the country, told us in October that “Andy Burnham has been doing a fantastic job in speaking up for and defending the people he has been elected to serve. Unite members will be forever grateful to him for fighting the corner of the low-waged and those in insecure employment, the vulnerable and the young, all of whom are paying the heaviest price of this dreadful virus”.
     Grateful or not Labour’s rank-and-file are not consulted over Starmer while the Corbynistas are left fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy’s suspensions and expulsions.
     Rebecca Long-Bailey, Starmer's closest rival in last year's leadership contest, has been sidelined. Momentum, with its claimed 40,000 plus membership, is a broken reed.
     Nevertheless the New Communist Party’s electoral policy is still to vote Labour. It’s not because we think a Labour government can solve the problems of working people. We know that isn’t possible in a bourgeois “democracy”. Our policy exists because it is based on the concrete conditions that exist in Britain today.
    In our view a Labour government with its continuing links with the trade unions and the co‑operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
    Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions to create a truly democratic Labour Party that will carry out the demands of organised labour when in office.

Northern Lights

 Andy Burnham has chosen the right time to challenge the Johnson government. The Mayor of Greater Manchester is being asked to support the Government’s Tier 3 lockdown without the financial support that’s vitally needed to make it viable. Accusing the Tories of “playing poker with people's lives” the Labour mayor spoke for the millions in his region who need financial support to stave off unemployment and poverty that will otherwise follow the new local lockdown regime.

Greater Manchester is calling for between £65m and £75m to support businesses that would be forced to close during a Tier 3 lockdown and he’s won across-the-board support from other local government leaders in the region who have joined him in dismissing the Government’s current business support packages as woefully inadequate.
     According to a Daily Telegraph journalist “Politics is crazy right now. One Tory MP just told me: ‘We are on the cusp of having Andy Burnham carried shoulder-high through the streets of Manchester. He has demonstrated courage and principle, hope and determination and a spirit that the British people can be proud of’”.
     Meanwhile Sir Keir Starmer is calling on Northern Tory MPs to support Labour’s demand for furloughed workers to continue to receive 80 per cent of their wages after the current scheme ends at the end of the month and better financial support for areas in the top tier of restrictions. “The Prime Minister and the Chancellor need to make good on their commitment to the British people to do whatever it takes to help us through this pandemic,” the Labour leader said. “We need a fair one nation deal that can help us through the second wave”.
    This could mean trouble for the Tories particularly in the “red wall” Northern constituencies that they took from Labour in last year’s general election. The Government has put £60 million on the table and the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, clearly hopes that will be enough to buy off trouble in the run-up to next year’s regional elections. Sunak clearly doesn’t want to maintain the current national business and furlough support at the current levels. This is probably because Sunak fears that a national lockdown of a much longer duration than the currently touted two-week “circuit breaker” is inevitable and he doesn’t want to raise taxes or, indeed, cut the defence budget, to pay for it.
    This could also mean trouble for Starmer himself. Back in 2017 Tony Blair told us that Labour would be 20 points ahead of the Tories if it wasn’t for Corbyn. This year the Remainers said Labour’s fortunes would dramatically change once Starmer was at the helm.
    But that hasn’t happened has it? Starmer claimed to be a “unity” candidate who would continue along the trajectory charted by Corbyn. But he didn’t did he?
    Continuing with the bogus “anti-semitic” campaign and hounding out prominent left supporters of the old regime may have won him the plaudits of the Zionists and the ageing Blairites who still sit in the House of Commons. But it’s cut no ice with working people battling against austerity and the coronavirus plague. There’s been little sign of a breakthrough in England and Labour remains in the doldrums in Scotland.
    If Starmer stumbles in the regional polls next year there’ll be plenty of other “centre-left” Labour wannabees more than ready to take his place. Andy Burnham is one of them. Sadiq Khan is another.