The different factions in the battle for the succession to Keir Starmer’s throne have adopted a one-month truce, awaiting whether the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, defeats or not Farage’s far right in the dispute for the vacant Makerfield seat in the House of Commons. That small town of one hundred thousand inhabitants will decide the fate of the entire United Kingdom.
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The Labour executive wasted no more than twenty-four hours in giving Burnham the green light to stand as a candidate, and try to obtain the seat in Parliament that would allow him to challenge Starmer, take the reins of Labour and try to stop Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s ultra-populist party, in the elections scheduled for 2029.
The just over one hundred thousand inhabitants of Makerfield will decide the fate of Labour, and perhaps the country
Power is undoubtedly addictive, and the Mayor of Manchester has decided to risk his entire career on one card. If he conquers the seat, he will prove that he is capable of beating Farage in his own territory in northern England, the so-called “red wall,” and the Party will put itself in his hands to do the same in the general elections. He will be the hero of the moment. But if he loses, he may have to dedicate himself to something other than politics.
Farage has already proclaimed that he “is going all out” in that Greater Manchester constituency, where his party captured half the votes in the recent local elections, successfully appealing to the anti-immigration English nationalism of the former working class with socially conservative values, who blame foreigners for the housing shortage, queues in public health, and overcrowding in education, instead of the nearly two decades of austerity since the 2008 financial crisis.
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Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, now with hardly any authority in Labour after the electoral debacle, posted a video yesterday on social media about today’s far-right demonstration in London called by the neo-fascist Tommy Robinson, without mentioning the leadership struggle at all. That he will still be governing in ten years, as he arrogantly said a few days ago, seems a chimera.
Parliament goes into recess next week, after the frenzy of recent days. The Makerfield election will likely be called for a Thursday in the second half of June, shortly after the G-7 summit in Evian, which Starmer will attend. If Burnham wins, the most considered scenario is that he challenges the current Prime Minister’s leadership during the summer, so that the party’s autumn congress will be his coronation.
But if he loses, which is not unreasonable given the demographic composition of the constituency, all the plans of the Labour barons will go down the drain, and it will be back to square one. Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner, and other contenders would once again face the dilemma of whether to challenge Starmer or not, and whether any of them can unite the different factions. Even the premier might see a crack to cling to power, although both the unions and the MPs are clear that someone else must lead the troops in the 2029 elections, or it will be a massacre like the Somme. All roads lead through Makerfield, a place that until yesterday almost no one had heard of.
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