Trade unions must lead
Editorial of the Socialist issue 1374
Keir Starmer has been forced out. He says he is looking forward to spending more time on the “most important job” of being the best dad he can. The failure of his government to do anything to help millions of parents do the same is one of the reasons he has become so hated.
The million families reliant on foodbanks, or the parents of the 150,000 kids in emergency accommodation, or the 7 out of 10 dads who can’t afford even to take two weeks off when they have a new baby – all have good reason to be furious with Starmer.
Working-class anger is responsible for forcing Starmer out, but our class is getting no say over his replacement. It is now clear that Andy Burnham is going to be crowned prime minister without a Labour leadership contest, never mind a general election.
At trade union conferences this year, leader after leader of the unions affiliated to Labour argued that maintaining the ‘Labour link’ is important to enable unions to “directly influence Labour” as Dave Ward, Communication Workers Union general secretary put it, including by “giving our members a vote in the election of Labour’s leadership”, according to the GMB union. But the trade union movement has had no say in who Labour’s next leader should be or what they stand for.
True, to win the Makerfield by-election Burnham had to say he was standing for Labour to change, and called for an end to 40 years of neo-liberalism. Many workers will therefore have some hopes that Burnham will, at least, be better than Starmer, and the majority of national trade union leaders will use those hopes to argue for holding back on strike action while he is given ‘a chance’.
But meanwhile, the bosses are piling on the pressure to ensure that Burnham does their bidding. The lead editorial of the Financial Times, mouthpiece of British capitalism, demanded that Burnham make “tough choices” including “spending cuts”, “reining in welfare spending” and breaking the “triple lock on state pensions”. It could not be clearer that the capitalist elite want Burnham to impose a new round of brutal austerity on the working-class majority.
Starmer’s resignation is a sign of this government’s weakness. The workers’ movement needs to take the opportunity to pile on the pressure in the interests of the majority, rather than the bosses pressure to maximise their profits. We need to build a massive national fightback to defend and improve workers’ pay and conditions and public services, including preparing for national strike action.
Will a Burnham government mean a change of direction? Any qualitative change in the class character of Labour would require an almighty struggle against the Blairite defenders of capitalism who have driven out all semblance of workers’ control from the party or socialist policies.
For evidence of that, listen to Starmer’s resignation speech. He began by claiming that he had inherited a Labour Party that was “politically, financially and morally bankrupt”, and went on to describe his “hard work” in transforming Labour. This he claimed, had allowed Labour to win a landslide victory in 2024, compared to its previous “unelectable” state. Never mind that Labour, under its previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, won almost three million more votes in 2017 than it did under Starmer in 2024, and half a million more even in 2019.
So what did Starmer mean by describing Labour under Corbyn as “bankrupt”? He meant a party with an anti-austerity manifesto – that called for nationalisation of mail, energy and water, mass council house building, rent controls and free education. Starmer did succeed in making Labour once again a reliable party for the ruling elite, loyally governing to defend the capitalist profit system. Of course, any party that does that – in this era where capitalism means relentlessly squeezed living standards and crumbling public services – becomes hated. That was the fate of British capitalism’s traditional party, the Tories, and now Labour is on the same path.
If Burnham is to restore Labour’s fortunes in the polls, even partially and temporarily, he cannot openly say he is ‘continuity Starmer’. But he has proposed nothing along the lines of Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto, and has said that Corbyn himself should not be allowed back into Labour.
Continuity Starmer
The fact that he will be elected unopposed, with the backing of the New Labour cabinet, including chancellor Rachel Reeves, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, and home secretary Shabana Mahmood, tells you that he, like Starmer, will govern in the interests of the capitalist class. The point has been rammed home by the appointment of ‘ultra-Blairite’ James Purnell as his Chief of Staff and Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs as an economic advisor, who previously served in Tory David Cameron’s government.
Yet the weakened Labour left are not able to stand a candidate, and the trade union movement has no power within Labour’s structures to get another candidate on the ballot. One of Starmer’s anti-democratic measures was to raise the threshold for the number of MPs required to back a candidate for them to get on the ballot paper to 20%, which is currently 81 MPs, far more than the 24 MPs currently in the Socialist Campaign Group. Back in 2015 even right-wing MPs nominated Corbyn in order to allow a democratic debate. After he unexpectedly won, and engendered mass enthusiasm, the pro-capitalist leadership of Labour will not allow the same thing to happen again.
So Burnham will be crowned without any opposition. Initially, no doubt, there will be an improvement in Labour’s current dire poll ratings. In the first New Labour era, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair as prime minister, Labour’s poll ratings initially went up by nine points. A year later they were five points lower than when Blair resigned because they both followed, fundamentally, the same pro-capitalist policies. The same fate is ahead for Burnham.
Hemmed in by the capitalists’ demands for more austerity, and the desire of the working class for change, he is currently avoiding much in the way of policy. Nonetheless, he will strive to find a few measures to show he is different to Starmer. He has said he wants to oversee a mass programme of council housebuilding. Trade unions and socialists should demand that councils, especially those Green councils elected in May on an anti-austerity programme, begin work to immediately implement such a programme in their areas and present ‘Andy’s government’ with the bill.
‘Seeking the ear’ – or working-class representation?
On the other hand, Burnham’s vague statements about devolving aspects of welfare to the local level as a means to “reduce the welfare bill” smack of governments once again expecting local authorities to implement austerity, with a danger of a return to a version of the Victorian poor laws. A new trade union-led fight for the right to a real safety net for all those who need it is clearly going to be required under a Burnham government as part of a general struggle on pay, jobs and conditions.
Above all, it is already clear that Burnham will not make Labour into a party of the working class as he promised. Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, has praised Burnham’s Manchester launch speech for being in ‘listening mode’, while also saying ‘we need to see the detail’. One of the details Unite members want to see immediately is Burnham announcing he will remove the government commissioners from Birmingham City Council and meet all the Birmingham bin workers’ demands.
But in fact, what the working class needs is not just politicians who sometimes deign to ‘listen’ to representation from the trade unions. Labour was originally founded as a conscious break from trade union leaders’ previous approach of ‘seeking the ear’ of capitalist Liberal politicians. Rather than passively joining the queue of interest groups seeking to influence those in power, there is a need to actively build independent working-class political representation. The experience of ‘Burnhamism’ is only going to drive home the need for the trade union movement to begin to build a mass workers’ party with socialist policies.
