The decision by Sir Keir Starmer to fall on his sword and resign as Labour leader and Prime Minister was made inevitable by the size of challenger Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election on 19 June. Burnham’s smooth and superficial oratory, his very marketable persona, ensured a trouncing for the racist and chauvinist challenge from Reform UK and its right wing outlier, Restore Britain. He took 54.8% of the vote on a turnout of 59%, itself a seven percentage point increase over the 2024 general election poll. Reform UK and Restore Britain together collected 41.3% of the vote. It was a mark of the lack of confidence that the ruling class currently has in the competence of Reform UK and its leadership.
Had Burnham only just scraped home as seemed possible early on in the Makerfield campaign, his pitch to become Labour leader would have seemed flimsy. But Labour MPs and cabinet ministers, increasingly fed up with Starmer’s witlessness, his recent missteps, and the threadbare nature of his defence in relation to his appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, quickly put the boot in, and presented Starmer with no choice. Immediately, former Health Secretary and arch-Zionist Wes Streeting announced he would back Burnham’s leadership bid, making a contest for the position an unlikely proposition.
It is of course good riddance to Starmer. He won the general election on pledges which included opposition to ending the two-child benefit cap but within a few weeks proposed to terminate the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. Austerity was to continue, whatever name it went under, subject to fiscal rules which were to be harshly oppressive in their application. The accelerated removal of ‘illegal’ migrants became a regular and highly-publicised boast: 70,000 to date, with ever more punitive rules on admission of migrant workers which ruled out care workers and nurses, increasing the default qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain to 10 years, restricting benefits and social housing eligibility, and potentially requiring those granted asylum to leave if their country is deemed safe.
Starmer led the battle-cry for Ukraine across Europe, most recently agreeing to pay for 150,000 Ukrainian-produced drones and over 350 air defence missiles and radars while stepping up the seizure of tankers carrying Russian oil. Then there was the continued support for the genocidal Zionist state: no crime the Israelis committed would be sufficient to end Starmer’s support for the onslaught on the Palestinian people, no barbarity sufficient to draw criticism let alone talk of sanctions. Instead, pro-Palestinian sentiment was deemed to be anti-Semitism and an acceleration of state-led repression, the banning of Palestine Action and the arrest of thousands for their defiance of the ruling.
Burnham – a safer pair of hands for the ruling class
And what of Burnham? Straight out of the blocks during the Makerfield campaign he endorsed Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s accelerating offensive against migrants. In 2015, the year Jeremy Corbyn comprehensively defeated him in the Labour leader contest, Burnham became a member of Labour Friends of Israel and during his leadership bid described the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel as ‘spiteful’. He also promised to make Israel his first state visit if he won – calling the country a ‘democracy that has a long history of protecting minorities and promoting civil rights’. More recently, he has pointedly refused to call the genocide a genocide, and stated that the Israeli state has the right to take ‘targeted action within international law’ – a right he opposes for the Palestinian people. He has also stated that he supports the EHRC guidance arising from the Supreme Court ruling against trans people.
Streeting has backed Burnham despite stating in a December 2025 email to Mandelson that ‘Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children…. This is rogue state behaviour. Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers.’ There is no way he is going to challenge Burnham on Labour’s rock-solid support for the Israeli state.
So what will be Burnham’s purpose? In substance it will be no different from Starmer’s: to shore up the international position of British imperialism by attempting to solve the crisis of British capitalism – the deteriorating balance of payments deficit, the rising external debt let alone the state spending deficit and state debt. The ruling class wants to see far more substantial progress on this, and will be pressing Burnham to meet their requirements. A Reform UK-led government is too much of a risk at the present even if it promises those cuts which the ruling class sees as necessary – to the NHS, to local government funding, to the Civil Service, to state benefits and of course an unbridled attack on migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
This is where the uncertainty arises for the ruling class: the possible development of US-style mass resistance led by black and brown people in conditions where general working class conditions will be under severe attack. The ruling class does not trust the abilities of Reform UK representatives or the charlatan who leads it, Nigel Farage: it cannot allow a Liz Truss-type adventure. Reform UK has to be tested in local government, and at present too many of its 2,300 councillors are creating chaos through their incompetence for the ruling class to be prepared to allow it anywhere near government. It has turned to Burnham to provide the necessary credibility as Prime Minister that Starmer lacked, and to get on with the job of crushing the working class. Resistance has to be our answer – anti-racist, anti-imperialist resistance.
