The following article by Mike Morrissey was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
‘THE Labour Party is dead, and Kier Starmer has killed it’ – so begins David Edgerton’s take on the coming battle for the leadership of the governing party (New Statesman, 17/05/2026). This is astonishing given it still has a 170 seat majority in the Commons and will be in power until 2029. And, to be fair, its overall performance has been respectable – ending the two-child benefit cap (eventually); breakfast clubs for primary schools; another half million children eligible for free school meals; new rights for renters; new rights in the workplace; even some bending of fiscal orthodoxy to facilitate new capital investment making it faster growing than five of the G7 economies (Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 14/05/2026).
However, all of that has been crowded out by a series of entirely unforced errors ranging from the early political gifts to the ‘island of strangers’ speech to the Mandelson affair. The 24/7 outrage and abuse from the attack dogs of the far-right press and tv stations (while the BBC remains cowed) has not helped. It may be rich given that the same media indulged a series of venal, incompetent Conservative governments and currently encourage Reform’s ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet fascists’ (David Cameron). Equally, the same pundits have little regard for any truth or reality different from their paranoid, conspiracy theories. Take some examples which have their endless attention: NHS waiting lists have just have just had their biggest fall in 17 years, net migration is down by three-quarters and knife crime has fallen by 10% (Rowena Mason, The Guardian, 20/05/2026) – none of which they have reported. That, nevertheless, is the new ‘reality’.
Bad News
The May election results were uniformly dreadful. Labour lost 58% of its councillors and northern strongholds like Barnsley and Sunderland. It failed to stop the SNP winning a fifth term and collapsed into third place in Wales having been previously dominant there for a century. While Reform was the big winner of seats (plus 1450 councillors and control of 14 councils), its performance was significantly less dominant than presented by Farage. The vote share actually went down, it failed to captured three of the four London boroughs it targeted and failed to capture Wales its ‘top priority’ (The Economist 14/05/2026).
Reform needs to destroy the Conservatives to have a chance of forming a majority government – it failed. None of this is solace for Labour. No political party has ever come back from such a political drubbing.
‘Nigel Farage is the formidable national challenger with the alternative story and national momentum to bury social democracy in Britain’ (Andrew Mar, New Statesman, 13/05/2026). If so, the hyper caution shown by Starmer and the Labour leadership will no longer cut it. Certainly, there are issues about personality (or lack of it) and the absence of a clear strategic vision. But, deeper factors are also at work.
For one thing, public sector debt at 96% of GDP and the serial mismanagement of Conservative governments means that the bond markets remain wary about the UK. It doesn’t help that one of the biggest bondholders, the Bank of England, has embarked on a selling drive, when it should be holding onto its quantitative-easing purchases. Even though demand for UK public debt remains buoyant, increasing yields (interest rates) moving towards 6% might consume half of the £24 billion ‘fiscal headroom’ created by Reeves in her last budget (The Guardian 05/05/2026).
In short, the government appears to feel trapped between a public clamouring for change and a fiscal straightjacket that prevents significant change happening – the UK thus seems ungovernable. Perhaps, above all other issues, the government’s attempt to reproduce a kind of New Labour settlement has been a core reason of its failure.
Bad Ideas
New Labour left much of the Thatcher settlement in place, saw ‘market efficiencies’ as the way to improve public services, embraced globalisation and financialisation and saw subordination to US foreign policy as the means of preserving some international reach. This worked for almost a decade even though the anti-Iraq-war demonstrations were the biggest ever seen in Britain. Some important things were done. Every Gordon Brown budget was redistributive while he boasted of multiple, successive quarters of economic growth. It introduced the statutory minimum wage, devolution, and cut child poverty in half. Some initiatives, like SureStart and Total Place, began to shift chronic poverty and underdevelopment.
Nevertheless, 2008 destroyed its base assumptions about the economy even if Brown’s performance at the 2009 G20 meeting was instrumental in preventing complete, global, economic breakdown.
Since 2008, productivity in the UK economy has collapsed and real growth has been marginal. Meanwhile the population has been aging and unanticipated shocks, like COVID, increased the debt burden and put even more pressure on public services (the NHS saw a doubling of its waiting lists). In today’s circumstances, neither Blair’s and Brown’s approaches would deliver similar results.
Quite simply, these times demand a radical vision of economic management and political governance. In opposition, Reeves flirted with what was called the ‘new supply-side’ economics but found it difficult to transform that into practice. Starmer’s claims of managerial competence and ‘bringing adults back into the room’ wilted following setback after setback.
The key question for Britain is whether any kind of social democracy can be saved in the face of Reform’s advance, particularly in a first-past-the-post electoral system where the progressive vote is split between Labour and the Greens. Yet, polling by IPSOS revealed that if Starmer is separated from the Labour Party, it’s supported by 34% of the electorate, more than any other party. Its fate is by no means sealed.
Has Burnham a Solution?
Even before the Makerfield bye election, some are already doubtful. Owen Jones urges the left ‘be cautious about Andy Burnham’ (The Guardian, 19/05/2026) worrying that talk of ‘public control’ may mean no more than tighter regulation of private businesses while arguing that his record on housing as Manchester mayor has been less than impressive.
Others are less worried (see Neal Lawson, The Guardian, 12/05/2026) claiming that ‘Manchesterism’ would bring a completely different approach to the government of Britain. Drawing on recent research (e.g. The Productive State and work of the Foundational Economy Collective), this argues that the basics of life should be in the hands of the state. Successive privatisations have meant that citizens depend on services from organisations where profit is the primary motivation. In turn, this not only leads to poor services and but also rising prices where the state has to subsidise citizens simply to live. Putting the fundamentals under public control would not only give greater economic security but would temper the rising cost of the public sector. Lawson argues that Burnham pioneered this approach in Manchester by taking public transport under control to create an integrated system (The Bee Network). A recent report from the Centre for Cities (Uneven Cities, 21/05/2026) also found that inner-city multiple deprivation had fallen more (by 17 percentage points) in Manchester than in any of the 63 towns and cities analysed.
Equally, he has been clear about the need for constitutional reform, particularly proportional representation, a long necessary and long delayed reform of British politics. Burnham’s approach may be worth trying.
A Hard Road
Whether he will be given the opportunity is a different question. In the areas covered by Makerfield, Reform gained 48% of votes in the local government elections. However, he has no choice but to take on Reform in one of its strongholds. Not only might his victory wipe the permanent smirk off Farage’s face, but would also show what is possible in a general election. That does not make it easy. The approach of the Greens will be crucial. Caroline Lucas argues the Greens should not challenge for the seat since it might only benefit Reform. Others regard the Labour Party as irreformable and want an all-out campaign.
Even if Burnham is elected. Starmer is giving every indication that he won’t go down without a fight. Months of internecine strife would be good neither for the party or the government. It would also bring Streeting (and perhaps Rayner) into the fray and, while it’s not clear what strategic vision (other than rejoining the EU) he would bring to the challenge, he has been a very competent health minister.
Finally, there remains the question of whether ‘Manchesterism’ can be translated nationally across multiple services like water, energy and housing costs. What would be the costs of nationalisation and how could these be met? Will Hutton (The Observer, 17/05/2026) asks whether the British state can ‘transmute into a force for productivism that, outside of wartime, it has never demonstrated’? It would nevertheless be interesting to see how such a strategy would play out – as the Chinese say, we live in interesting times.