Starmer has gone, a man whose main achievement as Prime Minister was to throw away a landslide majority in the House of Commons and make himself even more unpopular than Liz Truss. The UK is now heading for its seventh prime minister in ten years, meaning that British prime ministers don’t last as long as a new pair of socks. As those of us with big feet know to our cost, sock manufacturers vie with Starmer and other British prime ministers in the liar liar pants on fire stakes, because when they say sizes 6 to 11 what they really mean is size 6 but they stretch, and so in about the political lifespan of a British prime minister your big toe has popped through and is looking for a new home.
The British media fixates on personalities not policies, but Starmer and his robotic personality was never the real problem. The real problem is that the Labour, Conservative and Reform parties are all creatures of the corporate and vested interests who flood them with cash, cash which we are expected to believe is given with no expectations of favourable policies in return. Burnham has been captured by these interests as much as Starmer before him.
The wholesale capture of British political parties and the media by the super-rich is why the UK lurches from one prime minister to another, providing a short term sticking plaster over the deeper structural problems which the British media and political classes refuse to address, the capture of the state by the wealthiest and the transformation of political parties and their client media into agents of the super-rich. All of the UK’s political obsessions, Brexit and now immigration, are convenient distractions which are used as a cover to divert blame from the real cause of crumbling public services and the housing and cost of living crises – the annexation of the public realm by private interests and government policies which serve to enrich the wealthiest at the expense of the rest of us.
Burnham will do little to fundamentally change the direction of the British state. He has already rowed back on some of his earlier not-quite-promises. He won’t take the UK back into the EU, he’s highly unlikely to rejoin the single market or customs union or restore freedom of movement. He won’t introduce proportional representation. Burnham will keep Shabana Mahmood and her cruel policies on immigration.
He’s also signalled that he’s more than willing to slash social security payments in order to boost spending on defence. He won’t tackle the underlying reason for the UK’s ballooning benefits bill, which is that it’s increasingly used as a subsidy to employers who pay their staff wages which are so low they qualify for benefits. Approximately 40% of those in receipt of Universal Credit are employed. 18 to 20% of those receiving disability benefits are working.
Nevertheless we can expect more assaults on the meagre incomes of the disabled, the sick and the elderly while the government does nothing to address the fact that millions of people receive a wage which is not enough to live on. In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, whilst incomes for the richest fifth saw a 7.8% increase. Wealth inequality is even more stark, Britain’s wealth is ever more concentrated in fewer (private) hands, at the expense of millions of people and the public realm more generally.
Between 2011 and 2019, the average UK household’s wealth grew by about £4,000, according to an analysis of official statistics commissioned by the Fairness Foundation. Those in the poorest 10% of households continue to have no wealth at all – many are in debt. By contrast, the average person in the top 10% of households was £280,000 wealthier over this period. It’s a stark contrast and the analysis found that the wealth gap in the UK has grown by 50% over these eight years. This is a direct consequence of government policy.
Starmer will be remembered for ensuring the UK facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza while criminalising those who protested against it. Thanks to Starmer, the typical person arrested on terrorism charges in the UK is an older non religious white man or woman who was arrested for the terrorist crime of displaying a placard.
There’s no guarantee any of this would change under Burnham. Earlier this month he declined to call Israel’s slaughter of over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza genocide. Burnham became a member of Labour Friends of Israel in 2015 and during an unsuccessful Labour leadership bid that year described the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel as “spiteful”.
Within an hour of Starmer’s announcement, Wes Streeting, hitherto seen as Burnham’s main rival on the far right of the Labour party released a statement saying that he would not be standing and was fully behind Burnham, a position from which it’s much easier to knife him in the back. You can be quite certain that the intensely ambitious Streeting has extracted a quid pro quo from Burnham. Streeting will receive a very senior post in a Burnham government, which by itself puts paid to any fantasy that Burnham’s administration will be left wing. Streeting’s decision means that Burnham will accede to power with little or no scrutiny of his policies, policies which are largely a continuation of Starmer’s.
Little is likely to change as far as Scottish self-determination is concerned either. During the 2014 independence referendum campaign when the news was full of febrile and hysterical scare stories, Burnham claimed that in the event of Scottish independence motorists would have to present their passports on the M6 at the border and drive on the right. He later tried to downplay this as a “weak joke”. Scottish self-determination is a joke to these people.
Burnham is unlikely to recognise that the people of Scotland saw fit to give the Scottish Parliament its fourth successive mandate for an independence referendum. We’ll get more of the same stalling and delaying tactics while Westminster continues to undermine the Scottish Parliament. Don’t be surprised if Burnham proposes to introduce metro mayors to Scotland. This will be an attempt by Labour to build alternative power bases in Scotland which it has a chance of controlling and which can be used to by-pass Holyrood. This will be billed as “strengthening devolution.”
It’s very much a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss, the underlying ails of the UK will go unaddressed by this new prime minister as by all those who came before him, and in two years Burnham will be as loathed and distrusted as Starmer is, the big toe of political reality will be poking through and the UK will be looking for a new prime ministerial sock puppet.
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this this week but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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