There are two political comedy shows on BBC that I watch regularly, Have I Got News For You, whose irreverence makes me laugh, and Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, which makes me weep, because of course it’s not meant to be funny. Except last Sunday (17 May), when one of the trio of panelists was the writer Will Self, who has a cynical and sardonic sense of humour. Normally the panelists represent a skewed version of the political landscape which suggests that the programme has not yet adjusted to the new conjuncture, in which the age-old two-party system has collapsed and new parties are emerging to both right and left. (Not that you’d expect it to, when everyone else in the BBC is faced with the same problem.) A typical panel back in November consisted in one soft left Labourite, one journalist, and one business person. Early in January we got a centrist Labour (Layla Moran), a Tory (Grant Shapps), and a Tory defector to Reform (Nadine Dorries). Last Sunday’s panel also included Jo Coburn, a BBC political journalist, and Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield who has just resigned to allow Andy Burnham to fight a by-election to return to Parliament and make a bid to replace Keir Starmer in No 10. This was pretty much the focus of the whole programme, except for an interview with Kemi Badenoch, who is totally irrelevant and has nothing of interest to say, but says it politely with a practised smile.
Almost everything in the present scenario is conditional. It is not a forgone conclusion that Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, where Reform took over the Council in the local elections a couple of weeks ago, although his personal popularity in his own locality makes it seems likely. He will certainly challenge for the leadership if he does, but he might not be the only person to do so. However, we don’t know if West Streeting, who has the ambition, also has the numbers. If Starmer exercises his right as the occupant to stand in any leadership contest without having to gather supporters, I can envisage him losing miserably. The fact is, he’s toast – hardly any need to rehearse the reasons. He stood for the leadership on a radical programme which he then abandoned, the came repeated political misjudgements, vacillation and U-turns, his bland technocratic personality which repulses empathy and has turned him into the least liked prime minister in memory. Above all, he hasn’t delivered the goods. Despite some beneficial tinkering here and there, like raising the minimum wage, giving renters security against no-fault eviction, and eventually abolishing the two-child benefit limit, the electorate have not seen any improvement in everyday life and are alienated from the same old politics, which fails to respond to the most pressing problems.
However, if Burnham takes Starmer’s place, it’s an open question whether he can turn the fate of the Labour Government around. Meanwhile, the contradiction at the present moment is the need to remove Starmer and replace him without rocking the boat, which is quite impossible because the sea is extremely choppy. Nevertheless, while my response to watching LK on Sunday over my morning coffee is generally cynical, this week, strangely, I am also hopeful, although I’m not a Labour voter. But I’d like to see Burnham to win through and revamp the government because under Starmer it’s become dysfunctional. (The last time I voted Labour was in 1997, but Tony Blair rapidly alienated me, and since then I’ve voted Green. The Greens were absent from last Sunday’s programme.)
Self pooh-poohed Burnham’s appeal as retrogressive, deriding it as mere nostalgia for an organic communitarian uchronia. Self likes obscure words. Uchronia means a time that never existed. There is a certain truth in this taunt but it’s a travesty of both Burnham’s Manchesterism and his ‘big agenda’ for government. This amounts to the reversal of neoliberalism, but the programme gave only a scant account of his policies. Doubtless this is partly because Burnham hasn’t issued a manifesto and his remarks to journalists have been piecemeal, but from what I’ve read they include a bunch of radical measures, including placing Proportional Representation back on the agenda. He is also talking of taking privatised infrastructure such as water, electricity and transport back into public ownership. This is paramount. All three sectors are in deep trouble, and need urgent attention, but Starmer’s speech of Monday last week, when he tried to rally support after Labour’s disaster in the local and regional elections, failed to reassure anyone about anything, and nor did the King’s Speech later in the week.
The television programme covered three main topics, whose selection seemed arbitrary: Brexit, defence, and children’s exposure to social media. Absent concerns included immigration, the climate crisis, and foreign policy, apart from Europe. A majority in the country now think Brexit was a disaster and support rejoining, but Starmer insists on a gradualist approach. Streeting has declared that Britain should rejoin, and the programme made much of whether Burnham, who basically agrees, would be forced to backtrack because ten years ago Makerfield voted strongly in favour of Brexit. Two days later, that’s exactly what he’s doing.
Late news: Burnham has his critics, who point to his past positions, including his support for the Iraq War when he was in parliament, and his position on Israel. He has plenty of experience in government under both Blair and Brown, but we have no idea of his take on foreign policy. Some say he should do a deal with Starmer and make him Foreign Secretary is he resigns. What kind of deal would he do with Streeting? Chancellor of the Exchequer? Home Secretary? Now he says he won’t change the fiscal rules, so as not to spook the markets he spurned a short while ago. No change there, then.
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If it seems absurd that the next PM should be chosen by a by-election, then should Burnham return to Parliament, there’s another possible scenario, with two more conditions. If Streeting (or any other contender) chooses not to challenge him, and if Starmer resigns, then according to Labour Party rules, there would be no need for a vote by the party membership, and the King of the North would be crowned King of Downing Street.
In that case, it could all be over before the summer, but given so many ifs, is that likely? In part, the problem lies in the traps and the hurdles set up by an arbitrary set of procedural rules. In part it’s Starmer’s stubbornness. The ship of state is ploughing choppy seas with a stuttering engine and a captain who keeps changing course to avoid the squalls on the horizon, while threatened with a mutiny among the crew and rebellion among the passengers. He doesn’t know which way to turn but sees no call to launch the lifeboats, and duty tells him he can’t abandon ship. However, some of those squalls are in fact approaching hurricanes, indifferent to human travails although humans have raised them. The threat the country faces is overdetermined, the result of the long-term process of climate change, economic mismanagement going back many decades, and of recent irrational wars which not only add to environmental damage but unleash economic forces against which no individual country has any effective defence. Even if the unwarranted, irrational and illegal ‘war of choice’ against Iran launched by Trump and Netanyahu remains stalemated, the damage to the global economy has already been done. The oil giants are making billions while the supply of fuel oil and petrochemical products, including fertiliser, is severely restricted, and consumer prices are rising. The neoliberal globalisation of capitalism is running out of control. What the war of Iran demonstrates is that the sooner society weans itself off fossil fuels the better. Meanwhile, it’s going to be a rough ride, so strap in your safety belt.
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