After the governing Labour Party’s catastrophic losses in recent local elections, the dam has burst and several major party leaders have called for the resignation of the feckless prime minister, Keir Starmer. The only question is whether Starmer will agree to an orderly transition or will have the added humiliation of being the first Labour prime minister to be voted out by his own party.
In the local elections, Labour lost a record 1,498 municipal seats, while the far-right Reform party, under Nigel Farage, with virtually no experience governing and only eight MPs in Parliament, gained just over 1,400.
The Reform party has become the prime instrument of British voter grievances, despite massive cognitive dissonance. It was Farage more than anyone else who promoted British exit from the European Union, yet Britain left the EU in 2020 and since then the economic circumstances of the people who voted for Reform only got worse.
It’s tempting to invoke Tolstoy. Happy center-left parties are all alike. Each unhappy center-left party is unhappy in its own way.
Except that today there are no happy center-left parties. And while the collapse of the center-left in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and even Scandinavia displays national variations in the details, there is a common through line. For at least a generation, working people have suffered downward mobility, exacerbated by neoliberalism and symbolized by the cosmopolitanism of the center-left.
Most social democrat and labor parties are simply no longer credible champions of working people, economically or culturally. (The only partial exception is Spain, where Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists are doing well with a minority government.)
In some cases, like Britain, a dismal leader like Starmer only makes things worse. Not only is he a leaden speaker, but the essence of his program is to appease capital rather than to promote a growth program that would benefit working people. In those circumstances, the plain contradictions of a Farage (or a Trump) are forgiven. Angry voters want an avenging angel, the more destructive the better.
The few exceptions to this sad saga are leaders who demonstrate the power of a politics and a narrative of restraining the excesses of capitalism and fighting to deliver practical gains for ordinary people. One such leader is Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York. Another is Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is likely to be Britain’s next Labour leader and British prime minister.
In his nearly ten years as a popular mayor of Manchester, winning re-election twice with around two-thirds of the vote, Burnham has presided over an economic renaissance rare for Britain’s depressed north, emphasizing economic development, jobs, housing, and public transport. While other northern cities are mired in slow growth and out-migration, Manchester has been growing at an annual rate of 3.1 percent, more than double that of Britain as a whole. Center-city Manchester, with virtually no residents in 2010 (the census showed 300—not a typo), now has over 100,000.
Burnham enjoyed some tailwinds coming in, including the fact that the Greater Manchester city government was a poster child for municipal devolution, which gave greater fiscal power and autonomy to regional governments headed by newly empowered mayors, beginning in 2011. However, Burnham is widely credited with combining economic development strategies friendly to business with a healthy dose of municipal socialism. He proposes to bring the same approach to Britain.
To become party leader and thus prime minister, Burnham first needs a seat in the House of Commons. Last week, a young MP and close Burnham ally, Josh Simons, resigned his Makerfield seat in Greater Manchester. There will be a by-election, most likely on June 18, which Burnham is expected to win.
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, an unreconstructed leftist who became Labour leader in a fluke in 2015 and blew an entirely winnable election in 2019, Burnham represents a more broadly appealing form of leftism, in narrative and policy, but still a definite break with the centrism of Starmer and his predecessor Tony Blair. He’s also an inspiring public speaker, in contrast to Starmer.
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In Manchester, Burnham put the local transit system, which had been privatized by Margaret Thatcher, back under public ownership, cut fares, and made it free for senior citizens. The tram system is a centerpiece both of public services and economic development.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Burnham said the “deindustrialisation and privatisation” of Britain had left areas like Makerfield “without good jobs and people unable to afford the basics.” He added: “We need a different path completely … Put more things back under stronger public control: energy, housing, water, transport.”
Burnham’s comments and his prospects of becoming prime minister have already spooked financial markets. Borrowing costs for British Treasury bonds, known as gilts, have risen and the value of the pound has declined. The Financial Times warned editorially against Burnham’s approach, adding that “the bond market is acting as a rare adult in the room”—nicely proving Burnham’s point that financial markets have far too much power.
This set of constraints is what Marxists of my generation called a capital strike. The greatest Labour Party prime minister ever, Burnham’s hero Clement Attlee (1945–1951), was able to defy the risk of a capital strike because the rules of global capitalism were deliberately different during the postwar Bretton Woods era, precluding currency speculation and providing plenty of public capital. Attlee nationalized about 20 percent of British industry and created the National Health Service. When François Mitterrand ventured a similar program in 1981 for France, the Bretton Woods rules were dead, and currency speculators crushed the franc.
Burnham just might have a very narrow path, politically and economically, to succeed where Mitterrand failed, but everything would have to break right. Rather than increasing Britain’s already large deficit to pay for an expansive economic development program as well as renationalizations, he would need to substantially increase taxes on capital and turn Britain away from its lethal overdependence on finance in favor of the real economy.
First, he has to get elected to Parliament and to defeat other contenders for the job of leader. Though Makerfield has traditionally been a Labour safe seat, in the recent municipal elections Reform candidates actually won more than 50 percent of the votes in that Makerfield district, outperforming Labour. The by-election will be an early test of whether Burnham’s personal popularity can overcome the undertow of the dismal performance of Starmer and his ineffectual government.
If Labour’s most popular regional leader cannot defeat Reform in his own backyard, then the Labour Party is really at death’s door. The more profound test, should Burnham become Britain’s next prime minister, is whether, between now and the 2029 general election, he can overcome the deeper undertow of global financial capitalism and begin delivering better life prospects for ordinary Brits.
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