In the giddy rush to announce yet another ‘New Chapter’ in British politics – whose chapters these days seem to be about as lengthy and serious as those in a Biff and Chip book – there seems to have been a collective loss of sense as people hail Makerfield as a game-changer. This is at best wishful thinking, at worst, full on derangement. All Makerfield has done in the short term is to guarantee one of the silliest silly seasons for quite some time.
Once the enjoyable demise of Starmer happens there comes the probable Burnham win. It will not take long for this too to descend into farce
We are in for a summer of unreality: Fear and Loathing in Downing Street, Labour in Wonderland. Two things seem likely to happen. Firstly, Andy Burnham will be hailed by a desperate and intellectually moribund Labour party as the saviour long-awaited who can stop their electoral extinction event. Secondly, Keir Starmer will refuse to see that his position is untenable and try to continue as usual.
At some point over the long, hot summer months, these two fantasies will, in quick succession, collide with reality. The results will be firstly amusing, and then catastrophic.
First Starmer has to resign. This will be the enjoyable bit. The thought of Starmer, a generationally dishonest and hypocritical politician, finally being forced to go ‘meep meep’ into the long night, will fill much of the country with glee. The process by which this happens will invariably be funny, as he is adamant that it isn’t happening, his retreat to the Starmerbunker being now complete. One can picture him there, played by Bruno Ganz, circling maps of the Red Wall and repeating his conviction that just one more breakfast club will turn things around.
Even today Starmer gave a weird and stilted interview to Sky News in which he claimed both that ‘there isn’t a leadership contest’ and that ‘I’m not walking away’. Despite these protestations, he is already yesterday’s man, a pub quiz answer of the future.
However, once the enjoyable demise of Starmer happens there comes the probable Burnham win. It will not take long for this too to descend into farce. Even Labour will realise pretty sharpish that he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very mediocre boy. Electing Burnham isn’t going to solve a defence crisis which just days ago caused the secretary of state and a minister to resign, it isn’t going to magically put more money into the Exchequer and it isn’t going to stop much of the country viewing the Labour party as a group of moronic scolds dedicated to the worsening of life in this country. Indeed, in all three cases it is likely to make things worse, as borrowing costs rise and Labour MPs sense an even softer target for their insatiable welfare spending lust. Meanwhile Burnham’s single biggest selling-point, not being like other Westminster politicians, may not survive contact with prolonged exposure to Whitehall and the necessity of taking unpopular decisions.
The likely makeup of a Burnham cabinet is amusingly grotesque and indicates exactly why his premiership looks doomed before it starts. The New Statesman has breathily anointed Harriet Harman protégé Miatta Fahnbulleh as ‘the brains behind Burnham’, which is like naming someone the moral guide behind Boris Johnson or the personality guru behind Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, Sheffield’s answer to the Artful Dodger, Louise Haigh, has been given the mandatory Fabian bob-cut in preparation of a return to government. Another member of the inner sanctum is Anneliese Midgley, who as a measure of her depth as a politician, recently called for the Netflix show Adolescence to be screened in all British schools. Meanwhile, Labour insiders are talking about Ed Miliband in Number 11, which will give hope to lunatics with asylum-running ambitions everywhere.
Burnham doesn’t represent Labour realising it has to do something drastic to survive but, as his post-Oasis vibes-vomit of a victory speech today showed, is in fact a sort of anti-reality, a denial that any change has to happen at all.
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