Keir Starmer was the architect of his own downfall. Andy Burnham should take heed

As he stood behind the Downing Street lectern, welling up, struggling to get his words out, Keir Starmer’s public resignation address signalled precisely what was such a disaster about his two years as Prime Minister.

Starmer’s premiership was responsible for cutting pensioners access to the Winter Fuel Allowance and then climbing down from the policy; defending Israel’s right to starve Palestinians in Gaza and arming its genocide; committing £5.5 billions worth of cuts to disability benefits and then being forced into a U-turn after a rebellion in Parliament; and echoing Enoch Powell’s infamously racist ‘rivers of blood’ speech and then later apologising for his remarks.

With all these rather noticeable, but by no means exhaustive blotches on his record, you would imagine that Keir Starmer might approach his departure with an air of humility. You would be wrong.

Cleansing Labour of Corbynism

The former Director of Public Prosecutions, even in defeat, returned to the homilies which had come to overwhelmingly shape the thrust of his agenda in office. Instead of a positive vision for the people of Britain that actively sought to improve everyday lives, Starmer defined his agenda in opposition to his predecessor as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Starmer began his exit speech, as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy blasted in the background, reminding us how incredible his 2024 general election victory was, given that he “inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt.” Considering that his Labour Party got a lower voter share than Corbyn received in both the 2017 and 2019 general elections, and that he leaves his position with some of the worst satisfaction ratings of any PM ever, it is remarkable that the Member of Parliament for Holborn and St. Pancras has any pride in his tenure at all.

It is almost laughable that he has the gall to accuse anybody else of bankruptcy. This is especially the case given that when Jeremy Corbyn resigned as Labour leader, he was handing over a party with 600,000 members and sound finances. Keir Starmer wouldn’t dare make such a claim.

Among Starmer’s self-declared achievements, the one that did not involve scapegoating migrants, supporting wars abroad, locking up pro-Palestine protesters or punishing the poor - the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap and the lifting of almost half a million children out of poverty - only ever happened because sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party dragged him kicking and screaming into reversing his declaration that he would continue the Tories’ eugenicist welfare policy.

Alongside the fact that Starmer defined his governing project against Corbynism, two fundamental realities define his downfall. Firstly, once turning his back on the Corbyn-lite set of policies which got him elected Labour leader, he did everything in his power to triangulate upon a congealed, parochial image of the ‘Red Wall’ voter. He incentivised himself and his allies to emulate the language of the Faragist right whilst reproducing the policy impulses of the political centre.

Even when he implemented or advocated policies that would benefit the country’s social majority, such as chipping away at Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union legislation or raising wages for public sector workers, these policies were watered down and communicated so appallingly that Starmer’s administration was always chasing the nation’s ever-polarising Overton Window.

And secondly, right from the very outset, Starmer, alongside his Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, swore fealty to the very institutions and powers - namely the Treasury and the bond markets - that have kept Britain stuck in its miserably deteriorating spiral for well over a decade.

Labour’s future leader

Today, newly-elected Member of Parliament for Makerfield, Andy Burnham, likely faces a coronation to the premiership instead of a contest. Wes Streeting has pulled out of any potential leadership race and thrown his weight behind Burnham. Only Starmer loyalist Darren Jones and an unknown quantity, Al Carns, stand in his way, and it is highly doubtful that either of them has the nominations required from MPs to initiate a leadership race.

Burnham will face many of the same structural obstacles that Starmer confronted, and there is a groundswell of intellectual production circling around his emerging premiership, principally Matthew Lawrence and Alex Williams’ paper, ‘The Productive State: a Framework for Manchesterism’, that seeks to find a way out of the uniquely British doom loop which entails low growth, low productivity and crashing living standards.

But like his predecessor, the Makerfield MP is already making the same catastrophic decisions which led Starmer down the path of badly managing an ailing political system to the benefit of very few people.

Burnham has, contrary to previous political positioning, already committed to fiscal rules crafted under the Austrian David Cameron-era Conservatives, putting severe constraints on his touted public ownership commitments. The flurry of briefings that he should not hire soft-left Ed Miliband as Chancellor has opened the door to the potential appointment of Wes Streeting. This is by no means guaranteed. The final outcome will be the product of a struggle between the party’s soft left and its now disenfranchised right-wing.

Josh Simons, the former Director of right-wing faction, Labour Together, who stepped down as Makerfield MP for Burnham to run, now has the ear of the so-called ‘King of the North’. It is an open question whether he is listened to as much as those on the soft left, such as Louise Haigh and Anneliese Midgley, the organisers of Burnham’s election campaign and his ongoing journey to power.

The interventions of the trade unions, with Unite leader Sharon Graham already declaring herself against Ed Miliband’s appointment, will be pivotal in this battle too.

With the fiscal rules already having been accepted, the appointment of someone outside of Labour’s soft left camp as Chancellor will be a fatal blow to those on the left of British politics who see in Burnham a hope for improving our lives and stopping Nigel Farage from becoming Prime Minister in 2029.

Rumours that Burnham is open to keeping Shabana Mahmood on as Home Secretary, and statements in the wake of racist pogroms in Southampton and Belfast that he agrees with Farage on immigration, signal that the Labour Party will remain committed to reproducing the racist policies and talking points which have inflamed the far-right over the course of the 21st Century. Alongside this racist rhetoric, when one factors in Burnham’s comment that he is not “squeamish” about cutting welfare spending so that he can increase outgoings on defence, it may well be the case that the former Greater Manchester Mayor might just be the closest thing to a Blue Labour Prime Minister this country will ever encounter.

A friend remarked to me the other day that Andy Burnham will be her son’s third Prime Minister. Her son is not yet three years old. The crisis politics of Brexit Britain, ten years since the country voted to leave the European Union, are going nowhere. Andy Burnham has an opportunity to avoid the disastrous errors of Starmerism. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly given both his track record and recent statements, it seems the future Labour leader will consign his administration to the same calamities as his predecessor.

I could not resist asking my friend how many Prime Ministers her son will have lived under by the time he’s ten years old. I was half-joking.

Jonas Marvin is the author of forthcoming The Breaking of the English Working Class, due out for Verso Books in August 2026. He also cohosts Life of the Party podcast and blogs at Marx’s Dream Journal.

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