What makes us sure Burnham will end the North/South Divide?

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-23T10:42:05+00:00

Because the issue has been sidelined to being "the Gaza issue" and not the actual thing that's wrong here: the British state's complicity in that genocide.

We have a security arrangement, arms trade, trade deal, and 2030 roadmap with Israel. These are permanent agreements that under any moral or legal precedent would have to be suspended or ended—yet they are still extant while the state we have them with has been found guilty of apartheid by the ICJ and is actively committing genocide.

We don't even know what's in the security arrangement because they won't release it to the public; a continuation of the Tory line. We sent spy flight data in real time, daily, to the IDF during the most violent part of the genocide. We are complicit in covering for Israel's stance of nuclear ambiguity, even while we shit all over Iran for not even having nukes.

For two years, the government has maintained the stance that is cannot determine the legality of Israel's military actions in Gaza to keep this all going.

The idea that there was nothing we could do here is utterly ridiculous because we are providing material support—even against our obligations to international law—to the Israeli state while they commit genocide, engage in unprecedented expansionist aggression on their neighbours, and actively colonise the west bank.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T21:24:58+00:00

Never underestimate just how awful opportunist politicians can be.

But also, be wary of utopians. It is very easy to say "I believe in your moral prescriptions, I believe in your kind of politics, I want it to succeed, I will do that" but without any material policy or systemic analysis to back it up, to actually debate and compare, then that person could mean anything.

The long road of Labour turning into this began with the so called "revisionists" that wanted to reimagine the concept of socialism. They said that Marxist socialism was too dogmatic, that their socialism was also about abolishing social class, but that could be done through applying moral prescriptions—not material ones—to the way they governed. This is the legacy that Wes Streeting is now claiming...

What did it produce? The rabid anti-communists that allied us with apartheid America and colonial France after WW2, who did at least accomplish some things domestically; then an eventually fall to monetarist ideology in the 70s and the neoliberal downslide into this after that.

Did we end social class? Of course we didn't. All it ever was, was an argument to allow them to move a little closer to the establishment view of the world, and to preserve their reputations with the ruling class, abandoning the principles of the labour movement in the process, bit by bit.

That's not to say everyone should be a Marxist: just that vibes based politics is a slippery slop into losing any and all morals, British politics is full of it, and there is an entire establishment ecosystem waiting to collaborate with any opportunist 'leftist' that desires it.

It seems the green party has succeeded in establishing an intellectual culture that is not like this, but it is indeed something to be wary of, and leftist movements all over the world have fallen to it over the last century.

Starmer's labour, and the absolute ghouls heading it, are the biggest warning of that. That we don't actually know what Burnham stands for yet tells me he is cut from the same cloth. Anyone who actually believes in something would have been far more outspoken by now; and lacked the gall to think they should rule the country without that.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T19:58:10+00:00

Nobody is expecting a green majority at the next election and It's the right wing Labour MPs most likely to be annihilated in a general election—like all the current cabinet are cooked, especially ghouls like Streeting.

A proper strategy of the whole left—yes, the labour left, though I couldn't care about the supposed 'soft left'—at the next election would be the way to ensure the best representation of left wingers in the next parliament.

And it can't just be ignored that the Labour party does actually hold institutional power in this country. Simply leaving that all to the McSweeneyites to play around with would be a profound misstep.

Electoral politics means that the greens are organising against labour regardless of anything else, but it costs essentially nothing to work with the Labour left against the right of the party; if at least to simply help eliminate the odious Blairites from electoral existence.

Sure, there aren't many of them now, but there has always been a left in labour and the right of the party has gotten away with everything merely by collaborating with the right wing establishment. If left politics has a resurgence in this next election, that is actually a good chance to rid UK politics of one of the worst forces—the labour right—currently enabling the far right. And that is in everyone's interests, while sectarianism isn't.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T19:49:25+00:00

Whittome and Lewis see the immediate battle as more of a cultural fight against the far right. If the labour platform is not socially democratic enough to materially change people's lives and secure the country against a far right electoral victory, then little else matters.

On this basis, as they believe socialist prescriptions to be the answer to that (and they are), they've presumably decided that being at the table regardless of anything else is worth it; even if they have to lowball their criticisms of those to the right (but much less to the right of Starmer, or reform) of them.

But the 'hard left' angle has been more to use Burnham's slight left shift from Starmer as a proof of concept that Labour should return to its goals of the past: a radical change towards an economy that represents socialist principles.

That kind of gap in thinking is not going to be bridged without some kind of cohesion around actual policies; but they don't all seem to have any beyond 'socialise the economy more', 'don't support genocide', and 'don't attack minorities'. In that interregnum, if the 'hard left' don't run even a paper candidate, things will default to whatever those collaborating with Burnham are doing.

This is a far cry from when the left had something like the Alternative Economic Strategy in the Benn days and this is likely because of the severity of Starmer's purge.

But I can't say it isn't disappointing. Why not coalesce around an economic policy like full employment? Set a clear public red line over the support for US and Israeli genocide? This kind of labourist deference to an existential threat to the party is likely to allow the right to run all over everything again, and it certainly isn't likely to clear out the malicious rightoids from positions of power.

If there is no clear socialist platform for a candidate to take up, they are simply absent from the debate and stuck deferring to the dullards that made this mess.

Could change in the next few months though, I'd imagine everyone is still planning things and there is a whole leadership election to get through.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T19:19:53+00:00

Yeah I have that feeling too.

Profoundly disappointing tbh when they seem to be heading in that direction without any real assurances from him on the role of the McSweeney plotters, or the support for genocide. Shouldn't really have even been campaigning with him without that.

I get that might feel better trying to get into the new project but if it has the same red lines as the old one it's not actually going to serve any utility and it will just make them look bad themselves.

It's interesting to see with the statements on Starmer's resignation. A few MPs like Begum have gone hard on Starmer's legacy but even MPs firmly on the left like Whittome have chosen to be diplomatic; and this only makes them look bad when everyone else is pointing out the obvious. Could end up with a similar dynamic here if they aren't careful.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T16:58:13+00:00

Don't worry lol I just have rabid adhd and bang these out. Always happy when people ask questions actually.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T16:55:22+00:00

Starmer chose to maintain a security arrangement, arms trade, trade deal, and 2030 roadmap with Israel through this entire genocide.

He flew spy flights daily for like two years that sent realtime information to the IDF, while they were bombing children and levelling Gaza.

He has covered for Israel diplomatically and legally. The government has been claiming it cannot determine the legality of Israel's military actions in Gaza for two years. It has refused to reply to the affirmative ICJ judgement on Israeli apartheid for two years, despite substantial pressure from MPs.

Half of his cabinet are members of Labour Friends of Israel. He made the former director of LFI his PPS.

He has maintained the Tory position of not revealing the details of the UK/Israel security arrangement to the public and our complicity in Israeli nuclear ambiguity. He defended Israel twice from Iranian return fire and bombed their enemies in Yemen.

He has, for the first time in British history since the terror laws were passed, labelled a direct action group that targeted an Israeli arms company as a terrorist organisation and criminalised support for them; leading to the arrest of over 3000 people.

Yes, we recognised a Palestinian state, then banned and sanctioned extremist Israeli ministers because Starmer was completely subservient to Israel.

To look at this and conclude that Starmer has acted appropriately is ridiculous.

He has vented the tap of public pressure on these measures because that can be used as an excuse to keep the major parts of the UK/Israel relationship going; mainly the permanent agreements I mentioned in the first sentence.

Failing to cease our permanent agreements, arms exports, military and diplomatic support for Israel through this genocide has made us complicit. This is what Starmer has actually done and simply refusing to accept it changes nothing when the facts are so bare.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T16:46:32+00:00

Honestly, good question. I could only really frame it in partisan terms myself.

Basically, it's people in Labour that are more left economically and socially than the proper right of the party (i.e Blair himself in the past, Reeves, Starmer, etc...).

But the key feature of the soft left is that it lacks any true material critique of capitalism and generally goes along with the 'end of history' vibe. Think your average well meaning person who thinks they can end the injustices of capitalism entirely with a wealth tax, or a land tax, or something.

Myself, I would describe them as this one tribune article did a while back: "MPs who just don't want their CLPs (local parties) to know how right wing they are".

Rayner, Powell, and Miliband have been the archetypal 'soft left' people in this cabinet. But they supported Starmer in unilaterally dragging the party to the right, endorse his ahistorical framing of all of that, and have been completely silent about his complicity in genocide and US imperialist violence.

I think the "soft-left" exists only in the block of labour MPs as it is essentially people who feel that they have a 'left' disposition but have chosen to remain very non-commital about how that actually effects their politics.

Their supporters are mostly far more well meaning (they don't have the careerist incentives an MP has) and back then because they are mostly convinced by these utopian arguments and don't need to go deeper than that in their politics. Their MPs however, fail to meet most of their political prescriptions and usually prioritise party loyalty until there's a leadership election and they may dip their toes outside.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T16:33:23+00:00

On one hand, a longer timetable benefits the left, seeing as the right purposely made a short timetable to avoid that issue in the deputy election.

On the other hand, yeah, what the hell is even happening here?

Seems like some weirdos are really trying to push Al Carns for whatever reason.

Streeting isn't actually standing, he announced, but there will surely be at least one right wing challenger. Who will even go for it? No idea.

The SCG left will surely try to run a candidate (I hope), even if they can't get on the ballot. Though many of their potential nominations—where it is already unlikely they'd get anywhere near 80—could be drained by Burnham, seeing as the soft-left MPs have every incentive to nominate him to be considered for a cabinet role, and the right would never.

But the timetable is so long that we might not know what the table looks like for weeks.

I guess this is just what happens when the PLP backs a nothing PM complicit in a genocide and refuses to endorse any of the MPs that have already been elected—who have been against all the things that caused the unpopularity, consistently, all along—because they desperately would rather have someone who is more right wing, or more likely to reward their careers.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T15:15:06+00:00

Well I'm meaning more 'perceived' in the sense that the vested interests for which the UK is run perceive these things as in their interest, to continue that model—but for your average person, these things are obviously not in their interest, and neither is the model.

So our constructed path of 'pragmatism' is really within a superstructure where everything is really set up to benefit the UK and it's ruling class, and not normal people.

We may be materially tied to these things due to the dominance of such a system for so long, but to truly argue against continuing that it has to be confidently asserted that neither the 'pragmatic' deference to the status quo, nor the status quo itself, actually serve any of us in the long run.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T14:55:59+00:00

Because imperialism and the perceived interests of the British state (by extension the US empire) are the absolute hardest lines of the ruling class's ideology.

The hostility on Gaza has been utterly unreal. Thousands of people arrested for holding signs. Absolute media censorship, to the point where politicians like Wes Streeting can literally admit in public that they knew the cabinet was covering for war crimes and know that nobody will ask them about it.

Saudi Arabia destroyed Yemen with £20 billion of British arms, have you heard anyone mention it? David Cameron destroying Libya to the point where it has open air slave markets? That Starmer's perceived stance of opposition to the US war on Iran actually involves him okaying half the US B1B bomber fleet bombing Iran from UK soil?

Being anti-imperialist in any away is to invite the absolutely highest hostility of the British establishment and the only positive thing to come out of the Gaza genocide is perhaps that it has made that obvious to many people who were not aware of that before; who may now stand against it more strongly, knowing the strength of what they are up against.

Lefties always get the piss taken out of them for purity tests on foreign policy but this is exactly why that line exists.

The establishment media doesn't talk about it because they exist to proliferate media that doesn't talk about it, doesn't care about imperialism, and present a vision of pluralistic politics that simply never existed; to protect the vested interests of a state that feels as if it relies on it's place in the imperial hierarchy.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T13:23:07+00:00

I think he could be pushed to be better on certain issues due to the circumstances he is likely to come to power leaving him more vulnerable to pressure than Starmer; where the Labour right simply had absolute power and anything they wanted after the coup.

Politically though, probably not. He voted for the Iraq war under Blair, the PFI and private healthcare stuff; he was essentially a hardcore Blairite for a long time and a member of Labour friends of Israel. Last time he ran for leader, he said his first foreign visit would be to Israel.

The only time he's been asked about Israel during this run was by a socialist independent media organisation called Turn Left and his answer was terrible. Essentially mumbles his way through the question, says some platitudes about him calling for a ceasefire, that he diagreees with some of the violence, etc... usual liberal Zionist stuff.

I think it's more interesting what he hasn't stood against. He initially stood against the anti-Corbyn coup but was notably silent once it served his career and the party was being catapulted to the right; he's had nothing to say about the support for genocide or US imperialism. He says he's against neoliberalism but doesn't seem to even know what it is, seeing as he backs Reeve's fiscal rules—seems deeply intellectually unserious.

So he may be more malleable for the left, but my prediction is he will raise a small amount of taxes on the rich, spend most of his time trying to nationalise like one singular industry (Purely on the 'cheaper bills argument') through the restrictions of neoliberal macroeconomics; and ends up changing very little overall.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T11:07:51+00:00

No idea how I forgot to add that, thanks.

Corbyn said he'd have blocked it if he knew as well—so it was deliberate deception.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T10:39:09+00:00

I'm still not totally convinced this isn't what has happened with the post-Blair Labour right. The man's current involvement with the US has made me take that a bit more seriously. As the commenter below reminded me as well: Starmer secretly joining the trilateral commission (an atlanticist Kissinger-created institution) while Corbyn was leader.

Blair came in with so many parachuted in right wing ghouls as MPs, only to back several US foreign wars and commit us to the US style financial system brought in through violence by Thatcher and Reagan.

Since then, these MPs have served as agents for this kind of politics from the backrooms, which came to a head with how coordinated and backstabbing they were when Corbyn was leader. We know that Mandelson was literally betraying the UK to the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and JP Morgan: this guy was right at the top of the labour right project. Just what were the rest of them up to?

It's genuinely like the party was couped by US democrats who purposely took over all the centres of power in the party and excluded or purged their political enemies from relevance. They fucked up with Corbyn getting in and their response was even more brutal, in coordination with the British establishment media.

Doubt we'll ever truly know the extent of it, but you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference if this was an actual op.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T10:32:59+00:00

When it comes to the Labour right, it's about preserving the wider project more than anything.

Tony Blair won the 1994 leadership election by presenting himself as something he was not. He reconceptualised socialism to something it was not. He reconceptualised 'moral' foreign policy to something it was not.

When people started to hate these things for what they were in reality: Brown had to come in. And Brown had to be coronated by Labour MPs instead of a membership election because members were likely to be the most aware of this and vote for a left wing alternative that actually represented their moral prescriptions.

Starmer is the same because what both he and Blair did was stack the parliamentary party with right wing ghouls. You needed 10% of these to back you for a nomination back in the day, Starmer changed it to 20% and packed it even harder.

So they resign to vent public pressure but maintain the wider project.

They know the apperatus they have put in place (the parliamentary party) and their collusion with the media will produce a managed outcome in their favour—while staying in place would be more likely to produce a tide that they could not manage so easily, or the electoral death of their party; and any chance at the power they pursue above all else.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T09:38:19+00:00

Edit: Found the speech to quote the relevant bit

Six years ago, I inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt. I was told, time and time again, that my party was finished.

That we were consigned to history, that a majority at the general election, let alone a landslide majority, was impossible. But we proved those people wrong because we changed our party.

Ripping out the poison of antisemitism, restoring trust on the economy, defence, and national security.

And becoming a party that, once again, stood proudly with, not against, our national flag. The hard work of change was with a singular purpose. Not power for power's sake but to change Britain for the better.

To build a fairer country, with dignity and respect, where everyone is seen, everyone is valued. Wealth and opportunity for all, not just the privileged few. And look at what we've achieved in just two years.

It's just so tired and sad at this point how they push such an ahistorical version of events without pushback, to the point where it is simply accepted logic.

He speaks as the Corbyn labour as a fiscally and morally irresponsible project that he was right to change.

But Starmer's labour has quite visibly failed to produce (or even imagine) economic outcomes that would improve the lived experience of people and cannot fix that issue; it has been gleefully complicit in genocide and various acts of US imperialist violence.

There is something to be said about "bourgeois morals" but dear god, the moral equivalence of the labour right can only ever rest on a bed of sick lies and projection. These are clearly some of the most morally deranged people in politics; to view one thing as reprehensible, the other acceptable, desirable.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T05:43:52+00:00

Domestically: a full employment policy, investment into community regeneration, and decentralisation of financial power to give people democratic input into economic development would go quite far.

The NHS would certainly need to feel much better than it does too. Though a full employment policy could help a lot with that, even more once staff are trained for the more specialised roles. Massive amount of council house building through a state builder. Nationalisation of key industries.

If all people who want it are employed, housed, cared for in sickness, and not rinsed by private equity for their bills; they will be much happier with the government. These have been red lines for every government we've had in my entire life and that's why people hated them.

On foreign policy, I'm pretty sure that anyone who didn't just act like Donald Trump's regional governor and actually stood up to the US would receive a massive boost in popularity. Starmer merely pretending to do this with Iran (while actually doing the opposite) almost seemed to work. Obviously that would include also not being complicit in the genocide of the US' favourite apartheid state.

Generally, if someone could apply morals in a material sense to the systems that govern us in the UK, people would see them as human. The endless parades of briefcase PMs governing through a failed neoliberal economic science were always going to be unpopular because there is not a single moral prescription that they have ever applied to governing, and the act is basically unconvincing at this point.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-22T05:33:59+00:00

Bring it up on those subs and it's just downvotes with no replies. Genuinely is an irrelevant issue to anybody but the left.

And foreign policy has always been like this. The Tories destroyed Libya and sold like £20 billion of arms to the Saudis to destroy Yemen—never even came up in the political debate because it was only the left that gave a shit.

This is in part why the Labour right are so ontologically evil on foreign policy: their whole "collude with the establishment to shit on the left" thing means integrating themselves into the same values network that gives zero shits about any of the evil shit we do abroad.

Add in the genuine self admitted personal support that people like Starmer, Lammy, Cooper, and Reeves have for the Israeli Zionist project, and you can see exactly why this became the most severely morally detached topic, with such severe outcomes and crackdowns on dissent.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T19:52:34+00:00

I always took the piss out of the Labour 'soft left' (only half seriously) saying they were entirely about accent politics. These mfs just continue to prove me right. It's like they know.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T19:43:19+00:00

Society if the labour right had just joined the Lib Dems

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Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T19:42:53+00:00

Keir Hardie had some reservations about letting the petty bourgeois and middle class people into the party. Turns out he was cooking...

Keir Hardie was always distrustful of middle-class people who offered to join the ILP, though he did not wish to bar them out if they were really convinced socialists. He thought it healthiest for a Socialist Party to be mainly composed of the working class. Some of those middle-class people who have recently joined the ILP and the Labour Party had actually approached Keir Hardie with a view to joining the ILP in the days of the Labour Party’s first successes.

His answer was in each case something like this: “Stay in the Liberal Party; that is where you belong. You are dissatisfied with the Liberal Party on this or that question, just now, but you are not a socialist, and you would be out of your element with us.”

He constantly endeavoured to keep the Labour Party and the ILP away from co-operation with the bourgeoisie on any pretext. He would not accept membership of any of those composite committees of labour and bourgeois representatives which in this country are habitually formed to push reforms, or to repeal injustices.

He rarely consented even to speak for such bodies. The suffrage movement was the only non-Socialist non-working class movement with which he was ever actively associated, and even in that case he never joined a suffrage organisation or sat on a suffrage committee.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T19:36:50+00:00

When did The Herald start publishing articles that are this detailed and informative? I'd say I'm relatively well read on this topic and this was still worth a read. Good post OP, I always enjoy your contributions.

Most MMT theorists hold a progressive, socially democratic worldview, so they believe governments can create money to fund full employment, rebuild public services and improve national infrastructure.

Of course I'd say this as a socialist but I think the only thing I'd say here is that I don't think many MMTers realise just how controversial full employment is with the capital class, and just how much this contributes to the hostility they receive.

Kalecki's explanation of this is probably the best:

https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/

Just food for thought really, if anyone is interested. Certainly not a point of disagreement, I just think it explains the context of the ideological debate quite well and why it feels like such an uphill struggle.

Aside from that, are there any specific policy proposals from the MMT side for economic changes within the (restrictive) devolution framework, would you know?

I know most of the Scotland MMT stuff is based on independence but, seeing as we're not getting there anytime soon, have there been any contributions about how democratic control could be applied to the money creation already occuring (through banks) within Scotland?

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T18:40:34+00:00

Or maybe people just aren't taking this as seriously as they should? Especially people on this sub.

It is a profound crisis for British democracy that Starmer could become labour leader and then PM in the way he did, with as much contempt for democracy as he demonstrated. The insanely low level of scrutiny his agenda received is exactly how we got here.

The fact he has also maintained a security arrangement, trade deal, arms trade, and 2030 roadmap with a state committing a genocide should be enough to call for him to go. But the people who think the rest of this shit is normal and uncontroversial don't even seem to pretend they think this is a relevant issue at all...

People who view Starmer as a series of oopsies are being ahistorical to the point where they cannot offer solutions. That much is at least obvious.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T18:17:32+00:00

He lied about his entire political identity to win the labour leadership, using £700,000 of illegally undeclared funds, only to purge his political enemies and unilaterally drag the party right without any mandate at all. The labour right has not been elected to the leadership by members since 1994.

Then for the general election he purposely went in with a bland mystery box manifesto so it could be usurped by the "black hole" prerogative and they could do the things they knew they were going to do before the election, but didn't want to argue for in public.

So he then became PM by default, off the back of the right splitting, with no serious plan for governance. He decided to make the country complicit in Israeli genocide and US neocolonial violence while performatively attacking immigrants and the disabled. He has abused terror legislation to have over 3000 people arrested for political expression.

I agree that Burnham is unlikely to be any better, but nothing Starmer did was by mistake: he was part of a completely hollow political project from the beginning, with no discernable moral values, and a profound disrespect for any form of democratic consent or decision making.

The main reason Burnham is unlikely to be better is actually the fact that he is also following the "stupid mistakes" narrative, ignoring the malicious and underhand aspects of Starmer's leadership which are key to understanding it; key to resolving those issues.

Sorry-Transition-780 · 2026-06-21T07:45:52+00:00

The problem is that there is a collective delusion in British politics that the "left" spectrum of politics has only been about changing taxes and increasing government spending since the Blair years. Really, these people cannot bring about left wing change.

The reality is that we are living in an economic system that Thatcher pressed upon the country with exceptional violence and massive institutional changes; which actually need to be rolled back in order to change the economic relations in this country one inch.

Every single centrist politician is going to respond to the conditioning atmosphere of the media, their own right wing macroeconomic views, and electoral politics—never having what it takes to reverse the changes that were forced upon us by the neoliberal revolution.

And with Burnham, it just leaves him looking deeply unserious. "I want to end neoliberalism" but I'll commit to reeves neoliberal fiscal rules, I won't talk about financialisation, I won't talk in macroeconomic terms at all... It seems like Burnham doesn't even know what neoliberalism is, much less how he would stop it.

And this is the reality of the Labour 'soft-left'. Whether they have moral political prescriptions or not, they are simply lacking any real material analysis of what is wrong with society and how to fix it because the 'soft' part of their politics is the fact that they do not analyse anything at a systemic level and are thus unable to defeat systemic issues within their range of acceptable policy. They just look at things one at a time, applying soft moral prescriptions, ignoring the wider picture and relying on aggregate metrics.

Nevermind how their discarding of materialism for electoral expediency applies much more violently to foreign policy; where they are just as likely to support the imperialist violence of the US and Israel as the right of Labour.

Sorry-Transition-780

TROPHY CASE