The Labour machine always wins

Keir Starmer learned this lesson the hard way. Now, it's Andy Burnham's turn.

If my non-UK readers - now the majority - will indulge me, I want to take a bit of time to talk about Andy Burnham’s bid for leadership of the Labour Party. Burnham’s trajectory reveals something important about how democracy works in capitalist societies. And to understand what’s going to happen to Andy Burnham, we need to take a look at the rise and fall of his soon-to-be predecessor, Keir Starmer.

The obedient candidate

For those of you who haven’t been following the saga, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing pressure to resign after a disastrous performance in May’s local elections. Starmer’s extraordinary unpopularity has come as a shock to those who took the 2024 election results at face value. He won a huge majority, securing over 400 seats in Parliament out of 650. The UK’s liberal (i.e. centrist) commentariat were elated.

But, within a few months, it became abundantly clear that Starmer was personally unpopular, and utterly incapable of running the country. These insights would have been obvious to anyone paying attention to Starmer’s rise to power. Because Starmer didn’t win as a result of his competence – he won as a result of his obedience.

Starmer had been backed by key figures from within the Labour machine – men like Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell. These apparatchiks had one goal: purge the Labour Party of the left and rebuild the Party’s internal machinery to ensure someone like Corbyn could never be elected again. To achieve this goal, they needed a candidate who would be easy to manipulate, and who could credibly claim to be left-wing. Starmer – the arch-triangulator – ticked both boxes.

The Labour machine

One thing US readers should understand is that the Labour Party is unlike the Democratic Party in one important way: it is a centralised, bureaucratic organisation that plays a key role in UK democracy whether or not the Labour Party is in government. The right never truly ceded control over the Labour Party machine, even when Corbyn was in power. As observers from across the political spectrum have documented, key players on the Labour right worked behind the scenes to undermine him throughout his tenure.

The Labour machine plucked Starmer from relative political obscurity and seamlessly managed his rise to power. His allegiance to the machine’s functionaries is what explains one of the incidents that led to his fall from grace – his appointment of Peter Mandelson, known friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as US ambassador. Mandelson – a powerful figure on the Labour right and staunch enemy of the left – had been one of the architects of Starmer’s rise. Naturally, he expected to be repaid for his support, regardless of the cost.

In a more roundabout way, his allegiance to the Labour machine also explains Starmer’s other major failure: his total lack of policy ambition. The UK has endured multiple crises over the course of Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and, latterly, the country. At no point has Starmer articulated a coherent agenda to tackle these problems. His version of a vision was repeating the term ‘growth’ ad nauseam while failing to outline anything resembling a strategy as to how this growth might be delivered.

This lack of vision was the result of the trait that explained Starmer’s rise to power – his opportunism. In his bid first for the Labour leadership, then for Number 10, Starmer managed to be all things to all people – and he did so by never really saying anything of significance. This history of triangulation made him the perfect pick for the Labour right. They could craft an image of him to sell to whoever they needed to convince, without having to worry about his political baggage.

Blair’s cartel party

Starmer never articulated a coherent policy agenda because he was a puppet of the Labour right – and the Labour right has no answers to the problems the country faces. They’re stuck in the 1990s, at the ‘end of history’ moment when the economy was booming thanks to financial speculation and apparently endlessly increasing consumer debt – the only moment when their ideas actually made sense.

The Labour right’s lack of vision isn’t just down to the fact that it is populated by unimaginative bureaucrats. It’s down to the fact that, ever since Blair, the party has operated more like a cartel than a representative political organisation. In the 1990s, political scientists Richard Katz and Peter Mair described the idea of the ‘cartel party’ – the social democratic party that sheds its mass base in favour of cooperation with its opponents and the machinery of state.

Cartel parties do not focus on attempting to win victories for the interests that formed them – as social democratic parties once did for organised labour. Instead, they focus on triangulating to win votes without ever challenging the vested interests that favour the status quo. Without organised social movements to hold them to account, these parties are hostage to the balance of power within society as a whole – which, of course, is weighted heavily in favour of capital.

The cartel party becomes a playground for business groups, financial lobbyists, comms agencies, and think tanks. These groups jostle for position within the party machinery, each attempting to cast their particular interests as aligned with the ‘general interest’ of society. The leader’s role is to mediate between these competing interests, find a position that placates the most important groups, and pass it off as his own.

The machine versus the country

Even if Starmer did have his own solutions to the current crisis, the bureaucrats running the Labour machine would have tied his hands. If he had succeeded in articulating a progressive agenda even without their support, they would have taken him down. He did not have his own base, so he was powerless without them – which is, of course, precisely why he was chosen to begin with.

Starmer knew his power rested on his allegiance to the Labour bureaucracy, which is why he proved such an obedient leader. But his loyalty to his backers meant betraying the country. Under Starmer’s leadership, wage growth in the UK has slowed to its lowest pace in 5 years - a continuation of a trend that has endured since the financial crisis of 2008, and which no Prime Minister has been brave enough to tackle. The far right has surged as voters have given up hope in mainstream parties.

Andy Burnham is about to learn this same lesson, to his detriment. Burnham has managed to ingratiate himself with what remains of the Labour left over the last few years, thanks in part to some genuinely impressive achievements as Mayor of Greater Manchester. But a cursory look at Burnham’s public statements during his recent campaign reveals a politician just as slippery and opportunistic as Starmer.

As Harriet Williamson shows in this excellent video for Novara media, Burnham has made multiple, contradictory promises to different factions within the Labour Party. He says he’s going to invest in public services, while also sticking to Rachel Reeves’ nonsensical fiscal rules. He has previously articulated liberal attitudes towards migration, but recently supported Shabana Mahmood’s draconian immigration reforms. He’s criticised the Israeli government, but refused to call out Israel’s genocide.

This opportunism is, of course, what makes Burnham palatable to the Labour machine. To be sure, he is not their preferred candidate. They would prefer someone like Wes Streeting, who has clearly demonstrated his obedience by taking vast donations from private healthcare lobbyists only to advocate ceaselessly for greater private involvement in the NHS. Burnham hasn’t been quite so grasping. But he has flip-flopped enough times for the Labour machine’s apparatchiks to accept he is no threat to their project.

Perhaps more importantly, Burnham lacks a coherent base that might hold him to account were he to tack to the right once in office. He doesn’t have strong links with the unions or any social movements. He is relatively popular among the Labour membership, but the Party has been so centralised under Starmer that members now play a much-diminished role – and Burnham is unlikely to change this.

In short, as with Starmer, there will be no one to challenge him if he reneges on commitments. Equally, there will be no one to defend him if the Labour machine turns on him.

Breaking with Blair

The challenge Burnham faces is unresolvable within the current political settlement. For as long as Labour exists as a cartel, divorced from a mass base, it will remain a playground for lobbyists and consultants. These interests will fight tirelessly for their preferred policies – policies that directly contradict the interests of the majority of people in the UK. And any leader who attempts to democratise the Labour Party and take on these vested interests will be eliminated by the Labour machine.

The only way to square this circle is to build power outside the Labour Party – in communities, workplaces, and on the streets. A mass base is the only thing that could protect a genuinely progressive leader from their own party.

If Burnham truly wants to deliver a break with the last 40 years of neoliberalism, he should start by taking on Blair’s cartelized Labour Party – and the only way to do that is to build power outside it. After all, when Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement as Prime Minister, she didn’t say privatization or tax cuts. She said “Tony Blair and New Labour”.