Starmer's cabal would rather rule the ashes than try to win under Burnham

Keir Starmer's right-wing cabal would rather hand a Labour safe seat to the Faragists than allow the party a chance at survival under Andy Burnham

Keir Starmer’s goons at Labour’s ruling NEC have decided to block Andy Burnham from standing in the Manchester Gorton and Denton by-election.

The decision to exclude Burnham from the process would be somewhat surprising if considered from the perspective of what’s best for the Labour Party, given that he is one of Labour’s most popular politicians, in Manchester, and across the country.

It’s utterly unsurprising when viewed through the lens of internal Labour Party factionalism though, because Burnham is not part of Starmer’s grotesque right-wing faction.

They’re still bitterly angry with him for refusing to join in their mass resignation antics during their spectacularly failed Anyone But Corbyn coup in the wake of the 2016 EU referendum result.

Burnham’s decision to stay in post and put his loyalty to the Labour Party above internal factionalism was a key moment in Burnham’s political rehabilitation. He’s still not perfect by any stretch, but he showed a great deal of principle and backbone while 172 of his Labour colleagues participated in wilful factional sabotage, at a moment when it was absolutely crucial to pin the Brexit chaos on the Tories who caused it.

Burnham has gone on to do a good job as Mayor of Manchester, and looks a lot like the only high-profile Labour politician capable of reversing Labour’s rapidly sinking fortunes.

Keir Starmer is already the most unpopular Prime Minister since polling began, and one recent poll predicted Labour would collapse to just 45 seats at the next election, in 6th place (behind Reform, Greens, Tories, Lib-Dems, and the SNP), but the Labour right simply don’t care.

Their overriding priority has always been factional control of the Labour Party leadership, no matter the damage that their factional fixation causes to the Labour Party, the country, or the British people.

They deliberately sabotaged Labour’s election campaigns in 2017 and 2019, the latter giving Boris Johnson free rein to impose his economically ruinous shambles of a Brexit bodge, and ever since Starmer became leader, it’s all been about factionalism too. Rigging the Labour leadership nominations process to exclude women, people of colour and the left; vicious witch hunts against left-wing Jews; mass expulsions; factional purges; and overt bullying of MPs who refused to go along with deeply unpopular policies like pensioner mugging, keeping the two-child cap, and economic sanctions on disabled people.

In the aftermath of Burnham’s exclusion from the by-election, Starmer’s insiders have made it clear that they now expect to lose the Labour safe seat of Gorton and Denton.

One Starmer adviser even said that "a Reform win would be terrible, but a Green win would be existential".

If anyone was unaware of what a grotesque bunch Starmer’s cabal were before, surely it’s beyond doubt, now that they’re deliberately letting the Labour Party die, and admitting that they’d prefer to see the extreme-right Faragists win the Labour safe seat they’re intent on abandoning, rather than the left-liberal Greens.

Starmer’s horrible factional cabal would rather burn the Labour Party to the ground so as to rule over the ashes, than allow a popular and successful centre-left figure like Andy Burnham a shot at a chance to save it.