Burnham bounce is real

Only 25% bothered to vote, no doubt assuming a Labour victory or thinking that these elections do not change very much for them. The cost of living is still making it very difficult for most people and the country is burning up as a result of climate change. 

Outside the centre of Manchester the much heralded ‘Burnham led growth has not really arrived, apart from better transport, and you have to be close to the network to really benefit.  A 75% abstention rate is not exactly a wave of enthusiasm for the new regime.  However a win is a win and half a million people voting is a much bigger number that participate in opinion polls, so it has political significance

A few months ago the Starmer leadership was arguing that the threat from Reform meant it was too risky for Burnham to resign his post. In the May local elections, Reform was the largest party for vote share in many councils in this area and won 100 seats.. Yesterday Labour was only a short distance away from getting over 50% on the first ballot. On the second round, taking second preferences, into account Craig picked around ten percent more, surely from Green and Lib Dem voters, finishing with 66% to Reform’s 34%. The final result was pretty close to the scale of Burnham’s previous victories.

Bev Craig was a good candidate compared to the one Labour chose in Gorton. She has a record of defending LGTBQ rights and has stood up for trans rights at a time when Burnham has retreated:

“Throughout the course of my life, I’ve fought for LGBT rights,” said Ms Craig, who is also leader of Manchester City Council. “And I believe in a world where the two can go hand in hand. I’ve shown that you can stand up for single sex spaces, like women’s refuges that are important, but also not throw our trans communities under the bus.”

She said she was a “proud and committed feminist”, before adding: “I will not pit minority against minority for political point scoring.”

Manchester Evening News  (14 July)

The Daily Telegraph today has defined her as ‘well to the left of Burnham’.

In her victory speech she also said that she would implement her campaign pledge of free public transport for everyone up to the age of 16.  This is a policy that all socialists support and is a stepping stone for us to campaign for free and accessible public transport for all. The Burnham bounce is happening not just through smart communication but as a result of small but significant progressive reforms like this measure.

Yesterday the I Paper announced their commissioned poll shows Labour five points ahead of Reform.  In a general election, it would be biggest party without an overall majority. In the past year or so Reform has been ahead of Labour by up to ten points.  The new prime minister is not going to implement the radical Corbyn 2017 manifesto but he may do enough through less radical changes to defeat Reform.  Certainly it is difficult to see this sort of shift in polling if Starmer were still the leader.

Forward march of Reform halted?

If you add the votes of Reform and the even further hard right Restore together, you get 30% , which is still a historically high vote for parties to the right of the Conservative Party. So for socialists there is no room for complacency. Given the particular Burnham impact in Manchester this defeat might not be so easily repeated elsewhere in Reform ‘strongholds’.

Reform was unable to build on its surge in the local elections when they were fighting a very unpopular Starmer.  It shows too that winning seats from nowhere means that electoral success does not translate into an embedded party able to compete in this, the biggest ever by election.

Their candidate, Sian Astley, was particularly obnoxious. She made a ridiculous attack on the Green’s principled support for migrants and asylum seekers, proposing that Green voters should house ‘criminal asylum seekers’.  Reform is further hardening its line on migrants as a result of pressure from Restore on its right.

Farage’s troubles with the £5 million bung from Cottrell and other possible breaches of election law have certainly damaged Reform. His current ratings are the lowest since he became leader of Reform and he has lost 10 percentage points in the last month.  The bizarre decision to resign and contest Clacton again was a relatively rare tactical error from Farage. It has backfired with mainstream parties boycotting it and the satirical Count Binface candidate probably getting his best ever vote. 

Since Reform has always been a one man show with little internal democracy, a fall in Farage’s popularity immediately wounds the party.  Its failure to have a credible response on the big policy changes Burnham is launching like on social care is also affecting it. It does not even have a spokesperson on health and social care!

Further analysis is necessary to see whether Labour won back Reform voters or that they stayed at home much more than Labour voters.

Restore marching forward

After its eight percent in Makerfield, Restore got nine percent here. This is for a party only a few months old and with its base in Great Yarmouth. With huge resources from the US hard right, it has an enormous social media operation and it is now growing nationally. I watched the video of their candidate being interviewed by Rupert Lowe, Restore leader, and it was all about violent asyslum seekers and ‘asian grooming gangs’.  It was filmed against the backdrop of a street in a multi-ethic area and the fascist ‘replacement’ ideology was openly expressed.

Reform and some Tory voters are clearly moving to Restore. If the Reform were to go into crisis there is a  harder right, proto-fascist party ready and willing to clean up. We are seeing a re-composition on the hard right of politics similar to what is happening in Italy, Spain and France. The hard right racist party wins considerable support electorally and participates institutionally and then parties to their right accuse them of getting soft and put forward even harder policies. This in turn pushes the bigger party to adopt a tougher line. Vannaci in Italy is doing what Zemour in France and Abascal in Spain did. Rupert Lowe is playing the same game here.

Conservatives still struggling

Despite the press bigging up a Kemi Badenoch recovery, her party was beaten by Restore in the greater Manchester area. This is not a small constituency but covers 2 million voters and the Tories have to win some seats in this type of area if they ever want to get back into government. Already pressure from Reform and Restore has meant the Tories are moving further to the right. The leader is insisting that all candidates commit to opposing the European Commission on Human Rights and the policy of net zero. Her problem is that Reform and Restore are both competing on this ground. The risk for her is that softer, one nation, Tories will depart to the Liberal Democrats.

Of course it suits Labour if the Tories fail to recover, since the right wing vote will be very divided. It also opens up the possibility of a hung parliament with a 5 party split.

Greens find it harder against Burnham

After the election Geraldine Coggins, the Green candidate, was quite chipper with her 12% of first preferences. It was around five percentage points better than in 2024 and eight better than in 2021.  Nationally the latest poll puts the Greens on 10% so the Manchester result is not so bad in that context.

 She acknowledged that the Burnham ‘honeymoon’ made the campaign more difficult. They still came third, better than the Tories or the Liberal Demcrats, but at the start of the campaign they were trying to convince people that it was a straight fight between themselves and Reform.

This showed a weakness in their political analysis. They thought it was a re-run of Gorton but ‘forgot’ that Starmer had gone and the Burnham project was underway. For example, despite its limits in not calling out genocide, the fact that Burnham went on record disowning a lot of the previous Labour line on Gaza means some Labour voters who had moved to the Greens might move back.

Polanski will have to develop a different response to the Burnham leadership than how he attacked Starmer.  There are plenty of openings – notably the likely re-opening of the drilling in the North Sea when our countryside is burning up.  The demise of Your Party will also provide some scope for the Greens to link up with socialist activists no longer in Labour.

Burnham’s ‘new’ government – will it really change things?

The Manchester result shows that something has changed.  Labour can go on the front foot against Reform and the Greens. It is difficult to see today how far Burnham will go with any changes.

Today he put out a joint letter with his Chancellor, Healey, warning ministerial departments to stick with Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules. Really radical change which challenges the rule of capital is not likely. However by ‘interpreting’ these rules and other ‘work arounds’ Burnham may do enough on issues like the cost of living, social care, water and energy to win back the voters Labour has lost and stop Reform getting into government.

This is not Corbynism, certainly not a revolution but a different political context which the left needs to engage with. Independent organisation outsde Labour is still vital, we have to built a class struggle movement that can force Burnham to go further and which can at the same time devise and implement the real change we need.

An example of what we can do is the campaign to get Palantir out of the NHS. Sadiq Khan has already taken it out of the Met. It was kept out of Manchester under Burnham. There is growing opposition from inside the NHS not just because of the US company’s links with ICE and the IDF but because it does not work better that what already exists.  Locally and nationally activists from inside and outside Labour are working on this, they can put Burnham under pressure to ditch the contracts. We need to choose battles where we can have an impact and win victories for the working class.