Labour Leadership Jostling Reveals Unexpected Sides of Burnham and Streeting
The Labour Party appears to have been inhabiting three parallel worlds over the past fortnight. In one world, Prime Minister Keir Starmer celebrates positive economic news and lower migration figures, insisting he will fight the next election, even as his party seems intent on deposing him. In another, there is a byelection where Andy Burnham, the party's leftwing hope for prime minister, must demonstrate he can win over Reform UK voters on migration and convince bond markets on fiscal rules. And in the third, Wes Streeting, the golden boy of the party's right, unable to secure enough support to mount a challenge, continues a campaign to win members' hearts with ideas that include a decidedly leftwing plan for higher wealth taxes.
All of them are potential contenders in a leadership contest that does not yet exist. It may never come to pass, depending on the whims of voters in Makerfield, Starmer's ability to confront reality, and Labour MPs' appetite for risk. But the fantasy contest has already revealed surprising sides of its rivals. Burnham, who criticized the government for being too 'in hock' to bond markets, now knows he must demonstrate economic credibility, especially if he wants a stable basis for his big plans on devolution and stronger public controls on utilities.
Burnham also understands he cannot fight the Makerfield byelection as 'open-borders Burnham', as his Reform UK opponents have labelled him. This is why questions on the EU and on easing Shabana Mahmood's changes to the immigration system must be quickly shut down. However, this stance will undoubtedly sting for progressive Labour voters who had hoped for a bigger change of direction.
The stakes are unquestionably higher for Burnham than for Streeting, and their audiences are completely different. For Streeting, there remains a chance of a leadership contest, but without a change of course, he might end up with a vote share similar to Liz Kendall's 4.5% in the 2015 race. Consequently, over the past six months, he has made his views far more explicit on key issues on the party's left. He called for the recognition of a Palestinian state far sooner than his cabinet colleagues and made a vigorous push in condemning Farage and far-right racism when the prime minister seemed criminally slow in doing so.
Now freed from the shackles of cabinet collective responsibility, Streeting has condemned the scapegoating of migrants and issued the first detailed policy of his leadership campaign: a wealth tax centred on capital gains. It would be unfair to say that either Burnham or Streeting is being inauthentic. Both are human beings and members of the same party, and neither fits their public caricature. Burnham has been a business-friendly mayor of Manchester who oversaw the fastest economic growth in the country. He is not a bloodthirsty communist out to destroy the City of London, nor has he ever been a vocal supporter of more open borders. Streeting has been a longtime campaigner against racism and the far-right, including on Gaza, and was one of the most vociferous anti-Brexit voices. These are not convenient Damascene conversions.
However, Streeting's left turn and Burnham's right turn are symptoms of the electoral bind the Labour Party finds itself in. Labour lost almost four times as many voters to the Greens as to Reform UK in the local elections, according to YouGov. Those votes are piling up in cities with big Labour majorities that might go Green for the first time. Across the country, hundreds of seats with the tightest margins could fall to Reform with just a small number of switchers. No ambitious Labour leader or prime minister can afford to look in only one direction.
