Starmer has just held a call with Labour staff in a panicked attempt to head off talk of Burnham’s inevitable leadership challenge. He has also been ringing Cabinet ministers to urge them against jumping ship. Desperate…
He added that the party should now “take Reform on” after Burnham’s comfortable Makerfield win:
“The tide is turning on Reform. If you look at the national polling, Reform are now only six or seven points ahead of Labour in the national polls, which two years into a five year parliament is a place that we can make huge advances from
“The next opportunity is the Greater Manchester Mayoralty, which now will follow as a result of the Makerfield by-election. It’s a chance to go and take the fight to Reform
“It’s really important, it’s a huge by-election, one of the biggest by-elections we’ll ever run. It is really important that we maintain that Labour mayoralty, and that we take Reform on
“This is the fight in politics at the moment. We should relish the opportunity to take the fight to Reform and give them a hiding in Manchester, and frankly, expose them for who they are: divisive, inward, wanting to divide our country, the complete opposite values to us.
“When they see problems, they don’t ask how do we fix this problem, they ask how do we exploit this problem. When they see communities, they don’t look at the great strength of our communities, they think, how can we pull this community apart, how can we set people and individuals and groups against each other?
“That is the complete opposite of us in the Labour Party, who believe in our communities, who believe that by coming together we get the best out of everyone. We are the true patriots, they are plastic patriots.
“Let’s pull together as a party and a movement. The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement. That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”
Burnham allies are now briefing that they hope to be in Number 10 by September, with Starmer waving the white flag early to avoid bloodshed. Starmer will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the bunker…
Hat-tip: Steven Swinford
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”