As the FT notes this morning:
Ed Miliband played a key role in advising Andy Burnham to commit to strict fiscal discipline if he becomes the UK's next prime minister, news that will fuel Labour Party speculation that the energy secretary is positioning himself as a future chancellor.
Miliband has been offering economic advice to Burnham for some time and in recent days urged him to calm fears in the bond markets by backing the government's fiscal rules, according to people briefed on the discussions.
I have three obvious reactions.
First, this is deeply depressing. I know that the FT might be choosing its own framing, but I also suspect that there is deliberate positioning by those who provided the information to the FT to enable this story. The message they wanted to impart is that the so-called left of Labour now thinks it exists solely to keep the City of London happy, and will do all it can to do so.
Second, so much for Andy Burnham as a supposed alternative leader of Labour in that case. As I have already been saying, he is nothing more than the chosen continuity candidate for Starmer who will maintain the neoliberal/Zionist line that Mendelson and McSweeney, as the power brokers of the party, desire.
Third, Ed Miliband's father would be ashamed of him. Ralph Miliband was a radical. Ed Miliband is anything but that.
There is, however, some certainty that this story delivers. It confirms that there is no hope in Labour and no hope for it. There is no point in thinking otherwise. This is a party that has failed its ideals, its membership, the people of the UK, and which will, if they elect Andy Burnham, fail the people of Makerley just as badly as Reform will do.
Let me, then, make the obvious point. We need a new political narrative, as much as we need a new economic narrative and without either, we have no hope.
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This morning’s Guardian headline:
“Burnham to back Shabana Mahmood’s immigration changes, allies say”
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss…
Agreed
But will he be a new boss? I was following closely the 2015 Labour leader election as I was eligible to vote. I had no idea who I was going to vote for, so I was following all of them and also attended a few hustings.
Burnham was the one who came by far the worst out of it (followed by Cooper). Even if you put at the side that at that point he was definitely not soft loft, but blue Labour, he was a very, very poor speaker with practically no attention to detail and most importantly – he was telling completely different things to different audiences in the same day. It’s like he wasn’t aware that he’d been filmed earlier and we knew what he had said about the same topic and that it had contradicted completely what he told us later on.
People are saying that he’d changed, but to be honest, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit.
He being now to the right seems to be connected with his possible new constituency (but it’s also questionable how clever this is as Greens will have to run a proper campaign with him being now to the right) . I’m sure that he will be saying the opposite things when he’ll run for leadership, if he won’t be just crowned. And I think people are a bit tired of this attitude. They’ve already gone through the same thing with Starmer.
The Headline says it all really
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/20/burnham-to-back-shabana-mahmoods-immigration-changes-allies-say
Given that he wasnt allowed to stand in Gorton and Denton its starting to look more like a coronation than a leadership contest
We do indeed need a new story, and we have one, a politics of care, an economy of hope, fuelled by telling the truth about money.
Depressing to see Burnham tacking right already, on immigration https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/20/burnham-to-back-shabana-mahmoods-immigration-changes-allies-say while Mulliband tacks right on fiscal rules.
LINO panders to right wing racism, (to get the votes), panders to the wealthy City neoliberal bond vigilantes (to get the donations and future sinecures), and panders to Gentile Zionists like Akehurst, Mann, Austin and Warley (because they owe Josh Simons for the Makerfield seat vacancy and don’t want to be smeared into oblivion as “antisemites”).
If Burnham loses to Reform in Makerfield, will they reflect on the folly of this triple appeasement strategy?
One final reminder – in Dec 2019, the 80 seat Tory majority owed a lot (in addition to the smears against Corbyn) to Fa***e’s last minute decision to pull Reform out of over 300 seats where the Tories could win. Electoral politics is a nasty and dirty business.
The question of how to make the world a better place isn’t even on their agenda.
And I think the Farage / Johnson stitch up was funded by the notorious Christopher Harborne, who has give around £22m to Farage/reform over recent years.<p>
Another example of how open to corruption our political system is<p>
Yet almost no one is calling for an end to donations, 2nd ‘jobs’, insider contracts, bribery for honours, revolving doors etc etc
According to alternative media, £1m each after the act.
Britain is not governed for the benefit of its people. It is governed out of fear – fear of the bond markets and fear of the sewer rags. As a result, the political class is thoroughly detached from the public good and its citizens’ needs. Most of them will not notice the coming polycrisis until it affects the cost of their subsidised food and booze.
Labour has been assimilated to be precise, by the pleonexic capital order, just as the Tory party was, all in pursuit of appropriating for certain individuals the common wheal – from land, assets, to the wealth that flows through our economy.
Some want it all and they want it now and forever, I’m afraid.
Burnham isn’t the saviour, he’s just a naughty boy. Where have I heard that before?
But of the potential Labour leaders, he is the only one to have given an indication of support for PR. Now, whether he would do it as leader is another matter, but PR is an essential step in moving away from the sh-t show of a system that leads to everything else.
“The potential Starmer successor said as recently as January that PR could “deliver a more functional Britain”.
I agree with what the Greens intend to do.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/key-issue-greens-plan-to-seize-on-as-they-warn-andy-burnham-wont-walk-by-election/ar-AA23c3Zu
That’s better than nothing, and whether we like it or not, PR can only be introduced in Parliament by a majority, and right now, no one else in Labour who might be leader is in favour it would seem.
What I want to know is whether Burnham in power, if he ever got there, would be just like Farage — a supporter of PR until FPTP worked in his favour. Just another lying neoliberal apologist.
But this is where we are. If we want PR, it is now about whatever it takes to get there. Burnham may well be just like the rest on policy, but if he brought in PR, I’d take it. In one sense, I’m a revolutionary on that — I will take what the system gives to destroy it.
And anyway, The Daily Mail are complaining today about how he might be introducing PR, so that’s good if you ask me.
And with our fractured political system right now, I doubt we get the new political and economic narrative without PR.
Depressing news! I don’t trust Burnham to keep any promises, given how ‘flexible’ he is already proving to be. He’s giving the Greens less and less reason to stand down. In the circumstances, I think they should give it their best shot.
Personally I think the more Andy Burnham talks about things like supporting Mahmood and sticking to fiscal rules, the higher the likelihood he will lose the by-election. I ask myself, why would voters vote for more of the same thing under new management when what they want is hope and radical action that will improve their lives. I’ve just got a gut feeling that the so called King of the North might not get anointed
I tend to agree