The next stage of the ongoing political realignment of the United Kingdom out of the century-old status quo may be on the verge of emerging, with reports indicating further Labour Party fracturing if insiders fail to install their preferred prime Minister, Andy Burnham.
A significant number of Labour Members of Parliament could defect leftwards to the considerably more radical Green Party if the present slow-motion coup against party leader and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer fails, it is claimed. While the party’s astonishing defeat in the nationwide local elections earlier this month had been taken by many as the signal that it was time for Starmer to go quietly and shoulder the blame for Labour’s failures, he seems determined to remain in post, and it isn’t even certain a leadership challenge would be able to replace him.
The clear favourite of the party mainstream is Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, a two-time failed leadership candidate who evidently hopes for better luck on the third spin. Confirming speculation that Burnham would likely try to drag the government to the left, The Daily Telegraph reports several Labour MPs are already in talks with the Green Party about jumping ship if they don’t see things going their own way by getting their man in.
The paper states that these alleged defection talks are on ice until the outcome of the leadership race — which hasn’t even officially begun yet, waiting as it is on discovering whether Burnham is even eligible to stand for leader, per party rules — which may come in the Autumn.
While long relegated to the sidelines of British politics and limited to campaigning around environmental issues, observers have noted that the potential of the Green Party as a vehicle for hard-left and ethnic or religiously driven sectarian politics has increasingly become a reality. Competing with a web of so-called ‘Gaza Independent’ candidates vying for votes in the same space, this recent development in British politics threatens to cannibalise Labour’s support base in the migrant communities it has long groomed and, in turn, grown dependent on for support.
As previously reported, Labour has already lost key seats to these Gaza Independents, and it is now known that top Labour figures are privately deeply concerned about the risk to their own jobs and the future of the party in areas where Muslim voters want to support candidates that represent their own interests, rather than be pandered to. This was dramatically revealed during the Peter Mandelson scandal, when private texts between the erstwhile health secretary Wes Streeting and Mandelson became public.
Streeting reflected on a then-recent election result in a Muslim area to a Gaza Independent and wrote to Mandelson: “I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election… We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats”.
It seems clear that, for at least some Labour Parliamentarians representing ‘diverse’ seats, jumping to the Greens may be the only way to save their jobs.
The Telegraph report notes the Greens stated they were open to defections, and said: “We are more interested in winning elections than defections. However, we know that more and more Labour voters and politicians recognise the Green Party as the most authentic party of the Left… We will always talk with anyone who shares our values.”
If Labour loses Members of Parliament to the Greens en masse, it would mark the second major split within the party over the past decade. Previously led by hard-left firebrand and Palestine obsessive Jeremy Corbyn, one of the first acts of the new leadership upon his ouster was a purge of the party by now-leader Keir Starmer. Corbyn and several of his colleagues went into the wilderness and have since been involved in a variety of temporary parties, but, more than anything, seem to be waiting to see which way the wind blows and whether they will eventually be re-admitted into a post-Starmer Labour Party.
Flight from the party to the Greens would signal that the break on the left between the Middle East-focussed hardliners and the globalist soft left may be permanent. This would mark the latest act in a years-long political realignment of the United Kingdom, which has seen the country go from a two-party system to a multipolar state of flux in less than 20 years. The Conservative Party, which, as often said, is the oldest and most successful political party in world history, has already been eviscerated over its appalling mismanagement of the Brexit issue, allowing Nigel Farage’s UKIP, Brexit Party, and now Reform UK to thrive.
This is a process that remains underway, and it remains uncertain whether the present flux will congeal into a new two-party system where the old certainties of the Tories and Labour are forgotten in favour of new parties less encumbered by old dogmas.
Also possible is a prolonged period of instability, with half a dozen or more small parties competing at election time and none able to form a government alone, as has come to define politics throughout much of the European continent. It is not even certain what the new parties will be at this stage: whether the Greens are the new party of the left or a resting place on the move to another yet unknown destination mirrors developments on the right, where Nigel Farage’s Reform is dominant but already faces a challenge from its own right from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.
While Lowe’s faction has proven adept at generating attention online, it is a new one with uncertain support. Just how far it has managed to penetrate, the future of the Labour Party, and the direction of travel for the next couple of years of British politics are all due to be illuminated by the forthcoming by-election (special election) next month.