Editorial of the Socialist issue 1383
The first parliamentary test for the so-called ‘Burnham bounce’, in Holborn and St Pancras on 8 October, is likely to be as favourable a terrain as the new prime minister will ever face. It is before his administration’s first Budget, and there are still some hopes among workers that Burnham’s government might, at least, prove ‘better than the last lot’. In addition, the timing of the announcement of UK sanctions against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is partly aimed at winning back Holborn and St Pancras voters, particularly those from a Muslim background who make up 16% of the electorate.
Nonetheless, the outcome is uncertain. The smaller scale tests of council by-elections that have taken place since Burnham was crowned will not reassure Labour – they, along with the Tories, have a net loss of seats, while Reform and the Greens have both made gains. Reform are not contenders for Holborn and St Pancras, but the Greens – who got 28.8% of the vote in the Borough of Camden in May’s local elections – are fighting to win. PollCheck’s election simulation currently has Labour winning with 41.7% of the vote and the Green Party leader Zack Polanski second on 37.8%. Election predictions for by-elections are never reliable, but a 3.9% gap between the two lead contenders three weeks out, shows there is a real prospect of Labour losing the seat of the former prime minister, less than three months after Burnham was crowned promising to restore his party’s electoral fortunes.
That is no surprise. Yes, Burnham is trying to fan hopes in his government by talking about easing the cost-of-living crisis and taking some, very minor, measures. But fine words butter no parsnips and, in essence, Burnham has little better than fine words to offer. The Parliamentary Labour Party that backed him to be leader by more than 95% is the same Parliamentary Labour Party that oversaw cuts to the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits. His most enthusiastic backers include many of those furthest to the right. Remember that the MP who stood down to allow him to contest Makerfield was embroiled in scandal because he was prepared to go to any lengths to damage Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s previous left leader.
Burnham’s Chief of Staff is the ultra-Blairite James Purnell, while his Chancellor John Healey only resigned from Starmer’s government because he thought it should spend more on weaponry. Healey’s relentless mantra of maintaining ‘fiscal discipline’ is indistinguishable from that of his predecessor Rachel Reeves. In order to try and restore Labour’s electoral fortunes, Burnham will try to pose his government’s policies in popular terms – something Starmer was incapable of doing – but in reality his government also represents the interests of British capitalism not those of the working class. Like its predecessors, this government will also become hated, as the experience of it in power unfolds.
Holborn and St Pancras
Labour clearly hope that their candidate in Holborn and St Pancras, the current Camden council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali, will prove an electoral asset. She arrived in Camden as a child refugee from Somalia, and was active in her local community before being elected as a councillor in 2022. However, in May this year she became leader of a council which has consistently implemented austerity. According to the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it also invests £104 million in companies involved in aiding the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli state. The first full council meeting since she became council leader refused to even hear a 4,000-strong petition from local residents demanding the issue was discussed.
Whatever the outcome of 8 October, the shallowness of the ‘Burnham bounce’ will be shown by significant numbers of voters voting for the Greens in order to voice a left protest against the government. A smaller number may also vote for George Galloway, who has belatedly entered the contest on behalf of the Workers’ Party of Britain. Justifying the decision to stand Galloway, the Workers’ Party explains that in their view the Green Party are on the “‘left wing’ of capitalism.” They argue that, “the Greens have demonstrated that they do not wish to enter into any temporary or limited electoral arrangement with the socialist movement”. Further, they add that “Whilst the fight to break the link between the labour movement and the Labour Party is far from over, it can never be accomplished if we allow social democracy to syphon the anger of working-class people through the Green safety net.”
It is true that the Green Party does not define itself as a socialist party, not even having the same commitment to socialism in their rules as many trade unions do, and certainly not a broad socialist programme to transform society in the interests of the working class. Nor does its structure put central, or in fact encompass in any way, democratic working-class organisation. If a trade union was to affiliate to the Greens its members would have no means through which to influence party policy or to hold its leadership to account. It is also true that the Greens have consistently refused to reach electoral agreements with socialist candidates, standing candidates against Jeremy Corbyn, for example, in every election since he first became an MP in 1983.
At this stage, however, the Greens have stepped into a vacuum left by the failure of the workers’ movement to start building a mass democratic workers’ party. First and foremost the responsibility for this lies with the national leaders of the trade union movement, most of whom continue to try and defend the Labour government, and none of whom have yet taken decisive steps towards a workers’ party. However, their failure to act has been enabled by the mistakes of key figures and organisations on the left.
Most recently, just over a year ago, more than 800,000 people signed up to support the declaration for a new party from Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Unfortunately, that opportunity was squandered. Your Party, as it is now called, has not met its potential as a result of a top-down approach and a failure to orientate towards the rank-and-file of the trade union movement.
The by-election confirms Your Party’s failure. In the 2024 general election the former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein, who was then already part of the Your Party pre-discussions and later of its launch, stood in the constituency and got 18% of the vote, while the Greens got 10%. But this time Feinstein has ruled himself out of standing, instead backing Zack Polanski. Jeremy Corbyn has been MP in a neighbouring constituency for decades, yet Your Party is not standing in the by-election nor, as yet, even publicly commented on it.
Galloway’s role
But George Galloway and the Workers’ Party’s mistaken approach has also contributed to the current absence of independent political representation for the working class. When Galloway won the Rochdale by-election in February 2024, we recognised that, despite our serious differences with him, it marked an important break in the situation, showing the possibility of left candidates outside the capitalist establishment parties being elected. It was undoubtedly a factor that encouraged other potential steps forward, including Corbyn’s decision to stand as an independent in the general election and the stand of various ‘Gaza independents’, including the four who went on to win seats in the general election.
As we warned at the time, however, while George Galloway could potentially have played a positive part in the development of a new mass party of the working class, it would “never be created by any leader or organisation declaring that it is ‘the solution’.” To play a positive role, we argued, the Workers’ Party would need to work “on the basis of collaboration with others in the trade union and socialist movement” marching on the same path, fighting at each stage to “maximise unity between different sections of the working class moving into struggle: whether via strike action, anti-war movements, climate activism or other means”. Unfortunately, to put it mildly, this is not the approach that Galloway and the Workers’ Party have taken. Instead, Galloway has repeated the mistakes he made as leader of Respect twenty years ago.
Galloway has continued authority among some sections of workers, particularly some from Muslim backgrounds, because of his record of opposition to the imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly the memory of the way in which he fiercely stood up to US senators in 2005 over the Iraq war. The perception that he is a fighter against imperialism and for the oppressed in the Middle East is also bound up, of course, with his consistent vocal support for the Palestinians.
He has repeatedly been able to harness that authority to gain votes. He has already been an MP for four different UK parliamentary constituencies, and has stood for four more, plus three times for the Scottish Parliament. Yet nowhere has initial election success led to him serving more than one term or, more importantly, the consolidation of a base or of stable organisation.
Today, despite the Rochdale breakthrough two and a half years ago, the Workers’ Party claims just over 3,000 paying members and has seven councillors nationally, four of them in Rochdale. It is not a broad workers’ party and ironically, like the Greens, its structure does not allow for trade union affiliates to have any say in the party. It is organised on a centralised top-down basis, and does not bring together different workers’ and left organisations within its parameters.
The seven Workers’ Party councillors are all elected for areas with a Muslim population of 20% or more. But they are not alone in this. In fact, 88 of the 98 left councillors outside the major parties elected this May were in wards with a similar demographic. In the recent period, above all as a result of the genocidal slaughter in Gaza, it is workers from a Muslim background that have led the way in breaking with Labour and looking for a left alternative to vote for. This has been a potentially major step forward, but only if it is a bridgehead to reach out to other parts of the working class around a socialist programme.
A serious struggle against austerity, war and racism cannot be won if it relies on just one section of the working class. But unfortunately, neither the Greens nor Galloway are able to draw different sections of the working class closer together in common struggle for socialist policies. In particular, Galloway’s social conservatism – including his record appealing to anti-trans prejudices – only serves to deepen divisions rather than fighting for unity.
In this election, the Greens are likely to be the main weapon which voters pick up to express their opposition to continued austerity, militarism and climate change. At the same time it cannot be excluded that the ‘Burnham bounce’ will include some voters who had previously voted for the Greens or left candidates temporarily giving the new government the ‘benefit of the doubt’ and casting their vote for Labour.
Whatever the result, the workers’ movement will need to draw conclusions from the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. The trade unions in Britain organise more than 6.5 million workers, yet they have no political voice. It is not just switching from Labour to another political ‘brand’ that needs to be discussed, but how the working class can create its own party with a socialist programme. These issues are on the agenda in Unite, PCS and other unions. The discussion needs to urgently get under way before more opportunities are wasted.