Douglas Murray HUMILIATES Andy Burnham — Starmer’s Last Desperate Makerfield Gamble

Change begins now.

One of the most depressing spectacles in contemporary British politics is to watch a party that swept to power, promising to clean up the sleaze of its predecessors, only to descend within less than two years into exactly the same patterns of cronyism, I am sorry, undeclared gifts, forced resignations and naked opportunism that it once denounced with such theatrical outrage.

We're trying not just to defeat the Tories, but to defeat their entire way of doing politics.

If you enjoy clear -eyed, no -nonsense commentary like this, please subscribe and turn on notifications.We are witnessing this tragedy unfold in real time in Makefield, a solid, working -class constituency in the North West that once had the courage to vote Leave in 2016.Just days after the local elections delivered a humiliating blow to Labour, with Reform UK surging across the North, the party's response has not been reflection or reform.It has been the most contemptible act of political cynicism imaginable, shoehorning Andy Burnham into the seat by forcing the sitting MP Josh Symons to resign and step aside.This is not the act of a confident governing party.This is the act of a desperate, morally bankrupt leadership that treats democracy as a mere inconvenience to be bypassed whenever it suits their personal ambitions.

Mr Burnham launched his campaign only two days ago, on the 22nd of May, declaring with characteristic theatrical flair that British politics is tired, it needs a new script.A vote for him, he tells us, is a vote to change Labour.

I know my own party needs to change.We need to be better.than we've been.We've not been good enough and I want to leave people in no doubt today.A vote for me in this by -election campaign is a vote to change Labour.

Change begins now.

Yet the very manner in which he has arrived in Makefield reveals the breathtaking hypocrisy of the man himself.

Are you in favour of rejoining the European Union?I've said in the long term there is a case for that, but I'm not advocating that in this by -election.In fact, what I am saying is focus now domestically.Britain has got to focus very much on the here and now.

Listen carefully to that formulation.polished, slippery and entirely characteristic of the metropolitan political class.Mr Burnham does not renounce his long -held belief that Britain should, in the long term, rejoin the European Union.He merely postpones it for the tactical convenience of this by -election.In a constituency that voted decisively to leave, this is not humility, this is the sheer audacity of a career politician who holds the voters in quiet contempt, believing he can say one thing today and revert to his old ideology tomorrow, once the votes are safely in the bag.And I'm saying, We need a different path completely.

What is that path?Put more things back under stronger public control.Energy, housing, water, transport.I've done that with the buses in Greater Manchester, so I was the first to do it.Margaret Thatcher deregulated them.I'm just giving you an example.

She deregulated them.They just work for the private shareholders and not for the paying public.I put them back under public control.We've got £2 fares.So you take that principle and you apply it to energy and you apply it to water.That's what I think we need to do.

Here we have the old socialist hymn, freshly repackaged for the 2020.Mr Burnham presents the £2 bus fare in Greater Manchester as a great progressive triumph.Yet he never pauses to answer the most elementary question any serious politician should ask.Who pays?History has taught us again and again what happens when the state seizes control of these essential services.Inefficiency, bureaucracy...

chronic under -investment, and ultimate higher taxes falling on the very working people he claims to champion.Margaret Thatcher deregulated the buses precisely because the previous model of public ownership had failed so spectacularly.Now Mr. Burnham wants to turn the clock back, not because it works, but because it sounds good on a campaign leaflet and serves his own self -serving political narrative.but let us move beyond the rhetoric and examine the man himself.Andy Burnham wishes us to believe he is the authentic voice of the Northern working class.Yet it was under his long watch as Mayor of Greater Manchester that we saw some of the most serious failures in protecting vulnerable children from grooming gangs.

Former detective Maggie Oliver, who courageously exposed these scandals, has said publicly that while Burnham initially showed courage in reopening scrutiny, he ultimately fell short and ducked out.looking first to his own political position rather than gripping the nettle and delivering real justice.He commissioned reviews that became little more than paper exercises.He accepted explanations of lack of resources without the necessary outrage or determination to root out the institutional failures.When challenged in Parliament, his responses were described as supine.This is not the record of a man who truly puts the most vulnerable first.

This is the record of a calculating politician who understands exactly how far he can go without upsetting the party machine that protects his career.And now this same man is presented to the people of Makefield as the saviour who will change labour.Change it how, exactly?By taking the same failed ideology, more state control, more centralisation, more promises funded by someone else, and simply rebranding it with a northern accent while ignoring his own past failures.The deeper problem, of course, lies not only with Mr Burnham, but with the man he would ultimately challenge, the Prime Minister,Sir Keir Starmer.

This is a Labour government that came to office promising to restore integrity to public life after the scandals of the previous administration, yet within months it has become engulfed in what the press has accurately termed Freebiegate.or gift -gate, the breathtaking hypocrisy of a leader who lectured the nation about end -sleaze, while personally accepting well over £107 ,000 in gifts, hospitality and benefits.Clothes for his wife, designer glasses worth thousands, Taylor Swift and Coldplay concert tickets, Arsenal matches and £20 ,000 worth of accommodation, all courtesy of the Labour peer Lord Waheed Ali.Some of these gifts were not even properly declared at first.When the scandal broke, the Prime Minister was forced to repay more than £6 ,000, a tacit admission that the arrangements were not quite as innocent as first claimed.who is Lord Alley, a major donor who, it emerged, failed to declare his directorship in a company based in a British Virgin Islands tax haven.

This is the very definition of a cronyism that Labour once denounced with such moral superiority.While ordinary pensioners have seen the withdrawal of winter fuel payments, while working families struggle with higher taxes and frozen thresholds, the inner circle enjoys free suits, free tickets and free flats.The very ministers who lectured the country about ending the sleaze have been caught with their hands deep in the donor -funded cookie jar.This is not leadership.This is the moral bankruptcy of a political class that preaches fairness while practising naked self -interest.The hypocrisy does not stop there.

The internal chaos within Labour has become almost Shakespearean in its drama.Wes Streeting, once a senior cabinet minister, has resigned as health secretary, openly stating in his resignation letter that he has lost confidence in Sir Keir Starmer's leadership.Nearly 100 Labour MPs, almost a quarterof the parliamentary party, have now publicly demanded that Starmer either resign or set out a clear timetable for his departure.Ministers and junior ministers have fallen like dominoes.This is not a party in control.

This is a party tearing itself apart while trying to pretend to the electorate that everything is under control.And in the midst of this meltdown, what does the leadership do?It clears the path for Andy Burnham in Makefield.hoping that a popular northern mayor can somehow stabilize the ship and perhaps even replace the captain.Stammer himself has vowed to campaign alongside Burnham in the by -election, a remarkable act of public unity with a man widely believed to be his most dangerous internal rival.This is not statesmanship, this is the desperate politics of survival, the ultimate act of self -serving cynicism.

This by -election in Makefield is far more than a local contest.It has become a referendum on whether the Labour Party still understands, or even cares about, the working class communities it once called its heartlands.The people who marched in the Unite the Kingdom rallies are not extremists.They are ordinary citizens who feel their country has changed too fast.Their concerns about borders, identity and economic security have been dismissed as backward or bigoted.Labour's response has not been to listen.

It has been to double down on the same failed formulas, more public control, more gifts for the insiders, more contempt for the concerns of the ordinary voter.Andy Burnham is not the solution.He is the symptom.Keir Starmer is not a steady hand at the wheel.He is the captain of a ship that is taking on water from every direction.The entire current leadership of the Labour Party has lost touch with the very people it claims to represent.

They offer slogans about change, while practicing the oldest politics of all, patronage, opportunism, and the quiet betrayal of principle.The working people of Makefield, like millions across Britain, are waking up.They are tired of being treated as electoral props to be managed, rather than citizens to be served.They want honesty.They want competence.They want a politics that puts their interests first, not the interests of the donor class or the metropolitan elite.

For the sake of Britain, for the sake of the very communities that built the Labour movement in the first place, Andy Burnham should not win this seat.Not because he is personally a wicked man, but because he has become the polished, articulate face of a political project that has lost its soul.The British people deserve better.They deserve the truth.And the truth, at this moment in our history, is that the current leadership of the Labour Party, from Starmer down through the entire apparatus, has run out of ideas, run out of integrity, and is running out of time.If you value honest political commentary, please subscribe and hit the notification bell.

Thank you for listening.