On 10 September 2024, Jon Trickett, a veteran leftwing MP, was preparing to vote against one of his own government’s most incendiary plans: to remove the winter fuel allowance from some retired people, a benefit long seen by many UK households as essential. Senior figures told Trickett he would be the only Labour member of parliament to do so. He said this week: “I said: ‘I don’t give a fuck. I’m going to do what I believe is the right thing.’ And I was right.”
That has since seen as a policy misstep from which Keir Starmer’s government never recovered. Trickett could, perhaps, be forgiven for indulging in a little schadenfreude after Starmer’s resignation this week, just two years after he won a landslide general election victory.
But Trickett does not want to indulge, despite blaming what he calls Starmer’s “purging” of the left for Labour voters ditching politics, or turning to populists on the right and left. “Starmer and his allies turned their backs on the left and the working classes and those people are now turning to others,” he said. “I hope that this can be a moment where we can recover the sense that Labour is a party for social justice so those voters can come back.”
Like many of his political comrades, Trickett is now looking to Andy Burnham, Starmer’s likely successor, to see if much-marginalised ideas on the left may once again get a hearing – for some, the Starmer experience has created a deep anxiety about whether they will be disappointed again.
Burnham, a former cabinet minister who returned to Westminster as an MP on Monday after nine years as the mayor of Greater Manchester, has talked of “business-friendly socialism” and expanding his vision for the city nationwide. The approach he calls “Manchesterism”, under which essential assets such as water and energy could be brought into greater public control, a closer partnership between the state and business to spread the proceeds of wealth, and a huge expansion of devolution, has enthused some on the left.
But bruised socialists also remember the early days of Starmer, who presented himself to Labour party members as a continuity candidate to Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran leftwing figure who unexpectedly became leader in 2015 but oversaw a catastrophic election loss four years later.
In a contest to lead the party, Starmer made 10 left-pleasing policy pledges, from public ownership of utilities to ending student tuition fees. Clive Lewis, another leftwing MP, still has them on his wall. “The 10 pledges were basically Starmer saying, ‘Look, I’m Corbyn in a suit, Corbyn without the baggage’,” he said. “But when you read them back now they are a bit of a cliche. They sound like someone pretending to be left wing and imagining what 10 leftwing pledges would look like.”
After Starmer was chosen to lead Labour the pledges were, according to pragmatists, “adapted” in order for the party to become electable; to detractors they were dropped like a stone.
By the end of 2020, Corbyn – described as a “friend” by Starmer during the campaign – had been suspended from the party. A crackdown on antisemitism, which had dominated the headlines during Corbyn’s leadership, saw many leftwingers suspended.
“People were annoyed about the pledges, but the thing that really upset them was the purging and alienation of progressives which created a culture of fear,” said Lewis. “Many people were thrown out for little or no reason whatsoever. It was a mass expulsion.”
On the international front, Starmer’s early stance on the conflict in Gaza also alienated many on the left. Soon after Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel in October 2023, Starmer gave an interview saying Israel had “the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza, before he finally backed a ceasefire in February 2024. When some councillors left the party, a senior Labour source was quoted as saying it was a sign the party was “shaking off the fleas”.
“He never recovered from that infamous interview,” said one MP who voted against the government on Gaza. “Despite being the PM who gave recognition to Palestine he couldn’t get past it.”
Questions are being asked in the depleted ranks of the Labour left about how radical the political shift from Starmer to Burnham could be. Multiple leftwingers said they were cautiously optimistic. Several pointed to a new blueprint for “Manchesterism” in an essay by Mathew Lawrence, who is close to Burnham and has worked with him regarding his stance on public control of utilities.
“If you read that essay you think ‘fantastic stuff’,” said Aaron Bastani, a co-founder of the leftwing media platform Novara Media. “But it’s not just about the motifs, it’s about who’s in the cabinet and who are the influential figures behind him.” ”
To many on the left, Burnham’s choice for chancellor is seen as a binary choice that will reveal much about his intentions. They hope the former party leader Ed Miliband, who would be expected to take a more interventionist approach, will take up the role, but fear it could go to a figure on the right such as the former health secretary Wes Streeting.
Several figures brought into the Burnham machine are already raising leftwing eyebrows, including the former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and the former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill.
Other names have caused more consternation. James Purnell, a former Blairite cabinet minister who until recently led a lobbying advisory firm which counted BP, Amazon, Jaguar Land Rover and Uber among its clients, will become his chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.
Some of the left wince at the thought of Josh Simons, who gave up his seat in Makerfield so Burnham could run, being an influential figure. Simons previously ran the thinktank Labour Together, which one critic called “a vehicle to take control of the party and destroy the left”. The former minister resigned from government after he was revealed to have falsely linked reporters to a “pro-Kremlin” network in emails to GCHQ.
“I think the left would be wise to be very wary given these names,” said one veteran. “Those hires are huge red flags.”
There are other grumbles. The leftwing MP Nadia Whittome has expressed disappointment at the likely lack of a leadership contest, while another figure on the left ruefully noted that Burnham had been in regular contact but access had been more limited since the start of the week. Some want Burnham to take a stronger stance on Gaza, others to present more direct opposition to Donald Trump.
But his talk of the “end of neoliberalism” and apparent appetite for a more muscular state is welcome, said Andy McDonald, who served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. “You could worry yourself into a grave, but let’s hear what he has to say first,” he said. “The signs are really good and there’s cause for optimism.”
In an interview with the Guardian before his return to Westminster, Burnham said some leftwingers should never have been kicked out of Labour, although it had “gone beyond” the time Corbyn could be welcomed back. “I’ve always been a Labour politician that’s about unifying people, trying to be positive and working together,” he said. “That’s my approach to politics. I think politics needs less division and less factionalism these days.”
For Lewis, that means the left are – at the very least – back in the tent. “It feels like the boot has been lifted off our throat and we can organise again,” he said. “And I think if you look at where we are electorally, our ideas are going to play a part.”