Meet the New Boss...

Same as the Old Boss!

The Starmersaurus and his imminent replacement, Andy Burnham, MP (Makerfield)

I was going to write about the Crusades this week—a much misunderstood and maligned period in history, which we should be proud of, on the whole—but the resounding win in the Makerfield by-election by Andy Burnham this week will have such colossal consequences for Britain that I want to say a few words about it.

For those Overmen and Overwomen outside the UK, and perhaps some inside it, Makerfield is a district of Greater Manchester. The by-election was called because the Labour incumbent, Josh Simons, resigned—specifically so that Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Manchester, and Labour’s king-in-waiting, could be given a safe seat in parliament, and thence be able to challenge the Starmertron for the leadership. It’s a relatively new electoral district, but it has voted Labour since 1906, whichever constituency it belonged to, so it’s been a legacy Labour seat since the party’s inception. All the same, the population is 95% white, and mainly working-class, and in the 2016 referendum 65% of those who cast a vote voted for Brexit. In other words, like most white, working-class British people, they are socially conservative. The vote for Brexit was a categorical vote to end the uncontrolled immigration that has been swamping the country. In case you think that’s a subjective opinion, in the recent local elections most of the council seats were won by Reform, the ostensibly anti-immigration party (which in my opinion is only pretending.) So there was a real chance that a rightwing party, Reform or Restore, might break Labour’s deathgrip hold on the seat. However, Burnham won a resounding victory: 25,000 votes to Reform’s 16,000. In third place were Restore, who got 3,000 votes, or 7% of the vote—not bad for a party that’s only existed for four months, and well ahead of the Conservative, Liberal Democrats, and Greens, but of course still paltry.

The two big questions the Makerfield by-election raises are these: why did a constituency of predominantly white, working-class voters continue to support a party that has blatantly abandoned them, and disregards their wishes; and secondly, what will this mean for the leadership of the party and the future of the country.

First, why did these northerners, who are doubtless mostly decent and patriotic people, vote for Burnham? The man is well-liked in Greater Manchester, because he’s a local lad, speaks with the right accent, loves Oasis, and is capable of smiling, unlike the robotic Starmer. In other words, he’s personable enough. In terms of policy, he’s proven as slippery as Starmer, and like Starmer, was against investigation of the rape gangs, despite his claims to the contrary. If anything, the indications are that he’ll be even further to the Left of Starmer; the party membership believe that the Greens, who are the lunatic left fringe, are stealing votes from them (correctly), and that they need to lurch even further leftwards to scotch the advance of Polanski and his ilk. However, the Makerfield voters are not Marxists, as they’ve shown in the last decade. Their vote was an anti-Starmer vote: they despise the man, as almost everyone does in Britain, even on the Left, and essentially it was a protest vote, if an ill-conceived one. That they chose to remain loyal to Labour, doubtless simply from a sense of familiarity and heritage, is disturbing. The result will be to give a fillip to Labour nationwide, which can only have disastrous results for white working-class people.

Next, let’s consider how the next weeks and months will play out. Burnham will announce his leadership bid very soon, within a couple of weeks. Two thirds of the membership support him. Doubtless the knives are already out for Starmer in the Cabinet. Reportedly Shabana Mahmood will keep the Home Office if she supports Burnham. Wes Streeting, another possible leadership contender—and arguably the only other one with a respectable IQ—has probably been bought off too, perhaps with an offer of the Foreign Office. Lammy, Rayner and Reeves are such obvious clowns that they will be forced to stand aside. If there are more Cabinet resignations, which is likely, and a vote of no-confidence in the House, which is also very likely, then Starmer can either resign, or conceivably call a General Election as a national referendum on his leadership. If he does the latter, Labour will suffer a devastating defeat. The winners would probably be Reform, but perhaps without an overall majority, which might mean a coalition centre-right government led by Reform in alliance with the Conservative Party and/or the Liberal Democrats. This might suit Nigel Farage, who is actually a wet Liberal himself, not the fascist he’s been painted as by mainstream media. But I don’t think this outcome is likely—or desirable.

More likely, Starmer will resign—he’s little more than a machine for processing information, but even he, midwit that he is, must see the writing on the wall—and Burnham will be Prime Minister very soon. He can then either continue to misgovern the country in exactly the same mould as Starmer, or else, as I suspect he will want to take the country much further left than the election manifesto suggested, call a General Election to establish a mandate. If he were to win that—by no means impossible, because he’s quite charismatic, and as I said, his victory has made him popular, and that surge would continue for a while after he became Labour leader, and before the disastrous results of his polices were apparent—then we would have Labour in power in 2031. That seems even worse that what we expected, that they’d be in power until 2029. But is it? Who would win in 2031?

Not Labour, I’m sure. They will continue allowing the waves of immigrants into the country, and squandering vast amounts of national treasure on them, on welfare, while the armed forces remain not merely underfunded, but almost totally defunded. (Britain is currently defenceless). They will continue to support Ukraine and harrass Russia, which is likely to lead to war with the Russia, a war we cannot possibly win. Two-tier justice will continue. The universities and schools will not only continue to be indoctrination centres, but that may be ramped up. Citizens will carry on being arrested and imprisoned for posting on social media. Taxes will rise for working people, and almost everyone will be impoverished. The media will remain a source of disinformation, and NGOs promoting cultural Marxism will be funded by the taxpayer. Crime rates, particularly for violent crime, will continue to rise, and women and children will disproportionately be the victims. And we will rejoin the EU, despite the clear vote against that in the referendum. In other words, unmitigated disaster.

A more likely possibility is the Reform-Conservative-Lib-Dem alliance I forecast before. That sounds better, but is it? The Tories simply continued Blair’s policies when they were in power, and Reform has accepted failed Tories into their ranks, including Jenrick and Braverman, who were respectively ministers of Immigration and the Home Office—the very people responsible for the Boris wave of millions. I doubt they will make any serious attempt to stop the rot.

We must hope that by 2029 or 2031 Restore can mount a viable alternative. Unfortunately at Makerfield their candidate was not up to the task: she couldn’t speak on camera or in public convincingly. They have to find 600 articulate, intelligent, truly committed, courageous people who are ready to stand and will work tirelessly to be elected. Their popularity has grown very fast since their inception. It’s not impossible. And in my opinion, they are Britain’s last hope for a peaceful, democratic solution to its problems. The country isn’t merely in crisis: it’s on the verge of collapse. Restore could avert that, by putting the interests of the British people unashamedly in the forefront again. That needn’t involve inhumanity. Millions must go, yes—but immigrants loyal to Britain, and productive tax-payers, would of course stay. But if the British people don’t understand this—and the Makerfield election is a depressing reminder that most people are voting on hunches and emotions rather than as a result of rational thought—the thirties will be a decade of Weimar-like chaos, and bloodshed will be inevitable. This was a critical election. Let’s hope Burnham is a temporary ill.