SNNS 46

 

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 6

The failure to address that property question, indeed even to understand it, has left the working-class effectively leaderless. On the one hand, social-democracy and social-democratic parties, in the 20th century, emphasised the common interest of labour and capital. Indeed, as Marx sets out in Wage-Labour and Capital, so long as you assume the continued existence of capital, that is true. The workers interest is that of capital too, for a continued accumulation of capital, so that more labour is employed, which creates the best conditions for their wages to rise, not only from the fact of being fully employed, but also because of rising social productivity and an expansion of the range of goods and services they can consume, as Marx describes in The Civilising Mission of Capital. It also means that, as their employment expands towards full employment, their bargaining position is strengthened, so that not only do nominal and real wages rise, but also relative wages.

However, as Marx describes, in Wage-Labour and Capital, and in Capital III, Chapter 15, it is, then, precisely this rise in relative wages, whose concomitant is a fall in relative profits, i.e. a profits squeeze, as seen in the 1960's/70's, which creates a crisis of overproduction of capital. The first consequence is that the smaller, least efficient capitals, the plethora of petty bourgeois producers – whose profit margins were already below the average – go bust. To the extent they employ workers, they are laid off. The consequence is, the, also, an overproduction of commodities, even where none existed previously, because the firms that have gone bust no longer buy from their suppliers (as Marx puts it, capital itself is physically composed of commodities), and their workers no longer have wages to finance their own consumption.

So, the affluence of the workers, in these best of all conditions, turns, for many of them, into the cause of their own misery. Moreover, the underlying cause of the crisis of overproduction of capital was the shortage of labour, causing relative wages to rise, and so relative profits to fall. To respond to it, capital is led to engage in a technological revolution, to raise productivity, and to replace labour with machines. Again, that was seen in the 1970's, with the microchip revolution. Consequently, as long as capitalism continues, and so long as the working-class does not have control over its own collective property – the large-scale socialised capital – it is doomed to repeat the cycle of prosperity, full employment/boom, crisis, and unemployment.

Social-democracy, and reformist socialism/Menshevism, cannot offer any solution, therefore, but, at the other pole there are the “revolutionary” sects, who can only offer the illusion of some repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, or worse a version of the Peasant Wars, such as that in China in 1949, of Vietnam, Cuba, and so on. All of which are based on the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and not the industrial proletariat. But, that petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry can never form the ruling-class, because of its atomised and heterogeneous nature. It always results in chaos, crisis and Bonapartism. It can be see as a result of Brexit and Trump, today. But, the victory of Trump, Brexit and other petty-bourgeois nationalist movements is, itself, a consequence of the failure of Marxists to offer a real analysis and solution to the property question, turning themselves, simply, into more militant wings of social-democracy, and proponents of bourgeois, trades union consciousness.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 5

The 1832 Reform Act was a victory for the bourgeoisie as a whole, but the workers were left to pursue their own interests and demands for political rights and freedoms via the Chartist Movement. The large-scale, industrial capitalists, again, required the support of the workers to consolidate their victory, in 1848, against the other sections of the bourgeoisie – the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy – and its political reflection was the creation of the Liberal Party, in which the big industrial capitalists sat side by side with the trades union representatives of the workers.

The same was true in France, but its political revolution was far more thoroughgoing than its British equivalent. The Monarchy, and large sections of the aristocracy faced the criticism of the guillotine.

“To be sure, the bourgeoisie had already developed rapidly during the Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of the nobility and of the Church which had been confiscated and then sold, and partly by frauds on the nation by means of army contracts. It was precisely the domination of these swindlers that brought France and the Revolution to the verge of ruin under the Directorate, and thus gave Napoleon the pretext for his coup d'etat.” (p 331)

For Saint-Simon, rather like with the Physiocrats, the “workers” were not just the labourers, but also the capitalists, be they industrial capitalists or the merchants and bankers. The Revolution set this mass of “the people” against the idlers of the old aristocracy, but the idlers were not confined to them, but, also, all those that simply lived off their incomes without taking any part in production. At a time when capitalist production was still relatively undeveloped, compared to the later large-scale production, it is easy to see why this distinction was made.

For Saint-Simon, The Reign of Terror showed that the actual workers, the great mass of labourers and petty-bourgeois, did not have the capacity to lead the country.

“Who then was to lead and command? According to Saint-Simon, science and industry, both united by a new religious bond destined to restore that unity of religious ideas which had been broken since the Reformation – a necessarily mystical and rigidly hierarchical “new Christianity”. But science was the scholars; and industry was, in the first place, the active bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants and bankers. Of course, these bourgeois were to transform themselves into public officials, into trustees of society, of a sort; but they were still to hold a commanding and even economically privileged position vis-a-vis the workers. The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit. This conception was in exact keeping with a time when large-scale industry and with it the chasm between bourgeoisie and proletariat were only just coming into existence in France.” (p 331-2)

Here can clearly be seen, even before the development of large-scale, socialised capital/imperialism, the basic outlines of social-democracy. A shared interest between capital and labour, but with the professional middle-class representatives of capital “functioning capitalists”, managing national production on behalf of “society”. Along with it goes the required planning and regulation of production and credit. All of this is contained in the statist ideas of Lassaleanism and Fabianism.

“But what Saint-Simon especially lays stress on is this: what interests him first and above all other things is the lot of “the largest and poorest class” (la classe la plus nombreuse et las plus pauvre).” (p 332)

Unfortunately, that same kind of moralism pervades much of today's Left. It confuses “the poorest” with the working-class, just as it confuses “the rich”, by which if often means the affluent, with the bourgeoisie, and worse, the owners of capital. As Marx set out in relation to the hand-loom weavers, and Lenin set out in relation to the poorest peasants, the poorest (actually the least affluent, i.e. least net income) are not the workers but, setting aside the paupers and chronically unemployed, the great mass of the petty-bourgeoisie. These layers, the breeding ground of reaction and fascism, and which, today, is the foundation of Trumpism, Faragism, Starmerism, Bolsonarism, and all the other reactionary nationalist movements, can never be the prime concern of Marxists.

Our concern, today, can only be with the organised working-class, which is, itself, now, the collective owner of all the socialised capital that dominates production, and, via its pension funds, also, the collective owners of a large part of the fictitious capital, which draws its revenues from that socialised capital's profit. But, in neither case is the working-class allowed, by law, to exercise control over its own property. That, today, is the property question that Marxists must address in their programmes.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 4

Marx makes the same point in Value, Price and Profit.

“They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"” (p 93)

The contradictions arising from capitalist production were only taking shape, in 1800, when the utopians were setting forth their observations. The first, generalised crisis of overproduction of commodities did not occur until 1825. It was another quarter of a century before large-scale industrial capital asserts its dominance, and another quarter century before that large-scale industrial capital, predominantly, takes the form of socialised capital, in the shape of the co-operatives and limited liability companies that flourished after the passing of the Limited Liability Act of 1855. So, the Utopians could not see such development, and the means of achieving their goals. Rather, they relied still on the pervasive power of reason and belief that, if only society could have its eyes opened to such reason, a harmonious development could be undertaken.

“During the Reign of Terror, the propertyless masses of Paris were able to gain the mastery for a moment [and thus to lead the bourgeois revolution to victory against the bourgeoisie itself]. But, in doing so they only proved how impossible [it] was [for] their domination [to last] under the conditions then obtaining. The proletariat, which was only just separating itself from these propertyless masses as the nucleus of a new class, and was as yet quite incapable of independent political action, appeared as an oppressed, suffering estate, to which, in its incapacity to help itself, help could, at best, be brought in from without from above down.” (p 329-30)

The Utopias dreamed up were incapable of becoming real, not because the productive forces were not developed sufficiently, but because there was no reason that the capitalists were going to voluntarily abandon their own advantages and position as ruling-class. In 1800, it was still the case that many of the private industrial capitalists were former skilled labourers themselves. The majority of production was undertaken, still, by petty-bourgeois, independent commodity producers, like the hand-loom weavers But, as the fate of the latter showed, described by Marx in Capital I, those conditions were rapidly changing, as machine industry drove them out of production, and concentrated the means of production in the hands of private capitalist families, whose lifestyles were transformed along with it.

Marxist theory is not a theory that starts from the individual seeking to turn each one into a clone of another. So, of course, some of these individuals caught a glimpse of the future, but Marxist theory, historical materialism, is a theory based on the interests of given forms of property, and so the behaviour, in aggregate, of the social classes based on it. That some of these individuals did obtain a glimpse of the future, albeit expressed in their various fantastical forms, is still a mark of their own genius.

“Saint-Simon was a son of the great French Revolution, at the outbreak of which he was not yet thirty.” (p 330)

That revolution was carried out against the old aristocratic ruling class, a class of parasites and idlers that leached off the great mass of society engaged in the production of the nation's wealth – the Third Estate. But, this Third Estate was soon revealed to, in fact, be a contradictory whole, comprising, at one pole, the rising bourgeoisie, and, at the other, the emerging proletariat. Much as with the political revolution in Britain, in which the bourgeoisie conducted its struggle for political rights and freedoms, whilst drawing behind it a large mass of petty-bourgeois producers, and the emerging proletariat, as symbolised by the gathering in St. Peter's Fields in Manchester, it soon became apparent that this political revolution was one that the bourgeoisie sought to contain within strict limits.

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Forward To Part 5

SNNS 45 - Parts 1 & 2

 

SNNS 44

 

Burnham's Brexit Baloney

Its like deja vu all over again! The liberal Left and soft Left, having chosen their next potential saviour, and reduced themselves, again, to essentially passive onlookers of the historical process (class struggle), cheerleaders of whoever (or whatever) might be the current lesser-evil, had great expectations in the King of the North, Prince Across the Water – choose your appropriate aristocratic metaphor – Andy Burnham. But, 7 years ago, they had similar hopes for Starmer, who stood on an almost identical platform to that, now, put forward by Burnham. At least, Starmer had stayed in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, when Burnham ran off to Manchester.

Of course, even before that, the same passive, hapless role of what passes for “the Left” - an increasingly less than meaningless term – had, at least, formed up to cheer on Corbyn, into the same role. Its epitome was the less than useless, Momentum. But, as far as “the Left” is concerned, we could go back further than that. In the 1960's, Tony Benn, as a government Minister, had no great Left-wing credentials. If Burnham wants a precedent to answer the questions of those like Owen Jones who have noted Burnham's journey back and forth from Blair-right, to soft-Left, he could point to Benn, who, in the 1970's and 80's, became a champion of that “Left”.

Benn, like Foot before him, became a figurehead for “the Left”, but he could be so, much as with Corbyn, only because of the deeply inadequate nature of “the Left” itself. “The Left”, has become simply code for those that favour greater roles for the capitalist state, both in the economy, and society in general, as well as those that favour, and attach themselves to whatever the latest “progressive”, social movement is thought to be. In other words, “the Left”, is a vague, middle-class, liberal mush, the result of a long-term search for the broadest “progressive” coalition of forces.

It is a manifestation not of Marxism, but of Hegelian Idealism. By defining “the Left”, in terms of state ownership and intervention, its no wonder that it opens up the line of argument of the bourgeois centre that the Left and Right, meet up at their extreme points. How much more state interventionist could you get than Nazi Germany, for example. If that is the definition of “Left”, then, Marx and Engels, but, also, the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, would not have considered themselves to be “Left”. It completely leaves out of consideration, any question of the class character of that state.

As Marx and Engels put it.

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”

(Anti-Duhring)

It is, on that basis, a “progressive” development of capitalism, in the Marxist, scientific sense of the term “progressive”, as against the middle-class, liberal, idealist and moralistic sense, of being the latest social movement crusade. It is progressive, only, as an inevitable development of capital, into larger, more concentrated blocs, as with the previous development of monopolies/oligopolies. In fact, large sections of “the Left”, driven by a sense of petty-bourgeois moralism, show their confusion, by seeing those monopolies/oligopolies, not as, also, being progressive, but, as being akin to the devil incarnate. Not surprisingly, they see the appropriate response to that being, not, as Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin and Trotsky argued, the need for the workers to exercise their rightful control over them, but, instead, either to argue for the state to break them up/limit them, in favour of the smaller capitals, or else, for the capitalist state (the national capitalist) to assert its control over them! Socialists, argue that to expect this current state, the capitalist state, the national capitalist, to act in workers interests, is to mislead the workers, with bourgeois idealism. As, Marx put it,

“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases ...

the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.”

(Critique of The Gotha Programme)

In the modern parlance, such demands might be described as “Left”, but they are certainly not socialist. But, that confusion that misrepresentation is what has characterised “the Left”, including those that call themselves “Marxists”, for around 80 years. So, in the 1970's, “the Left” made itself into cheerleaders for the likes of Benn, and his statist ideas. But if that “servile belief in the state”, and “democratic belief in miracles” is to be pursued, then, it is clear that this state, can only be the current capitalist, nation state, and the democratic miracle can only be performed by the existing, bourgeois-democratic national parliament. Its no wonder, therefore, that, in the 1970's, when the question of the EEC/EU again dominated the political debate, the opposition to the EEC/EU saw “the Left”, and the Far-Right, indeed, meet up to defend the fiction of this nation state. Ironically, I watched, yesterday, a 2025 TV programme on how, in 1940, Churchill made a “bid to abolish Britain”, and merge France and Britain.

This servile belief in the state, and democratic belief in miracles that characterises “the Left”, is simply an extension of its petty-bourgeois, nationalist mindset that has also dominated it in the post-war period, which has seen it prioritise struggles for national self-determination, which means the national self-determination of bourgeois states, over the self-determination of the working-class across those states, and for whom, those bourgeois states are their main enemy. So, the opposition to the EEC/EU, becomes a utopian, idealist, and so reactionary quest, to insist on national self-determination for the “British” capitalist state, so that a “British”, reformist, Labour government can implement “Left” policies.

As in the 1970's, foreigners, i.e. the EEC/EU are used as the scapegoat, the excuse for why the British capitalist state, even when it was far more powerful, and with far greater room for manoeuvre, despite several Labour governments over the last century, most of them markedly to the “Left” of the current Labour government, failed to bring about any radical, meaningful change in the interests of the working-class, at the expense of capital. Over and over, the logical, reactionary dynamic of that is witnessed. If its Europe that limits a Westminster government from acting in workers' interests, then, in Scotland and Wales, it must be an English parliament in Westminster that is stopping the possibility of the Scottish and Welsh nations from acting in the interests of Scottish and Welsh workers. But, similarly, the problem in the Regions, in Manchester, Birmingham and so on, must be the need to “take back control” into local hands. The very logic of nationalism, every time it necessarily fails to deliver, leads to the argument to take back control to a smaller, less rational unit, which, also, inevitably fails. Nationalism destroys the basis of the nation state.

What is more, who is to say that having freed itself from the supposed constraints of some larger, more rational political entity, the nation state would act in the interests of workers, or be more “progressive”? That is not why the likes of the National Front, Enoch Powell, or the likes of Farage, Truss, the BNP and so on argue for national self-determination for Britain. On the contrary, they see such national independence as the necessary condition to pursue the interests of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, whose political representatives they are. They want to opt out of all those rules and regulations that go along with the EU. They want to be able to give all of those small traders and employers every opportunity to go back to the days of cheating and swindling that characterised the early days of capitalism, to be able to utilise sweated labour, unlimited rights to hire and fire at will, to ignore any consumer or environmental standards, because its only in that way that their dwarf capitals can make a profit. And, the concomitant of that was seen under Thatcher in the 1980's and 90's, with the introduction of Enterprise Zones, and so on, and the pitting of one region, local authority area against another, competing tooth and nail for resources for its area, at the expense of others.

The other logical conclusion of that is not greater democracy, but the handing over of political control to local Bonapartes, to act to attract those resources to that area, at the expense of others. That is the role that the Metropolitan Mayors played. At least in the 1960's, when development was pushed ahead, in places like Tyneside by powerful local figures, such as T. Dan Smith, and all the corruption that went with it, it was at a time when British capital was far less decayed than it is today.

So, it is no wonder that, today, we have Burnham continuing to argue that, although Brexit has been extremely damaging – and not even the hard line Brexiters, now, try to deny that – he will not do the obvious thing, and reverse it. Instead, just as with Starmer, he wants to continue to peddle the same old snake oil that somehow, Brexit can be made to work, that Britain can have a “closer relationship” to Europe, and that “Britain's” problems can be resolved, outside the EU. That is the same cakeist agenda that was put forward by Corbyn in 2019, and led to the dissolution of the coalition of support that had made him Leader, and came close to winning the election in 2017. It led to the disaster of 2019.

Starmer, of course, became Leader only by playing on his role in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, and by adopting, as part of the strategy put forward by Labour Together, his ten point pledge to pursue the Corbynite, social-democratic agenda. That is the same Labour Together that used Starmer as their cypher, and ditched that agenda as soon as he became Leader. It is the same Labour Together of which Josh Simons was a Director. That is the same Josh Simons who has just stood down in Makerfield for Burnham, and who Burnham has said, he would find a place for.

But, the reality is that Brexit cannot be made to work, and the longer it continues, the greater the damage it will do. Its like saying I realise drinking this poison is really bad for me, but I decided to open the bottle, and so have to keep drinking. The difference with Brexit is that its a bottle that never runs dry. As I wrote in 2019, and after, the idea that you can pursue any kind of even radical social-democratic agenda, without reversing Brexit, and re-joining the EU, is utopian and reactionary. Its a form of Stalinoid, theory of Socialism In One Country. For one thing, Britain is losing around £40 billion a year in tax revenues, as a result of the reduction in GDP growth that has resulted from Brexit. As I pointed out, in relation to the fantasy agenda of Blue Labour in 2024, if the key to your programme is growth, how on Earth are you going to get that growth without a) having the fiscal space to spend on infrastructure, and b) without renewing the free movement that comes from being a part of the EU?

As I've noted before, its not that joining, or now re-joining the EU is the answer to workers problems, but it is that re-joining is the basis of being able to create the conditions for doing so. Blair-rights such as Streeting, for all of their conservative, social-democratic agenda, at least have the advantage over the likes of Burnham that they recognise that the future for Britain, and in the immediate future at that, must reside in the EU. Without that perspective, the decay will continue, a Burnham government, even were he to be serious about carrying out some kind of progressive social-democratic agenda, would quickly have to face the reality that, outside the EU, the prospects for growth are dire, and without that growth, there is no prospect of carrying out even the agenda of Starmer, let alone anything more progressive. It is a recipe for further political chaos, opening the door even wider for the likes of Farage.

Burnham says he does not want to campaign for re-joining the EU, because to do so is divisive, but its equally divisive, and even more destructive not to do so. What is more, God forbid that even bourgeois-democracy should involve the electorate in a heated debate! Far better to keep the voters quiet for 5 years, and only ask them to passively place a cross every so often. So speaks the voice of the entitled, bureaucratic politician who just wants to be left alone to do their job. If that is the case, moreover, then there is a simple answer to that objection. As I noted prior to 2019, rather than a second referendum, Labour could simply put it in their next Manifesto that they intend to re-join the EU. In the meantime, a Burnham Labour government could be getting on with the job of negotiating with Brussels for such re-entry after the next British general Election. That is the best way they can “form closer ties to the EU”.

Burnham's supporters, of course, argue that Streeting, by raising the issue of re-joining the EU is seeking to sabotage Burnham's by-election chances. That assumes that arguing for re-joining the EU is damaging to Labour, and to Burnham. All the evidence shows that not to be true. The vast majority of the electorate, as a whole, know that Brexit has been a disaster, and the even vaster majority of Labour, Green and Liberal voters know that to be the case. In 2017 it was that coalition that gave Corbyn's Labour a 40% share of the vote, and saw the Labour vote, in every constituency, including those that voted “Leave”, rise dramatically, as against 2015. It took away the Tories parliamentary majority.

In 2024, when Starmer had committed to sticking with Brexit, he was able to get only 34% of the vote, and the lowest number of votes ever for any party winning a general election. In local and regional elections, Blue Labour has been haemorrhaging votes not to the reactionaries of Reform, but to the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP. Continuing the Brexit lie that to win in the “Red Wall” seats requires pandering to the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie and its attendant layers of backward workers will be disastrous. In the main those Reform/Brexit voters were never part of the core Labour vote, and so they could never be “won back”. The describing of the reactionary poor as working-class, is a bourgeois sociological terminology that confuses income and social status with class, and relation to the means of production. The petty-bourgeois traders and self-employed are frequently poorer and more precarious than the majority of wage workers, but that does not make them working-class. It is the basis of their desperate individualism, and often hatred of the organised working-class and its progressivism. They are reactionaries.

Its true that one result of Thatcherism and de-indstrialisation since the 1980's, has been a 50% growth of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and Burnham has pointed to some of the symptoms and consequences of that in the decayed urban centres, and the growth of asset inequality, based on the serial asset price bubbles in property, and financial assets. But, it is a crude opportunism and electoral politics that simply responds to that by chasing after the votes of that petty-bourgeoisie. If its true that, in Makerfield, the composition of the electorate is such that this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its associated layers of urban poor is so large that it outweighs the votes of the working-class and progressive middle-class, then, rather than blaming Streeting, Burnham should blame himself and his advisors for choosing such a seat in which to make their stand.  But, there is no evidence that is the case.  Makerfield, has lower levels of deprivation than the surrounding towns, and higher levels of home ownership with a mostly skilled working-class population.

Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney.  Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election.  In 2010 and 2015, McCartneys successor in the seat Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%.  In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.

Only in 2019, when Corbyn retraced his steps towards backing Brexit did Labour's vote in the seat decline, from that 60% to just 45%.  Another factor, here, was that the Corbyn wave, saw turnout in 2017 rise by 3.6%, whereas, Corbyn's return to Brexitism, in 2019, saw turnout drop by 4.1%, as Labour voters sat on their hands.  In 2024, Simons won the same share of the vote as Fovargue in 2019, but the turnout was down a further, 6.2%, as Labour voters reacted to Starmer's support for Brexit, and his abandonment of even social-democratic positions.  So, despite the same vote share, Simons got 2,000 fewer votes than Fovargue.  The reason was not Labour voters going to the Brexit Party/Reform, but Labour voters staying home, or moving to other progressive parties such as the Greens or Liberals.

The Greens saw their vote rise by 50%, in Makerfield, in 2024 compared to 2019.  The Liberals saw their vote rise by a third.  Reform more than doubled the vote for the Brexit Party, but the reason for that, as elsewhere, was simply that Reform has replaced the Tories.  In 2024, the Tory vote collapsed by 75%, in the constituency, compared to 2019.  Taking that into consideration, the combined reactionary nationalist vote going to Reform/Brexit Party/Tories fell from 21,000 in 2019, to just 17,000 in 2024, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the argument that the Labour voters of the constituency are abandoning Labour in favour of Reform.

It is far more likely that, this latest weak-kneed, cowardly approach from Burnham, typical of his vacillations over the years, will simply lead to even more Labour voters staying home, or continuing to move to the Greens.