Part 2 – A Relief Rally Is Always Short-Lived
The reality of that was seen, after 2024. As Starmer moved further and further to the Right, so Labour's vote fell. A small part of it went to Reform, but for every Labour vote that went to Reform four votes went to the Greens, Liberals and others to Labour's “Left”. In part, all that is happening, now, is a partial unwinding of that.
Blue Labour did not win over any of the petty-bourgeois reactionaries from Reform, and so had few to lose back to them. They had lost votes to the Greens, Liberals, SNP, Plaid and Independents, and Burnham has simply won some of them back. In many ways, as in 2024, that backwash of support to Labour is what, in financial markets, is called a “Relief Rally”. Left inclined voters, in 2024, voted Labour, not out of any conviction, but because even a Starmer, Blue Labour government seemed a better prospect than a continuation of the Tories. That feeling of relief soon dissipated, when the reality of Starmer's government proved to be just as bad as what had preceded it.
It has to be said, therefore, that the chances are that this will be repeated as Burnham takes the reins. The improvement in Labour's standing in the polls looks like what, again, to use the stock market terminology is a “dead cat bounce”. Labour had dropped so far, so fast that the change of Leader was bound to lead to a bounce from the bottom. But, as I wrote in Part 1, one poll at the weekend put Labour only on 32%, still below the level it had at the General Election. According to Professor John Curtice, the average, currently, puts it only on 29%. That is a far cry from the 40% Labour had in 2017, under Corbyn, when, remember, Labour still lost the election.
Burnham's ratings are flattered currently not just because of the factors set out above, but, also, because the intense media attacks on Polanski and the Greens, have accelerated some of the backwash of votes to Burnham's Labour. In Scotland, the resurgence of the SNP, largely at Labour's expense, has been unaffected. According to Curtice, and I agree, Burnham is unlikely to call an election any time soon, because he is unlikely to win large numbers of seats in Scotland, and that means on the current standing Labour would be likely to get less than 300 seats in parliament, requiring some kind of deal with the Liberals, Greens, SNP and so on. But, that poses further problems for Burnham's Labour. Unless he can demonstrate that he is not just Starmer with better PR, his honeymoon will be short-lived, and the Greens and others will be back eating Labour's lunch.
The reality, already is seen in that Burnham plays with words, be it on Palestine, and the Zionist genocide, be it in relation to Trump/NATO and the illegal war against Iran, or be it in relation to the EU, but the underlying stance remains the same. Burnham repeats the same nonsense about getting closer to the EU, but without committing himself to a wholehearted campaign to re-join; he continues to shy away from condemning the genocide committed by the Zionist state against Palestinians, and even fuelled further attacks by Zionists and settler-colonialists in the West Bank, by attacking the Green Party resolution that recognised the reality that Zionism is racism; he has further backed Trump/NATO's illegal war against Iran by, now, also backing the brutal feudal regime in Saudi Arabia, in its war against the Houthis in Yemen. If Netanyahu loses the election in Israel, Burnham and others will no doubt take their cue to end the minimal sanctions currently imposed and swing behind the new government, even though it, too will be a government of genocidal racists and colonialists.
A similar backwash of support has happened on the Right, as some Reform voters have returned to the Tories. Reform has seen attrition on both flanks. On the one hand, it has been hoist by its own petard, as Rupert Lowe's Restore outfit has split away some of its Right flank. At the same time, as Farage has been exposed in the media, in relation to his funding etc., and, now, the ruling class and its media pile in with their investigations into the activities of Reform's members, not to mention the daily disasters of Reform led Councils, former Tories have drifted back to Badenoch, as she has moved further to the Right. Now, of course, that rightward drift of Badenoch drives away more Conservative voters towards the Liberals, which is no doubt why questions are being raised about the adequacy of Ed Davey's leadership, as the Liberals seem to have been singularly incompetent in winning over Conservative voters, over the last seven years, in conditions where their pro-EU stance should have enabled them to fill their boots.
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