The Green victory in the Gorton & Denton by-election was a slap in the face for all the major parliamentary parties. Labour lost a seat it’s held for a hundred years. Reform came a poor second and the Tories lost their deposit trailing behind just a few hundred votes above the Liberal Democrats, the Monster Raving Loonies and the other also-rans.

Trumped by the Greens, the Faragists put their failure down to the “Muslim vote” while the Starmer crowd blame left “extremists” for making the common course with the Greens that led to Labour’s downfall in Man chester. But at the end of the day Starmer & Co got the kicking they so richly deserved because voters were sick of the lies of the false prophets of all the mainstream bourgeois parties in Britain today.

Jeremy Corbyn, one of those ‘extremists’ whom Starmer doubtless had in mind, welcomed the Greens’ stunning victory and said his supporters “will work con structively with the Greens, because there is only one way we can bring about real change: together”.

On the other hand Richard Burgon, one of the few left social-democrats still in the Parliamentary Labour Party, says the “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.

He says: “They put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the ‘Stop Reform’ party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt – and start appealing to them.

“That means a return to real Labour values – through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public. And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alien ated so many people who have voted Labour previously.”

We’ll see. The Greens deservedly got a massive protest vote this time round but their “eco-socialism” is only a rehash of the stale left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire.

Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. They uphold the NHS. They talk about public ownership. They pay lip-service to the old Bennite social-democratic tradition. They support the union bureaucrats at the helm of the labour movement. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge.

All honest people should unite to promote the working-class agenda. People must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world. The struggle for peace and socialism must begin anew – in the unions, amongst the rank and file and on the street.