By The New Worker

The Labour bureaucracy’s decision to block Andy Burnham’s bid to return to Parliament comes as no surprise – least of all to the Mayor of Greater Manchester who has done little in recent months to mask his leadership ambitions. Burnham knows the score. His star rose with the help of the right-wing blocs that have long held sway in the unions and the Labour Party – factions that are still loyal to Starmer and the ageing gang of washed-up Blairites that advise him.

Although some 50 Labour backbenchers and peers are calling on Labour’s NEC to reverse the Burnham ban, they don’t have the power or influence to force it through. But the decision to bar Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from contesting the Gorton & Denton by-election is a double-edged sword. It removes a potential challenger to Starmer or his chosen successor, Wes Streeting, but at the same time it boosts the chances of the Faragists and the Greens – who are both making huge efforts to turf Labour out at the by-election in the Manchester constituency next month. And if Labour lose then Starmer’s days are numbered.

Burnham will still be out of the running. He hasn’t got a seat in Parliament and he’s never going to get one as long as Starmer & Co are in charge.

Burnham’s hope, however, is that Starmer will fall on his sword if the Labour vote collapses in Gorton & Denton and the regional and local elections that will soon follow in the Spring.

If the ‘Stop Streeting’ brigade can mount a successful challenge for the leadership – possibly through Angela Rayner – Burnham’s return to national politics and the high office he craves for is on the cards. The ‘King of the North’ has been checked. But he’s still in the game.

None of this, however, is of much benefit to the working class. At the end of the day there is little that really divides Starmer and Burnham. All we are seeing is a spat within rightwing social-democracy – a beauty contest between the third-rate bureaucrat who claims to lead us and a seasoned street-wise politician who knows how to woo the voters.

Sadly, the left response has been weak and divided. The Corbynistas are too busy locked in their own internal struggles to intervene. One of their prominente, Salma Yaqoob, is openly calling on her followers to support the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election.

Prominent Your Party member and former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob has endorsed the Greens in the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election. She is urging the left to “work together to support” the Greens who are now the bookies’ favourite to take the seat.

Though essentially a liberal-bourgeois front the Greens like to pose as ‘eco-socialists’ when gunning for votes in traditional Labour areas. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is a former Liberal-Democrat who has seen his platform grow on calls for a wealth tax, an end to arms sales to Israel, and the defence of immigrants, asylum seekers and civil liberties as a whole.

But this is still reformism – a rebrand of the left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire. Although there is a time and place for a protest vote – and Starmer definitely must go – we must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world.