If the Makerfield MP is to be our next PM, he needs some immediate and memorable cost of living policies to avoid his predecessor’s fatePause here before we rush headlong into the turbulent future. Stop and inhale last week’s rare political triumph, revel in the sunshine of cheery optimism. It was a precious but unfamiliar sensation when life on the progressive side of politics in Britain is so often a litany of hopes dashed and disappointments.Andy Burnham’s comprehensive victory in the Makerfield byelection, surpassing expectations, was a precious moment. He demolished £5m-Nigel Farage’s party of loathsome Reformers, whose every election candidate seems more repugnant than the last. Hostile hard-right politics in Britain needs defeating time and time again, every time nativists and hate-stirrers – from Enoch Powell to the BNP – erupt in our politics. Continue reading...
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/21/andy-burnham-labour-leadership-keir-starmer
