Kier Starmer has announced his resignation as Labour Party leader.  Andy Burnham is reported to have support of 200 MPs, well in excess of the 81 needed to nominate.  Wes Streeting has announced that he is not standing, presumably unable to collect that number.  No other candidates have yet come forward.

We think that there should be a left candidate, to make a real contest and enable a real debate in the Labour Party and wider labour movement about what has gone wrong, and how to change direction.  In any case, an uncontested ‘coronation’ would be damaging, looking like a closed doors ‘stitch up’ not the practice of a democratic organisation, and changing leader with no debated change in policy.

Mainstream are right to say that “What comes next must be a genuinely transformative political project. It must be bold in its offer to the country, and resolutely opposed to the internal culture of insularity and factionalism that has taken Labour to this point.”

Momentum are right to say that “The next stage of this process must be a frank and open discussion across the broad spectrum of the Labour Party on where we’ve gone wrong, and what needs be changed.”

But to enable either thing to happen, we need a left candidate in this election – someone who can link the necessary change of direction to a rebuilding of Labour Party democracy, including abolition of the National Policy Forum and a sovereign policy-making annual conference, local parties right to selection their own candidates unimpeded, mandatory reselection of MPs, and other reforms.

Someone who can challenge Burnham’s vague ‘public control’ narrative and push for public ownership, who can raise the need for the full New Deal for Workers, not just the scaled down Employment Rights Act, and who can promote the policies agreed even at the last Labour Party conference such as reversing Tory cuts and austerity, wealth tax, defence of leave to remain, and expanding collective rights for workers. 

Such a candidate may not even get 81 parliamentary nominations.  But they would provide an opportunity for a genuine debate in the party, as CLPs and unions can give that person their nomination, and push for enough MPs to join them to enable a genuine and party-building debate, not a cynical-seeming coronation.  It would enable those CLPs and unions to link those calls to support for local campaigns and strike actions, and their own initiatives.

As we said on the morning after Burnham’s election in Makerfield (a result for which we worked hard), “There is a long way to go in the Labour Party too.  As recently as February the Labour NEC ‘officers group’ – including representatives of two trades unions – voted to block Burnham from standing in Gorton and Denton, where there is no doubt that he could have won on a similar scale.  What has changed is that Labour’s right wing have decided that Burnham is the ‘unity candidate’ for leadership”.

There are a number of people coming to the fore now to pressure a Burnham leadership to the left, with initiatives such as the Mainstream-launched ‘Productive State’ report.  But what is needed is not just pressure on Burnham, but the building up of a movement – and organised left-wing in Labour and the unions, fighting for democratic control of both, a sovereign Labour Party conference, and policies that are up to the inequality and climate challenges ahead. 

As Labour MP Nadia Whittome has said, “When Keir stood to be Labour leader in 2020, he ran on a platform that largely had my support. That platform – which included taxing the rich, public ownership, putting human rights at the heart of foreign policy, and defending migrants’ rights – came far closer to meeting the demands of our times than the direction in which he took the party afterwards. We should return to those ideas and our party’s core values, while restoring party democracy to safeguard against the same errors being made in the future.”

With or without a left candidate, fighting for that is still our task, but it would set the movement up better for those challenges to come if this opportunity is used effectively.

Keir Starmer’s email to Labour members says he is asking Labour’s NEC to set a timetable for nominations for his successor to open on July 9th, and conclude by the parliamentary summer recess, July 16th.

This would give just one week for MPs, CLPs, affiliated trades unions and affiliated socialist societies to make their nominations – unless Starmer is referring to MPs only, neglecting the rights in the Labour Party rule book for those other party bodies to nominate the Labour MP of their choice.

The NEC is meeting today and tomorrow to shortlist for Labour candidate for GM Mayor, and will presumably decide on the leadership election arrangements at the same time.

Socialists in Labour and the unions should push now for a real contest.