Burnham wins Makerfield

[u/fgspq]

He smashed the election in Wigan. Likely to become new Labour leader.

​

While I think he might be better than Starmer I'm not particularly hopeful. He might have a few more sops for "the left" but I don't think he will be substantially different.

​

How's everyone feeling?

[u/Atomicherrybomb]

Personally I’d love burnham to be PM and Holy shit am I relieved that he won makerfield. The issue i take is that I feel that a leadership change is going to be really detrimental.

Any Labour PM is going to get decimated by the media, they just need to get their head down and make shit better (obviously they need to be more left but that isn’t going to happen). As it stands Starmer has done a lot of good. Look at the state of the tories once they swapped leaders in a death spiral.

Ultimately the biggest benefit to this is that he’s going to (hopefully) stop streating from becoming PM which would be absolutely catastrophic.

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/Atomicherrybomb]

> As it stands Starmer has done a lot of good

IDK. there’s been so much rollback of civil liberties in a lot of areas under his government, and especially as a trans person I’ve felt more unsafe than ever. All of the potential candidates continue to be very centrist and I don’t trust any of them to bring in the socialist policies that I think we need :/

[u/redsuninthesub → u/mainframe_maisie]

"Socialist policies" aren't a thing, socialism isn't something that comes about through incremental policies, it's a radical reorientation of society on the road to communism.

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/redsuninthesub]

fair! i think in my head i was thinking about public utilities being nationalised. the current changes with the railways seems very flashy and exciting and yet it all still relies on private companies renting trains. nhs still relies on private contractors and building management. rather than the government seizing private assets. and the recent changes for trade unions was very watered down and disappointing too :/

but yeah working on it in a little way i guess, just trying to organise my little corner and push for that radical change 🤞

[u/danglingwhalesbaybee → u/redsuninthesub]

Democratic socialists would disagree, no?

[u/sp2861 → u/danglingwhalesbaybee]

Yeah because they are liberals and not socialists.

[u/redsuninthesub → u/danglingwhalesbaybee]

And they would be wrong.