SOCIALISTS both inside and outside the Labour Party need to be intervening to help shape the political atmosphere around the impending change in government.

It now seems certain that former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham will become the next Prime Minister, most likely without a contest. 

Certainly, few pulses will have been quickened by the prospect of Chief Secretary to the premier Darren Jones putting himself forward as the “continuity Starmerism” candidate, continuity with the outgoing regime being the last thing anyone is calling for.

Burnham himself is a blank piece of paper onto which everyone in Labour projects what they most want to see. He was firmly in the New Labour mainstream during the Blair-Brown governments, lurched to the right during his own leadership bid in 2015 but then reinvented himself as an interventionist mayor in Manchester, within the considerable limitations of the post.

In recent weeks, as he was seeking election in Makerfield, he articulated a range of positions – on standing up to the bond market, on electoral reform, on justice for the Waspi women – only to walk them back almost immediately.

Given that Keir Starmer was partially undone by his endless U-turns, this is hardly reassuring, given that Burnham has not even been subjected to the full-force pressure of vested interest that will be brought to bear on him in Downing Street.

The fact that he appears an amiable human may make a refreshing change from Starmer, but it is not on its own sufficient to govern successfully.

Hence the need for the left to be applying pressure of its own during this transitional period, when a Burnham premiership is still being shaped.

What is Burnham’s attitude to the Treasury fiscal rules which mandate more austerity, unless he is prepared to grasp the nettle of increased taxes on big business and the wealthy?

Will he sign up to the Trump-ordered war drive, devoting an ever-growing share of national wealth to the military and the big arms monopolies?

How will he tackle the cost-of-living crisis afflicting millions? What will he do to get Labour’s stalled house-building programme moving again?

Will he finish the job on the new deal for working people and scrap the laws which continue to inhibit trade union action?

Will he reverse Starmerite authoritarianism, including lifting the proscription of Palestine Action as “terrorists,” and reversing Shabana Mahmood’s measures directed at legal migrants living and working here?

Does his commitment to “public control” over the key utilities mean, as it should, public ownership or souped-up regulation?

Will this former member of Labour Friends of Israel halt all arms sales to the Netanyahu regime and impose real sanctions on Israel to force compliance with international law in the occupied Palestinian territories and beyond?

The left has clear answers to these questions. Andy Burnham does not. The Socialist Campaign Group seems disinclined to run a candidate and, indeed, it would be impossible for any such challenger to progress to the ballot under the Starmerite anti-left rules adopted in 2021.

But it should mount a clear campaign around left policies to shape the environment under the new government. Blank cheques are bad politics.

The right wing is showing no inhibitions, with Wes Streeting coupling his endorsement of Burnham with familiar calls for “progressive capitalism,” a phrase which grows more oxymoronic with each passing month.

If the left is not to seem irrelevant its voice needs to be heard urgently, championing the complete shift in orientation which is needed if Burnham is not to prove simply an interlude before Farage, Badenoch and Lowe install the most right-wing government in Britain for two centuries.