𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham does not want to have to worry about the Greens when he fights the next general election. The looming by-election in Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat of Holborn and St Pancras could be a historic moment for the British Left. The decision of Green Party leader Zack Polanski to stand presents Labour with a threat and an opportunity.

If Mr Polanski wins big in the inner London seat which has been painted red since its creation in 1983, then the Greens will once again be seen as a threat to Labour on a par with the one posed by Reform UK to the Conservatives. If Mr Polanski enters the Commons, he will be able to challenge Mr Burnham directly in Prime Minister’s Questions.

But if Labour’s candidate, Camden Council leader Sagal Abdi-Wali, can utterly crush the Green leader then it will look highly unlikely that his party will return to those heady springtime days when it tied with Labour and the Conservatives.

For decades, Labour campaigners have told Left-wingers on the doorstep that a general election is a straight choice between whether you want them or the Conservatives running the country; that if your priority is keeping the Right out of power – tough! – there is no other party to support.

Labour will face a crisis the next time the country goes to the polls if once-loyal supporters are still enamoured with the Greens. It will be hard to win back former Labour voters who have drifted to Reform; that challenge may be impossible if the party is also scrambling to stop voters on the Left peeling away to support Mr Polanski.

Mr Burnham needs to deal with the Green challenge without delay. If he can push their support down to single digits then his MPs will breathe a deep sigh of relief and they will feel that the gamble of replacing Sir Keir with the former Greater Manchester Mayor is paying off.

It would be deeply cynical to suggest that finishing off the Greens was the primary reason for announcing sanctions on Israeli settlements on the West Bank but the Palestinian crisis is an electrifying issue in UK politics. In the 2024 election, both Greens and independent candidates put Gaza at the heart of their campaigns; there is no reason to think that many voters will not again think about Palestinians when they decide who to back next time.

This is dangerous territory for Labour, a party pilloried for being soft on anti-semitism during the Jeremy Corbyn era. Many Labour figures will have felt deep unease when UK Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis described the sanctions as “gesture politics” which risked emboldening “those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews”.

As the BBC reported, the Community Security Trust recorded a 21% increase in anti-Jewish hate in the first six months of this year compared with 2025. If there is any evidence that hostility to Jews is tolerated at any level of the Labour movement, Mr Burnham’s foes will accuse him of allowing Sir Keir’s clean up job to go into reverse.

But Mr Burnham’s determination to stamp on challengers from the Left goes well beyond the Middle East and tears up the Blair-Mandelson era playbook.

There was genuine shock on Wednesday when in Prime Minister’s Questions he told the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch that “national security” cannot “come at the expense of social security”.

Far from bowing to Tory demands to cut welfare to fund Britain’s rearmament in the face of the Russian threat, Mr Burnham presented himself as the champion of “social security”. His words will be repeated in speeches at the upcoming Conservative conference and will doubtless appear on campaign leaflets.

It is possible this was a gaffe but that seems unlikely from a politician of Mr Burnham’s vast experience. He gives every sign of welcoming Tory attacks which will signal to the Left that he is the defender of the welfare state that Labour did so much to build.

This does not mean he will not tack to the Right as the general election nears, but now he wants to present himself as the 21st century embodiment of Labour’s proudest values.

He is a master of realpolitik, as demonstrated by his defenestration of landslide-winner Sir Keir from outside parliament. In what looks like another naked attempt to see off the Green threat in Holborn and St Pancras, it is reported that a decision on drilling in the North Sea’s Jackdaw gas field will be delayed until after the by-election.

When it comes to securing political power, Mr Burnham is ruthless.