“Support doesn’t mean subservience” – Labour left backs Burnham but vows to hold him to account

Labour’s left gathered for its flagship fringe rally in Liverpool on Tuesday evening in a mood few would have predicted a year ago: upbeat, confident and claiming victory.

Hours earlier, Andy Burnham had used his speech to conference to set out an ambition to end 40 years of neoliberalism. Speaker after speaker at the Socialist Campaign Group rally welcomed it – then made clear the left would judge the government on what it does, not what it says.

Chairing the rally, Rebecca Long-Bailey, the group’s secretary and MP for Salford, joked that the group was considering disbanding after hearing the prime minister. Then she struck a more serious note. She said: “The left has not been defeated. We are still here. And so are our ideas.”

Launching the group’s new pamphlet, The Socialist Policies We Need, she joked that copies would be worth a lot of money in the future.

Andrea Egan, general secretary of Unison, set the tone for the union speakers. She said: “Support doesn’t mean subservience. We will hold Andy and the government to account.” Egan said Burnham’s ambition to end neoliberalism depended on bold action, including investment in public services and a wealth tax. “Working people cannot be allowed to pay for the crisis,” she said.

She also demanded an end to attacks on migrant workers. She said: “It is unacceptable to tear up contracts of migrant workers. We will not allow it to happen.” Egan also blamed Labour’s “rotten internal culture” for past mistakes. She called on the new leadership to “walk the walk” on party democracy and give members the respect they deserve.

Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, (pictured above) said: “The PM said stuff today that I never thought I’d ever hear a prime minister say. It’s a start. And that’s significant.” But he warned that good vibes were not enough and that Burnham “will have political choices to make”. Byrne, who champions the Right to Food campaign, said political choices had destroyed communities – and that people had not been left behind so much as deinvested in.

Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East, said Burnham had got the diagnosis right and the government now had to act on it. The right’s ideas were a dead end, she said, that would only let those responsible for the crisis off the hook.

Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, said that under Keir Starmer a Trump-style far-right government had felt inevitable. That was no longer the case, he said, but the country still needed “a fundamental and irreversible shift in wealth”. He said: “The left’s role is not to be a cheerleader for any one leader.” The task now, Burgon said, was to turn Burnham’s language on ending neoliberalism into reality and avoid repeating the mistakes of the Starmer era.

Andy McDonald, MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, urged the room to take the prime minister’s words as a victory, saying much of what the left had argued for was now mainstream. He hit out at Starmer’s record, criticising the comments he made on leaving the leadership about Labour being a bankrupt organisation, financially as well as morally. He accused Starmer of moral bankruptcy on Gaza and attacked his appointment of Peter Mandelson and his treatment of Jeremy Corbyn.

McDonald welcomed the Employment Rights Act as “a big step forward”, but said sectoral collective bargaining was still needed to raise wages.

Brian Leishman, MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, summed up the balance most speakers struck. He said: “A lot I agreed with from Andy today and we should support that, but the stuff we don’t needs to be questioned, revised and opposed.”

The sharpest criticism was reserved for the government’s approach to migration. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, (pictured above) welcomed Burnham’s care pledge but said Labour’s policy on immigrants was “still wrong and deeply racist”. She said: “You won’t solve social care if you drive out the people holding it up.” She cited the case of Jason Arday as an example of what can happen when a racist climate is created.

Kim Johnson, MP for Liverpool Riverside, said: “I hope Andy means what he says.” She said she was disappointed that Shabana Mahmood was home secretary, adding: “People involved in non-violent protest are being arrested while rampaging black-shirted mobs are allowed to continue unhindered.”

Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, spoke about the Insource Now campaign, which represents workers on poverty wages while their bosses earn seven-figure salaries. On the scapegoating of migrants, she said: “It’s racist. And it needs to stop.”

Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “We need to move on from neoliberalism but we need to replace it with socialism.” He called for more teachers, nurses, care workers and firefighters.

Labour NEC member Jess Barnard thanked supporters who had opposed her suspension from the party. She described a hostile period for the left but said: “We are still fighting and we are not going anywhere.” The policies the left had been putting forward were now being applauded, she said, but the left would have to take on the corporations that will oppose change. She stressed the need for green jobs and appealed to people who had left the party to come back. Gemma Bolton, another member of Labour’s national executive committee, stressed the importance of changing the party’s leadership.

Closing the rally and typically speaking without a microphone, Ian Lavery, MP for Blyth and Ashington, reminded the room that Labour had 600,000 members under Jeremy Corbyn – a mass movement that had hoped to reach a million. It was “political claptrap” to claim Labour and the left had been failing then, he said. The 2017 and 2019 manifestos were the best Labour had ever had, “but we were fighting against our own team”.

Lavery, who spoke about how his years in the pits shaped his values, warned that despite Burnham’s arrival the faces around the Cabinet table were very similar to those under Starmer. Hundreds of good socialists had been kicked out under Starmer, he said, and they should be welcomed back.

He also took aim at Reform UK. He said: “They are not an alternative for working-class people.” Lavery said: “Without the Socialist Campaign Group I don’t think I would still be an MP. And without the activities of our group then Starmer would still be prime minister.”

He said: “The left has been on the rocks but now we’re on the life raft.” Labour now had to deliver for ordinary people, he added: “I’m bothered about those people, our people, not the bond markets.”

Long-Bailey closed the evening by declaring that the Labour Party was reclaiming its soul. The mood in the room was clear. Burnham’s speech was a win worth celebrating – but no one there thought the fight was over.