Sir Keir Starmer won the 2024 general elections with a landslide, ending the close to two-decade rule of the Conservative Party. He promised to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, which saw many Brits choose between heating and eating, and solve the immigration challenge that Brexit caused, amongst many other electoral promises.
Barely two years down the line, critics and political opponents dismissed his government as visionless as well as directionless. Unemployment soared, as well as a rise in poverty and crime.
The Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, also accused him of being too soft on immigration, to which Starmer responded by tinkering with the idea of increasing the length of time to obtain the indefinite leave to remain from five years to ten. Despite the proposed change, the opposition still felt that he was not hard enough on immigration.
Then came the Peter Mandelson scandal, where the former Ambassador of the UK to the US, Peter Mandelson, was involved in the late Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which involved sex with underage girls trafficked from overseas.
Mandelson resigned dishonourably when the media blew it, and his lucrative consulting firm was immediately wound up as a result of the scandal. However, Starmer insisted that he wasn’t aware of Mandelson’s misdeeds despite overwhelming evidence that showed that his office was reliably informed before he made the highly controversial appointment.
Starmer made it clear that he wasn’t going to resign and surreptitiously behaved like a sit-tight African leader by attempting to sit tight in office despite the internal and external pressure on him to throw in the towel.
Eventually, on Monday, June 22nd, he bowed to public pressure and announced his resignation.
It is on record that Andy Burnham, his much-touted successor, was stopped from contesting for the Labour Party leadership, which made him step down as an MP and become the Mayor of Greater Manchester between 2017 and 2026.
His coming back as an MP representing Makerfield scared Starmer as the former was ready to challenge the Prime Minister for the party’s leadership.
If Burnham becomes the Prime Minister in July this year, he should pay close attention to the raging cost-of-living crisis, which has greatly impoverished millions of Brits. He should focus on the aftermath of Brexit, which has greatly weakened the British economy. Immigration should also be an issue that he should critically look at. The extension of the length of time taken to get the indefinite leave to remain should be left at five years, as it amounts to the shifting of the goal post in the middle of the match if it is increased to ten years. Moreover, the UK is a multicultural society that is heavily reliant on the great contributions made by immigrants, and so should still be made attractive to immigrants from far and wide who bring in their expertise to develop the country that was once the world’s greatest empire for centuries.
The UK is now a services economy and no longer an industrial one, which makes highly qualified immigrants a sine qua non in the new British economic order. Look at the universities, for instance, many are closing shops because the immigration policies are no longer attracting foreign students.
The economy is a time bomb if immigration isn’t handled with tact.
Over to you, Burnham!
