The Guardian view on Keir Starmer’s control freakery: beating Reform requires risking power | Editorial

Joe Biden repeatedly said that Donald Trump was an existential threat. Yet the former US president clung on to his party’s nomination when he ought to have allowed a better candidate to take on Mr Trump. What happened next is history. There is an uncomfortable parallel in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer insists that defeating Reform UK is the overriding priority. He warns of the “fight of our lives” against a party offering “racist” policies. But when faced with a choice between maximising Labour’s chances of beating a far-right insurgent and protecting his own position, he – like Mr Biden – chose the latter.

By blocking Andy Burnham from being selected as a Labour parliamentary candidate for an upcoming byelection in Manchester, where he is a popular mayor, Sir Keir has mistaken authority for control. In politics, this desire for control usually signals fear of one’s own side. Cowardice would be to avoid risk. This is where prime ministerial pride has overridden purpose and principles. If beating Reform UK really mattered above all else, Sir Keir would deploy his strongest political weapon in the form of Mr Burnham, even if it threatened his own position. Failing to do so doesn’t just weaken the message; it reveals that the message was never really believed.

Sir Keir’s defence is that he didn’t want Mr Burnham to become an MP only for Labour to lose a mayoralty. There is a chance that that might have happened, but Mr Burnham would have surely campaigned for Labour to retain his old job. It’s hard to see how the party would have collapsed so comprehensively given that he won 214 out of 215 wards in Greater Manchester in 2024.

Labour has failed to learn the lessons of recent anti-Reform UK contests. The Runcorn and Helsby byelection, and that in the Senedd constituency of Caerphilly, suggest that defeating Reform UK is not about presenting a “sensible” policy platform. It is about leading a broad coalition of opposition: poorer voters, minorities and younger professionals. The problem is not excessive radicalism. It is about being seen as the anti-Reform UK opposition. Runcorn showed how close Labour can get when it consolidates the anti-Reform UK vote. In Wales, Labour failed to do so – and another progressive force stepped in and claimed the “change” narrative instead.

That’s the dilemma facing Labour in Gorton and Denton. Mr Burnham is a national figure capable of unifying a bloc of support on the left. He is trusted by working-class voters, acceptable to Muslim voters and popular with young professionals – precisely the mix that defines the seat. A Starmer-endorsed candidate is unlikely to inspire such a following. Instead of positioning itself atop an anti-Reform UK coalition, Labour risks fragmenting it. If the Greens and Gaza-focused candidates pull left and Reform UK captures protest votes on the right, Labour would be stranded in the middle.

Labour’s governance is not in itself illiberal; the instinct behind blocking Mr Burnham is. Insecure leaders tend to confuse unity with control and competition with risk. That habit is most fully developed in Beijing, where Xi Jinping has spent more than a decade extinguishing rival power centres. Sir Keir arrives in China having just illustrated at home a diluted version of that logic. It is not the comparison that troubles. It is the ease with which it now presents itself.