"No Second Chance": Why Labour Cannot Save Us
There is no liberal social democratic scenario left. That disappeared twenty years ago, and no leadership change will bring it back.
Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election last night with 55% of the vote, defeating the right-wing Reform UK's Robert Kenyon by 9,231 votes. In his victory speech, Burnham warned Labour it had a "final chance to change" — that there would be "no second chance." He's right that there's no second chance, but there was never a first chance for this failed party. Here's why.
Hannah Al-Othman and Josh Halliday
In 2015, I, along with others, was making good progress in creating a new movement party which would build bottom-up community power and mobilise the under-30s. Then Corbyn became leader, tens of thousands of young people joined the Labour Party, and the new political project collapsed. Within a year or two, those young people were leaving, having been used and abused. I said it at the time, and I say it again now — there is not a chance in fucking hell that the Labour Party can respond to the objective conditions of the present historical moment, for the following structural reasons:
- The Labour Party has been going for over 100 years. It is institutionally toxic and Stalinist in its culture. Culture trumps strategy and leadership. There is overwhelming evidence that such organisations cannot be reformed. The only option is to set up an alternative.
- The rich now have so much power they cannot be overcome by any neo-liberal or reformist political project. They own Mayfair and Park Lane — it is mathematically impossible to win by following the rules of the Monopoly game. You have to change the rules themselves. Labour will never do this.
- Next year the world will most likely hit 1.7°C above pre-industrial temperatures. Runaway climate collapse is effectively locked in. Neo-liberal regimes have zero chance of surviving the social and political fallout. The centre will not hold. It has been left way too late.
The future is a populist democratic socialism or varieties of fascist barbarism. This realisation is not ideological — it's material, it's physical. It's about money and physics. Burnham has no chance. No chance at all.
There is no fucking hope. Only once that is accepted will any real hope exist.
Sources
- Martin Forde KC, The Forde Report, Labour Party, 2022 — the party's own independent inquiry, which concluded that a culture of factionalism caused serious failures of governance and allowed discriminatory behaviour to go unchallenged.
- Available at labour.org.uk/resources/the-forde-report.
- For the longer history of Labour's internal divisions, see also: Constitution Society, A Very Short History of the Labour Party, 2025, consoc.org.uk/history-of-the-labour-party.
- Oxfam GB, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, January 2026 — documents that in the UK the richest 56 people hold more wealth than 27 million combined, that billionaires are an estimated 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens, and that global billionaire wealth grew 16% in 2025 alone, three times faster than the previous five-year average. oxfam.org.uk
- James Hansen et al., temperature forecast cited in Carbon Brief, December 2025 (theclimatebrink.com); WMO, Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update 2026–2035, June 2026, which puts annual global temperatures for 2026–2030 in the range of 1.3°C to 1.9°C above pre-industrial levels and gives a 91% probability of at least one year temporarily exceeding 1.5°C. wmo.int
If the Labour Party won't build power in communities, we have to do it ourselves. On 11 July in London, organisers and neighbours are coming together to do exactly that — running assemblies, creating campaigns, working across groups to build resilience before the political situation gets worse. This is free, ticketed, and open to anyone who wants to get involved rather than just watch.
If you are not in the London area, below are recordings from last month's Festival of Revolutions, and upcoming events where you can hear more and get involved directly in revolution.
If a video or workshop isn't enough, there are several longer programmes running over the summer: a Collaborative Leadership Summer Intensive with Resilient Uprising in early July; an Introduction to Sacred Activism later that month; and a Strategic Leadership Intensive with Resilient Uprising in October. Full details and registration for all of these are on the events page.