The same difference
So Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has won the Makerfield by-election and can now challenge Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party. If he wins, he will become new Prime Minister. So what?
Marx famously pointed out that governments were ‘a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. In Britain the Prime Minister is the chairperson of this committee which doesn’t have to be composed of actual capitalists. In Marx’s day most British Prime Ministers were not capitalists but landed aristocrats but this was acceptable as long as they managed things in the general interest of the capitalist class. In the course of the last century committee members and chairs came to be drawn from a pool of professional politicians who could come from any background. This, too, was acceptable and is the norm today.
All the governments there have been in Britain, whether Conservative or Labour or, earlier, Liberal, or a coalition of two or all three of them, have managed the common affairs of the owning class in the interests of that class. The first duty of any government is to guarantee and enforce the ownership rights of capitalists over the means of production. The second has been to ensure that priority is given to the making and accumulation of profits. These — class ownership and production for profit —are the basis of capitalism and no government has ever challenged them.
Governments have a free hand on narrowly political matters such as the structure of the state machine or what is a crime but, when it comes to the economy, its power is limited by the nature of the capitalist economy as one that runs on profits. If, in its taxation or trade or tariff or employment policies, it goes against this, then sooner or later it will provoke an economic downturn and the risk of the resulting popular discontent leading to it being voted out of office and a rival set of politicians taking over. This is enough to keep governments in line with the general capitalist interest. The Labour Party learned this the hard way while the Conservative and Liberals didn’t need to be taught it. The Green Party has yet to learn it.
If the government has to respect and apply the economic laws of capitalism then it is not all that important who is the chairperson of the board of directors of UK Capitalism PLC. It is true that there can a bad government from a capitalist point of view — one that doesn’t competently manage the common affairs of the capitalist class — and an incompetent chairperson, such as the over-confident Truss or the bumbling Starmer, can contribute to this. But that’s a problem for the capitalist class, not the workers.
Whether Starmer or Burnham is Prime Minister is not going to make the slightest difference to the workers’ subordinate position in society nor solve the problems this brings them.