Green leader Zack Polanski has asked the uninspiring Andy Burnham three key questions as he hopes to take over from callous corporate lackey Keir Starmer as prime minister.
Polanski’s three questions for Burnham
The questions Polanski hopes the new Labour MP for Makerfield will answer are:
Are you willing to tax wealth fairly?
Are you willing to bring our water companies and public services into nationalisation and public ownership?
And are you willing to bring in proportional representation so we can have a fair voting system and a better politics that represents everybody?
But Polanski doesn’t think Burnham has been at all convincing so far, insisting that the “jury’s out on those questions.” So far, Polanski is the only leader pressing for these answers.
As we reported before Burnham’s by-election win, the Labour leadership hopeful has failed to make firm, meaningful promises on public ownership and electoral reform. And we’ll have to wait and see just how much he really wants fairer taxation, as he claims to. And Polanski isn’t afraid to call it out.
People in our country are desperate for change.
More of the same just won't cut it.
And from the Inequality crisis to the climate crisis – time is running out. pic.twitter.com/Ipfkvz6iSS
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) June 23, 2026
The Labour right’s defence settler-colonial genocide
Polanski also highlighted that part of Starmer’s legacy is his complicity with Israel’s settler-colonial genocide, saying:
We’ve seen years of a genocide that the Labour government have refused to call a genocide.
Starmer hasn’t just gone against the expert consensus by denying Israeli war crimes in Gaza are genocide. He hasn’t just invited genocide-inciters to Downing Street. He has also continued to send spy flights over Gaza while trying to criminalise and crush non-violent opposition to the genocide. Polanski has confronted these issued head on.
Not one MSM account of his premiership—left, centre, right—will mention his participation in genocide
Propaganda by omission is how they brainwash
Those who write the history books do same thing
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting pic.twitter.com/LCc9UX7rGQ
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) June 22, 2026
Starmer’s Israel-critical acts were gestures masking the UK’s fundamental political, military and economic collaboration with Israel during the genocide.
Starmer ran RAF surveillance flights for Israel, exempted F-35 parts from the arms ban, bought Israeli weapons, protected… https://t.co/07moAxaNzA
— Martin Shaw (@martinshawx) June 22, 2026
Unsurprisingly for someone who was once a Labour Friend of Israel and got money from the lobby group, Andy Burnham has also refused to speak out clearly against Israel’s genocide. That’s why it seems doubtful that his foreign policy positions would be any less immoral than Starmer’s.
Congratulations to @AndyBurnhamGM on his victory in the Makerfield by-election.
We look forward to working with you as you return to the Commons and wish you well as the new Labour MP for Makerfield. https://t.co/7HjUtTWMNA
— Labour Friends of Israel (@_LFI) June 19, 2026
Back in 2015, Burnham even said his first foreign visit as Labour leader would be to Israel:
Will Burnham heed Polanski’s warning?
The Labour right’s vacuous transformation of the party into a lapdog for US and corporate interests under Keir Starmer has all but destroyed it. Labour has haemorrhaged votes under his leadership, with a massive chunk of 2024 Labour voters going Green in the 2026 local elections.
We doubt Burnham will be better than Starmer in any meaningful way. But if he wants Labour to exist in the future, he would do well to listen to Polanski and give clear, positive answers to his three big questions. Because if he doesn’t, he may just be the last leader the Labour Party ever has.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
