An Open Letter to Andy Burnham

Official portrait, 2026. Photograph Alecsandra Dragoi, No 10 Downing Street

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Dear Andy Burnham,

I suppose becoming Prime Minister is something that you really worked hard for. And you, a realist and a good communicator, have quite an admirable track record on some things. Apparently you did well as the mayor of Manchester.

So, when you replaced Keir Starmer, we had hopes for you. Maybe it’s still worth hoping. Can I appeal to you?

So, let’s remember: Starmer was quite respected too. Before he became Prime Minister, being the Chief Prosecutor, he led the case for McDonald’s workers. People who worked with him said he was a decent guy. He didn’t come from a rich family; you don’t get to the position of Crown Prosecutor by being incompetent.

Now, you’ve never been a stellar professional in any way outside of politics, unlike Starmer. Starmer’s political career was underwritten by what we assumed to be high competence.

And yet Starmer, when he got into government, almost like the cliché PM of the TV series Yes, Prime Minister, found himself working within quite strict parameters, those set by the British civil service, of which he was once a member.

And the British Civil Service is the gold hallmark of all civil services. I know this is true because I was friends with the Chief Auditor of the Korean government; the South Korean government. The South Korean government is famously extraordinarily corrupt. It is built into the system there. The wheels of government are oiled by deals made with the powerful chaebol companies who led the South Korean miracle of accelerated development.

My friend had decided to come to Britain to learn how the British government was audited and how we kept ourselves more honest; although you could argue that the system itself is still quite corrupt because of promises unspoken of jobs and speaking engagements and other opportunities that arise from playing your cards right in office; nudge nudge, wink wink offers made the people who have the power and the money in our society, mainly aligning with the interests of the USA.

Even so, if you look at the base level of British society, you see that the majority of people are enormously decent; volunteering, setting up food banks, and whenever their heartstrings are pulled, they donate and help.

If I look around me, I’m living in a relatively peaceful society. I know some people sell dope down the road, though I can’t prove it. And some lead was stolen from our roofing three years ago, and last year a house was robbed. But in the suburbs of London there’s no knife crime that I’ve ever seen, and everyone crowds onto the privatised bus service and offers their seats to old and infirm people, or they stand peacefully carrying their shopping.

And in London, we all live side by side, all Londoners, as Londoners have always done: including people of mixed parentage, starting with the London Irish, London Scots, London Welsh, London Cornish and London Northerners. London is the world city. We are all London here and we have a good mayor (as you were a good mayor in Manchester) in Sadiq Khan. There are London French, London Spanish, London Ukrainians, London Polish, London Koreans, London Caribbeans, London Chinese, London Russians, London Sudanese, London Nigerians. And the list goes on and on and on.

And after one generation, everyone generally blends in very well, starting with sharing school.

Of course, to some extent, London is ghettoised. That’s wrong. It’s something of a failure, when people huddle together for protection, when they congregate, and don’t integrate.

Wasn’t it always a plan to put council estates together alongside expensive housing to integrate the different classes of British society and create more of a sense of a socially united social fabric? So it was disappointing when ESOL provision was reduced for newcomers to Britain, because the more helpful and open-armed we are, the sooner people integrate and participate. But there should be a strong and concerted policy to disrupt ghettoisation.

So you weren’t voted in, Andy, and you don’t really have a mandate, though you may have good ideas.

My advice to you is: until you get the backing of the electorate, tread water. Don’t get rid of the triple lock on pensions. Don’t threaten to start a war with Russia, or allow generals to do so, or commit vast amounts of money like Starmer, that would otherwise go on useful things like infrastructure and housing and social programmes, to supporting a deeply corrupt and compromised right-wing regime in Ukraine. You are not a bloodthirsty pirate like Boris Johnson, aka Spaffer.

Look, Andy, you and I know, and everybody knows, that the Ukraine war is a US project designed to regime-change Putin, to get a Yeltsin and start to pillage Russian resources again.

Everyone knows this, you know it, I know it, the Americans know it. Anyone who knows anything about the situation in Ukraine knows it. Stop supporting it.

Also, how cruel is it to push people towards their deaths? Without exaggeration, between two and three million Ukrainians have been killed by a larger, better armed country than Ukraine. NATO has utilised Ukraine as its proxy. The whole country of Ukraine is devastated. To egg them on into greater destruction is not only to risk World War III and the possible annihilation of Europe itself, but it shows a complete disregard for the lives of Ukrainians.

Again, all propaganda and paid tosh from the CIA aside, let’s not pretend. We all know this, we should all admit this is what is happening even at this stage when everything is just about to go tits up.

We know that the execrable Pete Hegseth said in a speech that it was the job of the Europeans to fight Russia. Ukraine was the USA’s proxy in its attempt to find capitalist Lebensraum in Eurasia, and now it wants to crash Europe onto the rocks too and make us into its larger proxy (in the process eliminating Europe as a united economic rival).

With utter disregard for our European well-being and lives, the powerful interests in the USA want to use 550 million Europeans to erode the military power of Russia. Not one data centre in the US will be hit, not a single power station, no industrial facilities, no train stations or airports or logistical centres or distribution depots. Instead the Americans want us to do it for them. To be their patsies.

And by the way, who are these people running around in the European Union that nobody voted for promising weapons and war? Who are they? Why do you let them? You (almost) democratically represent the UK, but they don’t represent anyone. They were appointed, they weren’t voted in.

Nobody wants this war. Nobody wants an expansion of this war. Who do you think will sign up to fight it for the USA in the UK for the USA’s billionaire class?

Why do you think Macron’s ratings are so goddamn low? Why do you think Starmer had to resign? Why do you think every single European leader is now in danger of being thrown out on their arse?

And the reason why is because none of us, none of Britain’s citizens, none of Europe’s citizens, want to go up to the edge of a cliff and jump over it, or even think of doing so.

What? In the hope that Russia will back down over what is, to Russia, obviously an existential question.

In one way or another Britain has sent up to 250 billion pounds’ worth to Ukraine. Do you think the voting public don’t understand that that 250 billion goes to the corrupt US military establishment, that that 250 billion is laundered in Ukraine via the most corrupt government ever to exist on this planet, with the possible exception of Mexico?

And we also know who Zelensky is. He’s a little British controlled Muppet. All of his speeches are scripted in bloody Vauxhall by MI6 in consultation with the CIA. We know this, Andy. We all know it.

What you’re counting on is that nobody’s going to hold you to account. It’s a disgusting impunity that you can feel that you can go around and start a war against the wishes of the British people. This is not your ‘realism’. These are not ‘rational’ compromises.

And do you think ordinary people actually read the billionaire press any more? From the Mail (that rag) to the Telegraph? Even The Guardian is on board with the regime-change in Russia project because they imagine the collapse of Russia is in Britain’s interest.

You think people want to send their kids to war? You think people want to sacrifice heating or transport or food while Trump is carrying out the controlled demolition of the global economy by blocking off the Strait of Hormuz? You think that this is in the interests of ordinary people? You think that supporting Trump, that evil clown, you are being a realist? Come off it!

Andy, what’s your life worth against all the other lives being destroyed now and possibly about to be destroyed? Why can’t you take a principled stand instead of a crazed warmongering ‘realist’ stand?

To be a politician, and to be a realist, does that mean you have to lose your soul? Why can’t you do what’s right? We’re not asking you to be a Burnham Allende and to go out to face Trump Pinochet. We’re asking you to show a bit of backbone and act in the interests of your own country and your own continent.

Pull us back from the abyss of war one way or another. Strike out and make a real deal with the Russian Federation. If Johnson had not torpedoed the Minsk accords, only the 14,000 Ukrainians in the Donbass would be dead by now (those who wanted to secede). Ukraine would only have lost the Crimea. But now it is on the point of losing everything.

Military Keynesianism does not work. You think you’re going to get technology and AI will spark a green revolution as a by-product or some such rubbish? You think you’re going to get spin-offs? You think you’re going to get British manufacturing industry back through military Keynesianism?

But these are not machine tools, these are things that blow up and are destroyed. If you invest in the military-industrial sector, we’re not going to get the basis of a new industrial society.

And you’ve got to know this too: the game we’re all playing here is a game of self-deception, and Blair was the archetypal self-deceiver. Does Blair, Mr. Mephistopheles, phone you up and tell you what he thinks you should do?

Come on, Andy. Maybe you don’t believe in God, maybe you don’t believe you have an immortal soul, maybe you don’t believe in anything much. But for the sake of millions and millions of British people, and millions of Ukrainians, and millions of Europeans, grow a fucking backbone. And sue for peace and a new security architecture for Eurasia. Lead Europe into a real peace, not into a huge new US proxy war that could end up in our annihilation.

I write you this in hope that you will read it, but with little expectation. I write this to you because it is my duty to do so for the sake of the safety and wellbeing of my children and grandchildren and wife and entire family and all my friends and compatriots and the people of Europe and Ukraine, where I studied and then worked.

In Friendship,

Philip Hall Steinhardt.