By Richie Venton, SSP national trade union organiser
In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar refused the crown thrice before accepting it, in a display of false modesty to seize political power with public backing.
Andy Burnham hasn’t been so coy in his ambitions; he reached out for the crown three times (2010, 2015, 2026) and now the ‘King of the North’ is gearing up for his coronation as the UK’s seventh Prime Minister in 10 years – itself the product of growing political and economic instability and crisis in British capitalism.
Closer to home, the SNP’s Stephen Flynn gifted the Tories Aberdeen South, by triggering the by-election, in his undoubted ambition to replace or succeed John Swinney as ‘King of the Real North’.
What does all this political ambition and manoeuvring mean to millions of people battling to survive the cost of living, escalating wars, and the galloping climate catastrophe, highlighted by temperatures exceeding 45°C this week in Europe?
Burnham’s fake radicalism
Keir Starmer’s Labour government has betrayed the hopes of millions, many of whom will respond to his resignation with ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’.
But what of Andy Burnham? As I’ve warned in several articles and videos for weeks, beware of Burnham fakery and pretend radicalism!
His history and current statements are warnings to expect the same acceptance of the dictatorship of the multinationals, international moneybags, and warmongers’ demands for investment in Britain’s has-been imperialism.
As an MP under Tony Blair, Burnham voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq and twice against an inquiry into it; abstained on vicious Tory welfare cuts; as Health Minister helped implement Blair and Gordon Brown’s socially destructive Private Finance Initiative in hospitals and schools.
He was prominent in Labour Friends of Israel, and in a previous bid to become Labour leader said as Prime Minister his first trip would be to Israel. Last week, he refused to call the Gaza slaughter a genocide and declared he “would not be squeamish about cutting welfare benefits” to help fund increased defence (that is, war) spending.
‘Change’ – or more of the same?
While making the right noises about ‘change’, the failure of trickle-down economics, and for an economy for the many, he has publicly declared his adherence to the Labour government’s fiscal rules – a political invention, not some iron law of economics, which inevitably dictates cuts to jobs and services.
He’s said not a word about a wealth tax on the millionaires, nor clear-cut calls for democratic public ownership of energy, water, transport, construction or agri-business – which would be required to cut bills on food, rent, energy or public transport.
We certainly cannot expect any genuine socialist change from a Labour PM and government in hock to big business, ideologically imprisoned by their belief in the continuation of the profit-driven capitalist dictatorship over our lives.
The accent and communication skills may be different, the ability to fool some of the people a lot of the time finessed, but expect no fundamental rupture with capitalist Labour under Burnham.
What’s on offer from the SNP?
So what alternatives are on offer in Scotland?
For now, let’s park discussion of Holyrood’s planned, savage cuts to the public sector, threatening cuts to 20,000 jobs and vital services in working-class communities – dictated by Westminster austerity, devolved by an SNP government which capitulates instead of defying them with a No Cuts Budget and mass campaign to win back the billions stolen from Scotland’s block grant funding; refuses to slap a wealth tax on millionaires, or axe the Council Tax and implement the Scottish Socialist Party’s progressive alternative Scottish Service Tax, which last year would have raised an additional £2.6billion for local jobs and services.
Aberdeen South by-election
This lack of courage, vision and readiness to tax the rich and confront the rule of the moneybags applies to every major issue we face, including those thrown up by the Tory victory in Aberdeen South.
Triggered by Stephen Flynn’s ambitions to become an MSP and then First Minister, this by-election saw mass abstention, a collapse in Labour and SNP votes, and tactical coalescence of the right around the Tories.
Apart from the longstanding Tory base in parts of the seat, this victory was heavily based on the lie the Tories could create jobs and sort out the energy crisis by a Trumpian ‘drill, baby, drill’ approach to the North Sea.
SNP and Big Oil
The context, and the response of Flynn, now SNP Cabinet member in charge of Economy, really does go beyond the murky manoeuvres of ambitious politicians to crunch issues of jobs, household energy bills, investment in communities, and tackling the climate catastrophe in our corner of the globe.
Back in the day, we had the nationalised British National Oil Corporation, then scrapped by privatisation in 1982, handing the fabulous wealth of Scotland’s ‘black gold’ to a gang of multinational capitalist profiteers such as Shell and BP, famed for polluting the planet for profit, without even providing the compensation of tax revenue or stable jobs.
For example, in 2010-2017, ten oil companies together paid not one penny in UK taxes but received over £2 billion from the UK government; state-subsidised profiteering.
‘Negative taxes’, job cuts and pollution
Capitalist ownership has meant the slaughter of thousands of jobs every year and the closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery.
Scientists in the UN’s IPCC August 2021 Report warned that 64-84% of all CO2 emissions are directly related to fossil fuel combustion, so there is no way to reverse the growing climate catastrophe without stopping the burning of fossil fuels.
In March 2026, Oxford University experts rubbished the claim that expanded North Sea oil production is the way to lower household bills as “sheer fantasy” and reminded us that the notion increasingly advocated by some SNP government figures of granting licences on an environmentally tested case-by-case basis is arrant nonsense.
As I wrote in the SSP’s book Socialist Change not Climate Change, “UK and Scottish government policies take no account whatsoever of the fact emissions from the actual burning of fossil fuels, as opposed to their extraction, is at least 30 times greater. Or according to some analysts, ‘downstream emissions’ account for 90-95% of total emissions.”
‘No greater friend’ of Big Oil
On becoming an MSP, Flynn promised the oil industry would have “no greater friend in Holyrood”.
The SNP have increasingly denounced Labour’s windfall tax on oil and gas multinationals’ profits, but in 2021 abandoned their previous promise of even a token public energy company (in collaboration with the Scottish Greens).
In 2022 the SNP/Green coalition sold off ScotWind licences for 17 gigantic offshore windfarm sites for buttons, to a clutch of multinationals, granting 20% of the total to Shell and BP.
Economists calculated that if this phenomenally rich source of renewable energy had instead been tapped into under public ownership it would have provided £5.5 billion a year to Scottish Government funds.
Hot air and unemployment
Instead of striking out with the bold vision of public ownership, under workers’ control to rapidly implement a worker-led green transition, the Scottish Government has alienated thousands of oil workers and others with a lot of hot air about a ‘Just Transition’ but no industrial strategy to harness Scotland’s natural advantages in the creation of green, sustainable jobs and cheaper household energy bills.
They have left the fate of hundreds of thousands of workers in the hands of fossil fuel capitalists. The danger now is they’ll begin to echo the Tories’ demands for expanded fossil fuel production – adding to environmental disaster – instead of reassuring North Sea and Grangemouth workers with decisive action to guarantee them jobs, without loss of earnings or conditions, in a properly planned green re-industrialisation of Scotland.
Public ownership under workers’ control
Democratic public ownership of energy is a concept alien to the leadership of the SNP (in common with Labour) but it is the only concrete answer to the inseparable tasks of securing jobs, cutting household heating bills, and beginning to reverse the environmental disaster created by fossil fuel capitalists’ profiteering.
If you still harbour doubts, look at some illustrative facts.
Case studies in public ownership
In Argyll and Bute, the privately owned Beinn an Tuirc windfarm (run by Scottish Power) returns £2,500 to the local community for every MW generated. Tilley windfarm – owned by Tiree Community Development Trust – returns 100 times as much to the local community: £263,000 per MW generated!
Extensive analysis in different reports by several organisations – including Platform, FOES and Greenpeace – demonstrates that with the right policies and planning together with the unions, a genuinely Just Transition could create more than 3 new jobs for every one North Sea oil and gas job at risk.
Five years ago, the STUC’s ‘Green Jobs in Scotland’ research demonstrated how up to 70,000 new green jobs could be created.
Socialist Green New Deal
It’s a question of ownership and control, which is why the SSP will steadfastly oppose moves by Stephen Flynn or others to expand fossil fuel capitalism, with all the job insecurity, increased heating bills and climate catastrophe which ensue.
We will continue to advocate democratic public ownership and workers’ control to harness the expertise of energy workers themselves in a rapid, urgently needed green transition.
There is no need to choose between good jobs, affordable energy and clean air; they are solved hand-in-hand in the Socialist Green New Deal we advocate.