Keir Starmer will pack up his desk and exit Downing Street on Monday, without even the sweetener of watching England in a World Cup final. In the last few weeks of his term, the PM effectively stuck a video on for the class. He went off to Paris, ostensibly for a meeting of Ukraine’s allies, and was awarded the Légion d’honneur by president Emmanuel Macron. The message being sent to Westminster was a simple one: you oiks may not appreciate me at home, but I’m a titan on the global stage.

As Duncan Robinson puts it in The Economist, “foreign policy is the last refuge of an unsuccessful prime minister”. The MP for Holborn and St Pancras always seemed to be jetting off to gurn sombrely behind a lectern precisely when he needed to assert his domestic agenda. And despite foreign policy appearing to be his happy place, Starmer often seemed outboxed (Donald Trump) and outfoxed (Emmanuel Macron). Picking up France’s most prestigious bauble is something of a consolation prize for the departing PM.

So far, Andy Burnham has been tight-lipped about his cabinet picks. From the moment that the Makerfield result was announced, a briefing war has raged about who will take on the job of chancellor of the exchequer once Rachel Reeves is knocked down to a junior brief. If lobby hacks are correct, the three names in contention are Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper and Shabana Mahmood, with Miliband possibly already having been excluded from the running.

The attacks on Miliband from the right were predictable. ‘Red’ Ed, so went the argument, would spook the markets by signalling a move away from fiscal restraint. He’d alienate voters outside of London with his liberal-lefty agenda. He looks weird eating a bacon sandwich, etc etc. But perhaps more significant than the usual scaremongering from the right was the response from the unions.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, was vociferous in her opposition to Miliband as chancellor. She castigated him as “a noose around the neck” of job creation. His support for net-zero, and opposition to North Sea oil and gas licences, was the main bone of contention. Graham claimed Miliband was “completely deaf” to what would replace existing jobs in the fossil fuel industry, and seemed to suggest he was “not pro-worker in [his] gut”.

“A lot of the left has now become a middle class project,” said Graham. “It now needs to work for the working class.”

Beyond the irony of a trade union leader helping squash the prospect of the most leftwing chancellor since the 1970s taking office, there are reasons to be sceptical of Graham’s arguments. More than 2,700 people died in England and Wales from heat-related causes during the recent record hot spells; more than one million workers depend on the UK’s net zero economy. It’s increasingly difficult to paint pro-climate policies as being anti-worker, particularly as the need for adaptation as well as mitigation grows more urgent.

The looming prospect of Andy Burnham illustrates a split on the British left: oily social democracy vs green socialism. The big dogs of the trade union movement – Unite and GMB – are fierce advocates for the former, and are content with Blue Labour conservatism as long as it comes along with a hefty portion of oil and gas. But this doesn’t come without costs, of the political kind as well as catastrophic global heating.

Since Makerfield, Zack Polanski’s Greens (at least in terms of national politics) have been in a position of cagily watching and waiting. Burnham’s rhetorical departures from Starmer on economic policy, and even something of a soft shift on Gaza last week, have threatened to put the squeeze on progressive voters. Should Burnham, in office, back up the comms with actual policy, a modicum of a leftwards shift combined with the threat of Reform might well tempt 2024 Labour voters back to the fold. Opposing Burnhamism on the grounds of being too anti-migrant, and insufficiently tough on Israel, is far from a majoritarian project capable of recomposing British politics.

But green socialism is bigger than any one single issue. The consequences of climate collapse are increasingly visible and intrusive: their economic impacts, on the cost of living and infrastructure, are becoming more and more severe. The space for populist, pro-climate politics will only get bigger – and if Andy Burnham doesn’t occupy it, Zack Polanski certainly will.

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