Andy Burnham is heading back to Westminster – what happens now?
The biggest gamble in modern UK politics has paid off. Andy Burnham has won in Makerfield, and now has a seat in Parliament.
The biggest gamble in modern UK politics has paid off. Andy Burnham has won in Makerfield, and now has a seat in Parliament.
It’s worth remembering this was never a guaranteed result: when Josh Simons announced he was stepping down as the constituency MP to make way for the Mayor of Greater Manchester last month, just one week had passed since Reform won big in the area’s local elections.
No doubt, the nightmare scenario has been playing out in Labour minds for the past five weeks.
If Burnham was to lose to Reform, it would effectively have demonstrated there is no way back for the party. Its brand was so irredeemably tainted that it failed the most popular politician in the country, even as he made clear his desire to overthrow the unpopular leader.
That did not happen – it didn’t come remotely close to happening. Burnham beat Reform’s candidate Robert Kenyon into second place by more than 9,000 votes.
There were questions in the past week over whether he might not quite beat the combined total of Reform and Rupert Lowe’s far-right party Restore. But in the end, he won thousands more votes than every other candidate combined.
The Labour candidate has shown there is a way back from the polling doldrums, and maybe – just maybe – a Reform government led by Nigel Farage isn’t an inevitability.
So, don’t underestimate the monumental sigh of relief that emanated from the counting hall in Wigan’s The Edge venue and the party HQ on London’s Rushworth Street this morning – perhaps even from backers of Sir Keir Starmer.
But as I wrote earlier this week, the result in Makerfield represents the end of just one little narrative thread from the dramatic week that followed the local elections last month.
Burnham and his team will have been planning his initial moves ever since this by-election was secured. He will sit down with Starmer this weekend, and that chat will likely involve the ex-Mayor gently suggesting the PM set out a timetable for his departure.
We still don’t know how Starmer will play this. Of course, he’s been saying for weeks that he will fight any leadership contest – but what else could he possibly say? What if he committed to a handover… then Burnham lost?
However, all signs point towards a stubborn PM insisting he has a five-year mandate to serve the country and a duty to provide stability. It may be a tough job to convince him otherwise.