Andy Burnham’s emphatic victory in the Makerfield by-election has reignited the Labour leadership question, as Reform UK scrambles to explain a defeat that Nigel Farage admitted was ‘disappointing’. Burnham won 55% of the vote, increasing Labour’s majority over Reform by more than 9,000 votes – a rare feat for a governing party candidate. The result was ‘a dramatic, emphatic win’, Farage conceded, but he immediately blamed the outcome on voters wanting to eject Sir Keir Starmer from Downing Street. ‘What really happened here is it was “vote Burnham, get Starmer out”,’ he said in a video clip posted online.
Yet behind the scenes, Reform is examining whether sexist comments by its candidate, Robert Kenyon, may have cost the party dearly. Canvassers from different parties reported that voters – particularly women – highlighted sexist and lewd social media posts by Kenyon, which emerged during the campaign. The issue rose to prominence when the TV presenter Carol Vorderman used a video posted online to demand an apology from Kenyon, after it emerged he had joined in a graphic discussion about her in now-deleted posts. One Reform source admitted: ‘I will admit that the Vorderman stuff did not help us.’ Another activist said the party had advised Kenyon not to apologise, adding: ‘That’s something that was not his fault, it was how he was advised.’
“Andy Burnham wins Makerfield by-election with 55%, prompting leadership challenge talk as Reform blames sexist posts by its candidate.”
Farage’s party had hoped for a tightly fought battle against Burnham, targeting a high-profile scalp to boost its credentials as the main opposition to Labour. Instead, Reform fell short of its target of 18,000 votes, securing just 15,696. Farage expressed frustration with the right-wing rival Restore Britain, founded by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, which took nearly 7% of the vote. ‘There’s a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted Reform, that voted Restore,’ he said, urging them to return: ‘We are the challenger party to the left in this country. And I would urge you to think again, I really, really would.’
Burnham, the outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester, used his victory speech to make his most explicit statement yet about his leadership ambitions. ‘This result will bring about a country that works fairly for everywhere and everybody,’ he said, calling the result ‘a final chance to change’ for the Labour government. According to the New Statesman, Burnham already has the nominations he needs to trigger a leadership challenge against Starmer, who has said he will stand and fight any such move. The prime minister’s biographer Tom Baldwin, Labour MP Rosie Wrighting and others discussed the implications on Channel 4 News, where the question hung: can Burnham topple Starmer?
For now, Burnham is the newest Labour MP, and the party’s internal battle is only just beginning.